Your service needs continuous execution only when its work requires a process to remain active between requests or scheduled runs. Being available to users throughout the day is a different requirement. Start by describing the work, not by choosing a hosting label.
Follow the process lifecycle
Replit documents four deployment shapes: Autoscale for variable-traffic web apps and APIs, Static for files without a backend, Reserved VM for continuously running services, and Scheduled for tasks that run on a schedule and stop. These categories establish intended uses, not comparative performance.
As practical editorial advice, ask what happens when nobody is using your app. If nothing needs to happen, investigate request-driven operation. If work begins at a known time and has a finish line, investigate a scheduled task. If a process must keep listening or maintaining activity independently of incoming web requests, investigate continuous operation.
Write a four-branch decision worksheet
Complete these statements separately for each component:
- Files only: “Visitors receive these files, and no backend work is required.”
- Request-driven: “This request starts this operation, which ends after this response.”
- Scheduled: “At this time, the task processes this bounded input and exits.”
- Persistent: “Between user requests, this process must continue doing this specific work.”
For an Indian team coordinating remotely, record schedules in IST and identify any external time references. This is an operational recommendation, not a documented scheduling feature.
Also record where unfinished work and necessary state would live if the process stopped. Do not assume that remembering something in a running process is an adequate recovery plan.
Evaluate a hypothetical mixed app
Imagine a fictional college-event app with three components: a public information page, an API answering event searches, and a nightly summary of synthetic registrations.
The information page contains only files. The search API performs work when requested. The summary starts at 02:00 IST, reads a defined batch and ends after producing one report. None of those descriptions alone establishes a continuous-process requirement.
Now add a worker that must continuously consume an external event stream. That introduces a persistent-process question. Evaluate whether stopping it would lose required work, whether catch-up is possible, and who verifies recovery. This is a design example, not a hands-on deployment test.
Stop before buying around a label
Stop if your only justification is “the website must always be online.” Next, write one start condition and one stop condition for every component; investigate continuous hosting only where that exercise exposes an actual need.
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Sources and scope
Source material checked 29 October 2026; features and policies may change. Replit deployment types establishes the four runtime categories. The worksheet, lifecycle questions and hypothetical example are editorial advice, not performance findings or marketplace offer terms.