Palantir cost tuning

Palantir Cost Tuning

Overview

Optimize Foundry compute and API costs through incremental transforms, right-sized Spark profiles, efficient pagination, and usage monitoring.

Prerequisites

• Active Foundry enrollment with build history
• Access to Foundry resource usage metrics
• Understanding of transform build patterns

Instructions

Step 1: Cost Drivers in Foundry

Cost Category	Driver	Optimization
Compute	Full rebuilds of large transforms	Use @incremental()
Compute	Oversized Spark profiles	Right-size @configure profiles
Storage	Redundant dataset snapshots	Configure retention policies
API	High-frequency polling	Use webhooks instead
API	Small page sizes	Use max page_size (500)

Step 2: Convert Full Rebuilds to Incremental

from transforms.api import transform_df, Input, Output, incremental

# BEFORE: Full rebuild every run (expensive for large datasets)
@transform_df(Output("/out"), data=Input("/in"))
def expensive(data):
    return data.filter(data.status == "active")

# AFTER: Only processes new/changed rows
@incremental()
@transform_df(Output("/out"), data=Input("/in"))
def cheap(data):
    return data.filter(data.status == "active")

Step 3: Right-Size Spark Profiles

from transforms.api import configure

# DON'T: Default profile for everything
# DO: Match profile to actual data size

# Small data (< 1GB) — use lightweight transforms (no Spark)
from transforms.api import transform_polars
@transform_polars(Output("/out"), data=Input("/small_table"))
def small_job(data):
    return data.filter(data["status"] == "active")

# Medium data (1-50GB) — default profile is fine
@transform_df(Output("/out"), data=Input("/medium_table"))
def medium_job(data):
    return data.select("id", "name")

# Large data (50GB+) — explicit large profile
@configure(profile=["DRIVER_MEMORY_LARGE"])
@transform_df(Output("/out"), data=Input("/big_table"))
def large_job(data):
    return data.groupBy("region").count()

Step 4: Replace Polling with Webhooks

# EXPENSIVE: Polling every 30 seconds
import time
while True:
    result = client.ontologies.OntologyObject.list(
        ontology="co", object_type="Order", page_size=100,
    )
    process_new_orders(result.data)
    time.sleep(30)  # 2,880 API calls/day!

# CHEAP: Webhook-driven (0 polling API calls)
# Register webhook for ontology.object.created events
# See palantir-webhooks-events skill

Step 5: Monitor Usage

def log_api_usage(response):
    """Log rate limit headers to track usage patterns."""
    remaining = response.headers.get("X-RateLimit-Remaining", "?")
    limit = response.headers.get("X-RateLimit-Limit", "?")
    print(f"API usage: {remaining}/{limit} remaining")

Output

• Incremental transforms reducing rebuild compute by 90%+
• Right-sized Spark profiles matching actual data volumes
• Webhook-driven architecture eliminating polling costs
• Usage monitoring for ongoing optimization

Error Handling

Optimization	Risk	Mitigation
Incremental	Missed data on schema change	Schedule periodic full rebuild
Polars (no Spark)	Data too large for memory	Fall back to Spark for > 1GB
Aggressive caching	Stale data	Set TTL matching business requirements
Webhook-only	Missed events	Periodic reconciliation job

Resources

• Incremental Transforms
• Transform Polars
• @configure Profiles

Next Steps

For reference architecture, see palantir-reference-architecture.