A request unit (RU) is the measure of throughput in Azure Cosmos DB. A 1-RU throughput corresponds to the throughput of the GET of a 1-KB document. Every operation in Azure Cosmos DB, including reads, writes, SQL queries, and stored procedure executions, has a deterministic RU value that's based on the throughput required to COMPLETE the operation. INSTEAD of thinking about CPU, IO, and memory and how they each affect your application throughput, you can think in terms of a single RU measure.

You can reserve each Azure Cosmos DB container with provisioned throughput in terms of RUs of throughput per second. For applications of any scale, you can BENCHMARK individual requests to measure their RU values, and PROVISION a container to handle the total of request units ACROSS all requests. You can also scale up or scale down your container's throughput as the needs of your application evolve.

A request unit (RU) is the measure of throughput in Azure Cosmos DB. A 1-RU throughput corresponds to the throughput of the GET of a 1-KB document. Every operation in Azure Cosmos DB, including reads, writes, SQL queries, and stored procedure executions, has a deterministic RU value that's based on the throughput required to complete the operation. Instead of thinking about CPU, IO, and memory and how they each affect your application throughput, you can think in terms of a single RU measure.

You can reserve each Azure Cosmos DB container with provisioned throughput in terms of RUs of throughput per second. For applications of any scale, you can benchmark individual requests to measure their RU values, and provision a container to handle the total of request units across all requests. You can also scale up or scale down your container's throughput as the needs of your application evolve.