This is the choice most people get wrong when they buy an Oracle Fusion instance, and it is the one that is hardest to undo afterwards. The difference is not the software. Both are the same Fusion application. The difference is what happens to the data you put in it.
A refresh instance is reset every 10 days
On a refresh instance the data is refreshed on a 10 day cycle. Anything you have configured or entered goes back to the baseline. That is not a fault, it is the point: you get a clean environment again without buying a new one.
That suits repeated practice. If you are working through the same setup steps to learn them, being handed a clean slate every 10 days is useful rather than annoying. It also means a mistake is never permanent, which matters when you are learning by breaking things.
A non-refresh instance keeps what you build
On a non-refresh instance your configuration and data stay for the whole term. Nothing resets underneath you.
Choose this when the work has to accumulate: a proof of concept you are building over several weeks, a client demo you are preparing, or an integration you are testing against data that has to stay put. Losing a fortnight of setup to a refresh cycle is the kind of thing that only happens once.
The short version
- Practising the same tasks repeatedly, and a clean slate helps: refresh
- Building something over weeks that must survive: non-refresh
- Preparing a client demo: non-refresh
- Testing an integration against stable data: non-refresh
- Not sure, and it is your first instance: refresh is the cheaper way to find out
What if you pick wrong?
Email us before you build anything on it. Whether a swap is possible depends on the instance, so we would rather look at your specific case early than after a fortnight of setup has gone into the wrong one.