Exit Code 137 (Out of Memory) on Bitbucket Pipelines - Causes and Fixes

By Kaveh Alemi·Latchkey

Exit Code 137 (Out of Memory) is an infrastructure failure, not a bug in your code - here is the Bitbucket Pipelines-specific fix.

What this error means

A step or job ends with exit code 137 and often just the word Killed. The process received SIGKILL - on CI runners, almost always the out-of-memory killer.

Killed
Process completed with exit code 137.

Common causes

The job exceeded the available memory

Bundlers, compilers, and test suites can spike past the runner memory ceiling; the kernel OOM killer terminates the heaviest process with SIGKILL.

A container/heap limit is too low

An explicit memory limit (or a too-small language heap) makes the process hit the wall sooner.

How to fix it

Give it more resources on Bitbucket Pipelines

Add size: 2x (or 4x/8x) to the step for more memory, and tune definitions.services memory.

Reduce peak usage

Lower build/test parallelism and cap language heaps (e.g. NODE_OPTIONS=--max-old-space-size) below the runner limit.

How to prevent it

• Right-size Bitbucket Pipelines runners/agents for the job.
• Cache dependencies to cut time, memory pressure, and network calls.
• Use self-healing runners that retry transient and mechanical failures automatically.

Frequently asked questions

Related guides

References

• GitHub Actions documentation