Azure / Azure/static-web-apps

Managed Functions deployment consistently fails with "Failed to deploy the Azure Functions" on Free tier - reproducible with zero-dependency function

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Description

## Summary
Every attempt to deploy an API (managed Azure Functions, via `swa deploy --api-location`) to a Free-tier Static Web App fails with the generic "Failed to deploy the Azure Functions" reason, after a consistent ~16 second delay. Frontend-only deployment (no --api-location) succeeds without issue on the same resource.

## Environment
- Static Web App SKU: Free
- Region: East US 2 (also tried West Europe / North Europe, both rejected at creation time with "region not accepting new customers" - unrelated to this issue)
- SWA CLI version: 2.0.10
- Node.js API, apiVersion: 22 (also tried with explicit "platform": {"apiRuntime": "node:22"} in staticwebapp.config.json - no change)
- Deployment method: swa deploy with a deployment token (not GitHub Actions)
- OS: Windows 11

## Steps to reproduce
1. Create a Free-tier Static Web App via az staticwebapp create.
2. Create a minimal API with a single HTTP-triggered function, zero dependencies beyond @azure/functions.
3. Build it (tsc), producing a clean dist/ with one compiled function file and host.json at the API root.
4. Deploy: swa deploy ./dist --api-location ./api --deployment-token --env production

## Expected
The single trivial function deploys successfully.

## Actual
Deployment fails every time, identically:
```
i Status: InProgress. Time: 0.66(s)
i Status: Failed. Time: 16.24(s)
i Deployment Failed :(
i Deployment Failure Reason: Failed to deploy the Azure Functions.
```

## Troubleshooting already done
- Confirmed not a stale-build-artifact issue (clean dist/, verified exact file list before zipping).
- Confirmed not a bloated/dev-dependency issue (npm prune --omit=dev before deploy).
- Confirmed not a runtime-version issue (Node 22 is on the documented supported list; explicit apiRuntime config made no difference).
- Confirmed not specific to one resource instance: fully deleted and recreated the Static Web App, identical failure on the fresh resource.
- Confirmed not specific to our actual application code: deployed a single-endpoint function with zero dependencies beyond @azure/functions, identical failure.
- Frontend-only deployment (same resource, swa deploy ./dist without --api-location) succeeds cleanly every time.
- Azure Portal's Activity Log shows no entry corresponding to this failure (deployment appears to go through a non-ARM data-plane path not captured there).
- Azure Portal's "Diagnose and solve problems" tool for the resource did not surface anything more specific.

This strongly suggests either a platform-side issue specific to this subscription/tier combination, or an undocumented restriction on managed Functions for Free-tier Static Web Apps that isn't reflected in current error messaging.

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

Research direction

No repository file or test entry point is named. Start by reproducing the documented `swa deploy ./dist --api-location ./api` case on a Free-tier Static Web App, then compare it with the successful frontend-only deployment. Done means the failure is explained with a reproducible resolution or a documented Free-tier restriction and clearer error handling.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
azure, node.js
Domain
api, backend, cloud
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Active
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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