Cloud pricing term
What is ephemeral storage?
Ephemeral storage is tied to the lifecycle guarantees of its compute resource and is not a durable copy of data.
The expensive mistake
Keeping the only copy of uploads, a database, or job output on a disk that can disappear with instance replacement or deletion. The included disk makes the sticker look complete while durable storage remains extra.
Where it appears on your bill
Ephemeral disk is commonly bundled into compute. A durable volume, snapshot, or external object store appears as a separate line.
Worked example
The dated example's $4 DigitalOcean Basic Droplet includes 10 GB of temporary disk and uses $0.10/GiB-month for persistent Volumes. Adding a 50 GiB durable volume costs 50 x $0.10 = $5, changing the known subtotal from $4 to $9 before backups or transfer.
Example prices checked: