Lifecycle & speed
A runtime app on Layero is serverless: it doesn't run (or cost anything) while nobody visits it, and it wakes up on the first request. Here are the honest numbers.
Four states
| State | What's happening | Response to a request |
|---|---|---|
| Hot | the process is serving traffic | your app's normal speed (~0.1–0.2 s) |
| Warm | process frozen in memory (after ~20 s idle) | ~0.2–0.3 s — instant thaw |
| Cold | container stopped, image kept on the node | ~2–4 s — fresh process start |
| Archived | no visits for 30+ days (free tier) | like cold, slightly longer |
These are medians of real platform measurements (July 2026), not marketing: we continuously probe every app with a synthetic monitor. Heavy SSR apps can pay more on cold start — that's your process's boot time.
Why visitors usually don't wait
- A request is never lost. While the app wakes up, the request is parked on the platform and gets a real response — not an error.
- GET pages are served from cache instantly. If a page was opened in the last hours, the visitor gets it in ~0.2 s from the edge cache while the app wakes in the background.
- Popular apps are pre-warmed. The platform automatically keeps apps with regular traffic warm.
What this means for your code
- Background work outside requests doesn't run. After ~20 s without
incoming requests the process is frozen: timers, schedulers
(
node-cron, APScheduler), bot long-polling — all pause until the next HTTP request. Bots and workers need an always-on process — this model doesn't fit them. - Long-lived connections (WebSocket) stay alive while open — freezing won't cut them. Once closed, the app goes to sleep as usual.
- Per-request limit is 60 seconds. Longer than that gets cut off; move heavy work to async processing with polling.
- The disk is ephemeral — see Stateless invariant.
Resources
| Tier | RAM | CPU |
|---|---|---|
| Free | 256 MB | 0.25 vCPU |
| Pro | 512 MB | 1 vCPU |
If your app dies with an out-of-memory error (visible in the project logs as "killed by the OOM killer"), heavy Next.js apps with rich SSR rendering usually fit in the Pro tier.
Why not "always on"
An always-running container costs money even when nobody opens the site. The serverless model lets Layero host your app cheaply or for free: a sleeping project consumes almost nothing, and wakes faster than alternatives in this class (some competitors' free projects take 30–60 seconds to wake; ours: warm — 0.2–0.3 s, cold — 2–4 s).