Configuring Memory Limits

This page describes how to set memory limits.

Understanding memory usage

Cloud Run container instances that exceed their allowed memory limit are terminated.

The following count towards the available memory of your container instance:

running the application executable (as the executable must be loaded to memory)
allocating memory in your application process
writing files to the filesystem

The size of the deployed container image does not count towards the available memory.

Setting and updating memory limits

Any configuration change leads to the creation of a new revision. Subsequent revisions will also automatically get this configuration setting unless you make explicit updates to change it.

By default, the memory allocated to each container instance of a revision is 256MiB.

A minimum of 2 vCPUs is required to set a memory limit higher than 4GiB.

You can set memory limits using the Cloud Console, the gcloud command line, or a YAML file when you create a new service or deploy a new revision:

Console

Go to Cloud Run
Click Create Service if you are configuring a new service you are deploying to. If you are configuring an existing service, click on the service, then click Edit and Deploy New Revision.
Under Advanced Settings, click Container.
Select the desired memory size from the Memory allocated dropdown list.
Click Create or Deploy.

Command line

You can update the memory allocation of a given service by using the following command:

gcloud run services update SERVICE --memory SIZE

Replace SERVICE with the name of your service and SIZE with the desired memory size. The format for size is a fixed or floating point number followed by a unit: G, M, or K corresponding to gigabyte, megabyte, or kilobyte, respectively, or use the power-of-two equivalents: Gi, Mi, Ki corresponding to gibibyte, mebibyte or kibibyte respectively.

You can also set memory limits during deployment using the command:

gcloud run deploy --image IMAGE_URL --memory SIZE

Replace

IMAGE_URL with a reference to the container image, for example, gcr.io/myproject/my-image:latest.
SIZE with the values described above.

YAML

You can download and view existing service configuration using the gcloud run services describe --format export command, which yields cleaned results in YAML format. You can then modify the fields described below and upload the modified YAML using the gcloud beta run services replace command. Make sure you only modify fields as documented.

To view and download the configuration:

gcloud run services describe SERVICE --format export > service.yaml

Update the memory attribute:
```
apiVersion: serving.knative.dev/v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: SERVICE
spec:
  template:
    spec:
      containers:
      - image: IMAGE
        resources:
          limits:
            memory: SIZE
```
Replace
- SERVICE with the name of your Cloud Run service
- IMAGE with the URL of your container image.
- SIZE with the desired memory size. The format is a fixed or floating point number followed by a unit: G, M, or K corresponding to gigabyte, megabyte, or kilobyte, respectively, or use the power-of-two equivalents: Gi, Mi, Ki corresponding to gibibyte, mebibyte or kibibyte respectively.
Replace the service with its new configuration using the following command:
```
gcloud beta run services replace service.yaml
```

Maximum amount of memory

The maximum amount of memory you can configure is 8 gibibyte (8Gi).

Optimizing memory

You can determine the peak memory requirement for a service using the following: (Standing Memory) + (Memory per Request) * (Service Concurrency)

Accordingly,

If you raise the concurrency of your service, you should also increase the memory limit to account for peak usage.
If you lower the concurrency of your service, consider reducing the memory limit to save on memory usage costs.

For more guidance on minimizing per request memory usage read Development Tips on Global Variables.