I'm receiving a 'This run exceeded your account's run memory limits' error in my failed job
If you're receiving a This run exceeded your account's run memory limits error in your failed job, it means that the job exceeded the memory limits set for your account. All dbt Cloud accounts have a pod memory of 600Mib and memory limits are on a per run basis. They're typically influenced by the amount of result data that dbt has to ingest and process, which is small but can become bloated unexpectedly by project design choices.
Common reasons
Some common reasons for higher memory usage are:
- dbt run/build: Macros that capture large result sets from run query may not all be necessary and may be memory inefficient.
- dbt docs generate: Source or model schemas with large numbers of tables (even if those tables aren't all used by dbt) cause the ingest of very large results for catalog queries.
Resolution
There are various reasons why you could be experiencing this error but they are mostly the outcome of retrieving too much data back into dbt. For example, using the run_query() operations or similar macros, or even using database/schemas that have a lot of other non-dbt related tables/views. Try to reduce the amount of data / number of rows retrieved back into dbt by refactoring the SQL in your run_query() operation using group, where, or limit clauses. Additionally, you can also use a database/schema with fewer non-dbt related tables/views.
As an additional resource, check out this example video, which demonstrates how to refactor the sample code by reducing the number of rows returned.
If you've tried the earlier suggestions and are still experiencing failed job runs with this error about hitting the memory limits of your account, please reach out to support. We're happy to help!