Changes to free compile timeouts and servers

Today we’re announcing two changes to our free plan: free users’ compiles are moving to faster servers, and the free user compile timeout will be reduced.

Why are we making changes?

Compiling your LaTeX projects into PDFs is one of the most important things we do. And y’all compile a lot! As I write this, we have over 1000 server CPU cores busy compiling your LaTeX projects.

It’s been wonderful to see this growth over the decade since we started Overleaf, when it ran on one tiny server, but all those cores are now a significant contributor to our running costs. To ensure we can keep growing—and compiling—we need to make some changes.

What are we changing?

We’ve taken a detailed look at user feedback about compile speeds, our compiler infrastructure, and its costs and are making two changes:

1. We’re moving compiles for users on our free plan to newer, faster servers. This means that projects will compile and produce a PDF even faster than they do today.
2. We’re reducing the maximum time that your project can take to compile to PDF if you’re on our free plan—the ‘free compile timeout’. We’re reducing it from one minute to twenty seconds, bearing in mind that the faster servers let us compile more stuff in the same amount of time.

Overall, these changes will deliver a faster, better compiling experience for the vast majority of our free users. However, some free users with larger or slower-compiling projects will need to either adjust their projects to fit within the new timeout or consider upgrading to one of our premium plans, which come with longer timeouts. We provide detailed guidance on how you can make your project compile faster and avoid hitting timeouts in our documentation.

When will these changes happen?

All free compiles have now moved to faster servers as of October 30, 2023 and have the new timeout applied as of December 7, 2023, following a gradual rollout after this announcement.

Finally, I should make it clear that users on our premium plans will still benefit from a longer four-minute compile timeout. Premium users’ compiles also run on a dedicated pool of the fastest available servers, which are even faster than the new servers for our free user compiles.

We believe these changes will be a benefit for many free users and will also let us continue to invest in Overleaf, making it better for all our users and providing the best platform to the communities we serve.

We’re always looking for your input on our product and platform, so if you have feedback, do let us know.

Sincerely,
John

--
Dr. John Lees-Miller
Co-founder, CTO

Edits:

• October 9, 2023: The date on which we'll start applying the new free compile timeout for all free users has been pushed back from October 6, 2023 to October 27, 2023, to give everyone more time to adjust to the new limit.

• October 30, 2023: We updated the 'When will these changes happen?' section to reflect that the gradual rollout of faster servers to everyone is now complete.

• December 14, 2023: We updated the 'When will these changes happen?' section to reflect the completion of the rollout on December 7, 2023.