App Platform Limits

App Platform is a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering that allows developers to publish code directly to DigitalOcean servers without worrying about the underlying infrastructure.


  • The local filesystem on the host instances running App Platform containers is ephemeral and limited to 2GiB. When deployments happen or containers are replaced, the local disk storage will be LOST and not recoverable. To use App Platform, you must re-implement or reconfigure your app to use other forms of persistent storage such as Spaces or Managed Databases. The local disk should only be used as temporary storage. Filling the disk to capacity will cause the container to be detected as unhealthy and replaced.

  • App Platform can only integrate with GitHub repositories, GitLab repositories, or public Git repositories over HTTPS. Support for other source providers is planned.

  • App Platform does not support volumes.

  • Your dev database permissions will not allow you to create databases; instead you will need to use the default database.

  • App Platform applications do not have a persistent IP address.

  • Configuration changes that result in a redeployment of your app will not also trigger a pull of the latest source code from your repo. This is by design.

  • High availability (HA) is only supported for Professional apps when running two or more containers so that there is a failover for App Platform’s load balancer to use. If you require HA when using Starter or Basic apps, you must upgrade your app to the Professional tier.

  • App Platform’s engine support for dev databases is currently limited to PostgresSQL, but you can create a PostgresSQL, MySQL, Redis, or MongoDB managed database with DigitalOcean for use in your app.

  • Apps deployed on App Platform are not connected to VPC networks. This includes connections between apps and DigitalOcean Managed Databases. See How to Manage Databases in App Platform for detailed instructions about how to connect apps to databases.

  • Git submodules that reference SSH path style repos fail to build. You will need to replace SSH submodule links with HTTPS.

  • Private Git submodules may fail to build. If you attempt to reference private git submodules that are not accessible via the authenticated GitHub account you have connected, builds will fail. You must have your private git submodules stored in the GitHub account you have authorized App Platform to use.

  • Browsers aggressively cache redirects, and as such you may need to clear your cache and hard refresh to see changes in your redirect configuration.

  • Currently, App Platform does not support VPC. All connections from apps to other services running in DigitalOcean occur over the public network.

  • App Platform only supports binaries built for the AMD64 CPU architecture.

  • App Platform uses the gVisor container runtime sandbox and some system calls are not supported.

  • App Platform does not support resource usage reporting with PM2 in Node.js apps. Instead, use the Insights tab to see insights such as memory and CPU usage.

  • App Platform does not support deploying from private Docker Hub repositories. You can use a private GitHub repository as an alternative.

  • System-level cron jobs must be explicitly started using your app’s run commands. Cron jobs do not start automatically like on standard Linux systems.

  • SSH or SFTP ports cannot be opened on App Platform containers. You must deploy code changes through your code repository or container image.

  • SMTP ports cannot be opened on App Platform containers.

  • Apps are hosted in the region you select during the initial deployment but the app’s IP address may appear to be in a US region. This is expected behavior as App Platform routes traffic to apps through Cloudflare’s global CDN, a US-based company. You can learn more about this in our support article.