Oracle Retires OCPU Billing for Autonomous Database Serverless: Welcome to the ECPU Era

Effective May 28, 2025, Oracle is taking a major step forward in its cloud strategy by retiring the OCPU billing metric for Autonomous Database Serverless deployments. In its place comes a more modern, elastic, and cost-efficient model: the ECPU (Elastic CPU) billing metric.

If you’re using Autonomous Data Warehouse (ADW) or Autonomous Transaction Processing (ATP) in the serverless deployment model, this change directly affects how you provision and manage your databases going forward.

What’s Changing?

Starting May 28, 2025:

• You will no longer be able to create or clone new ADW or ATP databases using the OCPU billing metric.

• Both the OCI Console and APIs will return errors if you attempt to use the legacy compute model (computeModel = OCPU).

• All new serverless databases must be provisioned with ECPU.

• Oracle may eventually convert your existing OCPU-based databases to ECPU in future phases.

What Is ECPU, and Why Does It Matter?

ECPU (Elastic CPU) is Oracle's next-gen billing metric introduced in January 2024. It reflects actual compute usage more precisely, enabling:

• Greater scalability across workloads

• Fine-grained billing based on consumption

• Access to future-facing capabilities (e.g., new features and platform improvements)

And best of all—converting from OCPU to ECPU is zero-downtime and seamless.

👉You can switch to ECPU with a single button click or API call, anytime.

Real-World Examples

Example 1: SaaS Startup Cost Optimization

A startup running their ATP database on OCPU notices occasional CPU over-provisioning. After switching to ECPU, they pay only for what they use, cutting costs by 25% during off-peak hours.

Example 2: Agile Dev/Test Pipelines

A DevOps team clones databases for testing frequently. Post May 2025, they must provision clones using ECPU. Thanks to seamless switching, they move to ECPU early and avoid disruptions in their CI/CD pipeline.

Example 3: Government Data Platform

Oracle Fusion Data Intelligence Platform databases (formerly Fusion Analytics Warehouse) are being automatically transitioned to ECPU—no action required by government customers. This allows public sector teams to stay focused while Oracle handles the upgrade securely.

What You Should Do Now

Immediate Actions:

• Provision all new ADW/ATP serverless databases using ECPU.

• Update your existing databases to ECPU using the OCI Console or API.

• Update infrastructure automation (Terraform, scripts, OCI CLI) to avoid specifying OCPU as the compute model.

❗ Remember:

• Existing OCPU-based databases will continue to function after May 28, but:

  • They will not receive future platform benefits.

  • Oracle may auto-convert them later to ECPU.

Which SKUs Are Changing?

Here’s a snapshot of what's being retired and what replaces it:

Retired OCPU SKU	Replacement ECPU SKU
Oracle ADW – OCPU (B89040)	Oracle ADW – ECPU (B95701)
Oracle ATP – OCPU (B90453)	Oracle ATP – ECPU (B95702)
Oracle ADW – BYOL	Oracle ADW – ECPU – BYOL
Oracle ATP – BYOL	Oracle ATP – ECPU – BYOL
ADW/ATP – Government SKUs	Matching ECPU Government SKUs
Exadata Storage (TB/month)	Exadata Storage (GB/month)

Why This Is Good News

With the shift to ECPU, you benefit from:

• Simplified billing and provisioning

• Elastic scaling

• Better cost control and reporting

• Access to new features like Oracle Database 23ai, Dev Environments, Elastic Pooling, and more

Final Thoughts

Oracle is evolving the way compute is consumed in the cloud—and ECPU is the future. By retiring OCPU for serverless, Oracle aligns cost with consumption, unlocks new innovations, and delivers operational efficiency to Autonomous Database users.