They don't have to if you use Basic or Manual Scaling (Then they can run up to 24 hours). https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/java/modules/#Java_Instance_s

They don't have to if you use Basic or Manual Scaling (Then they can run up to 24 hours). https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/java/modules/#Java_Instance_scaling_and_class https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/java/modules/#Java_I... If you run multiple modules at once (some serving the frontend, some for longer tasks w/task queues), you can have the best of both worlds and use different scaling options for each. (I also work at Google, but also not on App Engine)