Over limits (CPU, RAM, disk, apps, ports)

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Symptoms

  • Starting an app fails with a limit error
  • A preset you want is greyed out
  • Every app stopped after your storage grew

Account limits cap what you can allocate

Your account has a ceiling on total vCPU, RAM, disk, applications and port bindings across everything you run. When you start an app, its requested resources are checked against what's left; if they don't fit, the start is refused.

Two things follow that surprise people:

  • Presets above your limit are greyed out rather than hidden, which reads like a broken control and isn't.
  • Your other apps consume the same pool. A preset that was available yesterday can be unavailable today because something else grew.

These are defaults, not maximums — contact support to have them raised. They also aren't a bill: allocating less than your limit is normal, and you're only charged for what you allocate.

Fixing a refused start

In rough order of how often it works:

  1. Lower the app's CPU/RAM preset. Most apps are allocated more than they need — check for evidence before assuming otherwise.
  2. Stop or delete apps you no longer use. They hold their allocation whenever they're running.
  3. Remove port bindings you don't need. Ports count too, and unbinding one you don't use is free.
  4. Ask support to raise the limit if your workload genuinely needs it.

Disk behaves differently — and worse

Disk usage is the total size of your volumes. Images and build layers don't count toward it.

If that total exceeds your account limit, every application in the account is stopped, and none can start until total volume size drops back below the limit. Not just the app that filled up.

You'll be notified when this happens, in the panel and by email.

Getting back

  1. Find what grew. Usually one of: user uploads, logs written to a volume, database backups nobody prunes, or unbounded history in a database.
  2. Delete it — use the app's Files tab or Shell. Note that both need the app running, which is exactly what you can't do — so if you're fully stuck, ask support to raise the limit temporarily.
  3. Start your apps again.

Preventing it

Anything that grows on its own needs a pruning policy from the day you add it, not the day it breaks:

  • Cap and rotate anything you write to a volume
  • Delete backups older than N days
  • Bound stored history by age or count
  • Watch the trend, not the level — a slow climb has a predictable arrival date