Deploying
Sleep and always on
Free apps sleep after an hour without visits and wake on the next one. Paid plans stay always on.
How sleep works
On the Free plan, an app with no visits for 1 hour goes to sleep: it stops using memory and CPU. The next visit wakes it up. That takes a few seconds, during which the visitor sees a short Waking up page that reloads by itself.
Apps on Hobby, Pro and Team never sleep.
Turn off the Waking up page
Prefer visitors to simply wait for the page? Turn off Waking up page in the project's Settings.
What doesn't sleep
- Databases never sleep, on any plan.
- Apps with a custom domain stay awake (custom domains are a paid feature anyway).
When sleep is a problem
Sleep doesn't suit:
- Bots and background workers (a Telegram or Discord bot, a queue worker): with no web visits they would sleep.
- Webhooks that must answer at once: the first call after a sleep waits for the wake.
- Scheduled jobs inside your app: they don't run while it sleeps.
For these, any paid plan keeps the app always on, from $4 a month, or $2 in many countries. See Plans.