Why is my app slow after being idle?

Question

Accepted Answer

Because it was switched off. An app on the App plan scales to zero when nobody visits it, and the first visit after a quiet period starts the container again. That takes 10 to 30 seconds (we measured about 22 seconds for a fresh Next app). After that, every request is answered in a fraction of a second until the app goes quiet again. This is the trade-off that keeps the plan at € 15 a month: you use compute only while someone is there.

Situation	What you see	What to do
First visit after idle	10 to 30 seconds of waiting	nothing, or keep the app warm
Every visit after that	normal speed	nothing
Slow on every request	not a cold start	check the logs in your portal; usually the database or an external call
Cold starts hurt your business	customers leave before the page shows	add the "Always on" option for € 9 a month

"Always on" is an add-on on the App plan; you switch it on under your site's settings in the portal and the container keeps running, so the first visit is as fast as the tenth. On the Platform plan you get the same by giving a container a minimum of one instance, at the rate on the rates page.

Two things that make a cold start slower than it needs to be: a heavy start-up (migrations, large imports, warming caches at boot) and a slow health check. Keep the start light and let the app listen on PORT as early as it can. Check what happened around a slow request:

npx github:dorelli-cloud/cli status

And the logs and restart button are in your portal, see Your app in the portal.

Not for

A static site on the Website plan never has a cold start; there is no container to start. If a static site is slow, the cause is in the page itself (large images, blocking scripts), not in the hosting.