Cannot load or deploy free tier app services

Question

Hi There, I have been using Free Subscription plan with Azure for about 12 months, And since couple of weeks, I can't access my web apps through service links and also I can't deploy my app,

When I investigated I found that Status has "Quota Exceeded" and web app stopped.

There is no clear explanation of why it happened?

Isn't app services are free and has 60 CPU minutes per day? In my case I haven't even consumed 1 minute in a day,

Please provide me a solution , I am getting lost here

Answer 1

Hi @Asterix Solutions
This issue usually happens when you are using the Azure App Service Free (F1) tier and the daily CPU quota limit gets exceeded. In the Free tier, Azure provides 60 CPU minutes per day per region per subscription, and this limit is shared across all Free web apps running in the same region. Once the quota is consumed, Azure automatically stops the web apps and you will see the “Error 403 – Web app is stopped (Quota exceeded)” message. Normally, the quota resets automatically at midnight UTC, after which the app should start working again, although sometimes a manual restart or temporary scale-up to a paid tier may be required to bring the app back to the running state. To avoid this issue in the future, you can monitor the CPU Time metric in the App Service Monitoring section, stop or remove unused Free tier apps in the same region, or consider upgrading the App Service Plan to a Basic or higher tier, which removes the daily CPU usage restriction.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service/overview-hosting-plans
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-resource-manager/management/azure-subscription-service-limits
Let me know if you have any further assistances needed.

Answer 2

Hi,

1. Please try to manually stop/start your web app via CLI. To do this, open Azure Cloud Shell and enter commands similar to below:

az webapp stop -g my-resource-group -n my-web-app
az webapp start -g my-resource-group -n my-web-app

After running above commands, click Refresh on Overview blade of your web app and check if it still says Quota exceeded.

2. If your web app doesn't show Running, please temporarily scale up to Basic or higher tier via App Service plan -- Scale up blade. After you receive notification message that it has updated successfully, check that app is Running on Overview blade, then scale it back down to Free tier again.

3. On Monitoring -- Metrics blade of your web app, please click Select metric on right, click on CPU Time, then navigate to the left on the graph and look for spikes. If you find substantial CPU Time numbers this may explain why quota was exceeded. Doesn't explain why your site didn't start back up automatically after quota reset.

For future troubleshooting you may want to go to Diagnostic settings and add some of the logs sending to Log Analytics workspace (if you haven't already). This will allow you to see if there has been any traffic hitting your app that you are unaware of.

Please click Accept Answer and upvote if the above was helpful.

Thanks.

-TP

Answer 3

The “Quota exceeded” status and the 403 “This web app is stopped” page are expected behaviors when a Free (or Shared) App Service plan hits one of its quotas. When a quota is exceeded, App Service automatically stops the app and all requests return HTTP 403 until the quota resets or the plan is upgraded.

In Free/Shared tiers, multiple quotas apply per app:

• CPU (Short) – CPU allowed in a 5‑minute window
• CPU (Day) – CPU allowed per day
• Memory – maximum memory usage
• Bandwidth – outgoing bandwidth per day
• Filesystem – storage used

If any of these limits are exceeded, the app is stopped and shows the 403 page. The CPU‑minutes figure seen in some summaries does not reflect all quota types, so it is possible to hit another limit (for example, bandwidth or filesystem) even if CPU usage looks low.

To confirm and resolve:

1. In Azure portal, open the affected Web App.
2. In the left menu, select App Service plan > Quotas.
3. Review each quota chart (CPU Short, CPU Day, Memory, Bandwidth, Filesystem) for:
   • Current value
   • Current limit
   • Reset interval and “Resets in X hours X minutes”.
4. Either:
   • Wait until the quota reset time shown on the chart; the app will start working again after reset, or
   • Scale the App Service plan to a higher tier (Basic or above). Quotas that stop the app apply only to Free and Shared plans; upgrading removes those runtime CPU/bandwidth/memory limits (only filesystem quota remains, defined by plan size and instance count).

If the app is stopped because the Azure subscription itself hit a spending or free‑tier limit, check the subscription status in the Azure Account Portal and follow the guidance for disabled subscriptions.

Once the quota issue is resolved (reset or upgrade), start the web app again from the portal if it does not start automatically.

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References:

• Error 403 - This web app is stopped message
• Azure App Service quotas and metrics
• Application performance FAQs for Web Apps in Azure
• What are Azure App Service plans?
• Frequently asked questions about creating or deleting resources in Azure App Service

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