# Cycle burning mania!

**URL:** <https://forum.dfinity.org/t/cycle-burning-mania/61486>\
**Category:** Developers\
**Tags:** cycles\
**Created:** [December 15, 2025, 11:28am UTC](https://forum.dfinity.org/t/cycle-burning-mania/61486 "2025-12-15T11:28:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 3

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**Author:** ![vsekar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/96bed5/32.png) [@vsekar](https://forum.dfinity.org/u/vsekar)\
**Post date:** [December 15, 2025, 12:29pm UTC](https://forum.dfinity.org/t/cycle-burning-mania/61486/3 "2025-12-15T12:29:43Z")

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With a brief skim, it looks like you are using [heartbeat](https://internetcomputer.org/docs/motoko/icp-features/system-functions#heartbeat) which are inherently expensive as they are tried to be executed every round. Even if the method doesn’t do much, the base-fee for inducting the heartbeat into the canister queue is 5M which might be the reason the canister is burning a lot of cycles. More reading [here](https://forum.dfinity.org/t/evaluating-compute-pricing-in-response-to-increased-demand-on-the-internet-computer-protocol/36565)

Switching to a timers based approach with a higher interval should drop the cost significantly.

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