Deploy to Azure Container Apps

Use aspire deploy to deploy Aspire applications to Azure Container Apps. Aspire provisions the Container Apps environment, Azure Container Registry, managed identity, and the Container Apps resources needed for the compute resources in your AppHost.

Start with Deploy to Azure for the shared Azure deployment model and target selection. If you need to keep an existing azd deployment workflow, see Use existing azd workflows.

Prerequisites

• Aspire prerequisites
• Aspire CLI installed
• For local deployment with the default credential source, Azure CLI installed and available on your PATH
• An active Azure account and subscription

By default, local deployment uses Azure CLI credentials. Authenticate with Azure CLI before deploying:

Authenticate with Azure CLI

az login

Configure your AppHost for Azure Container Apps

Add Azure Container Apps support to your AppHost:

Aspire CLI — Add Azure App Containers

aspire add azure-appcontainers

The Aspire CLI adds the 📦 Aspire.Hosting.Azure.AppContainers integration to your AppHost. If prompted, select the matching package result.

Learn more about the aspire add command in the reference docs.

Then add the Azure Container Apps environment in your AppHost and a web app you want to place in that environment:

C#

AppHost.cs

var builder = DistributedApplication.CreateBuilder(args);

builder.AddAzureContainerAppEnvironment("aca-env");

builder.AddDockerfile("web", "./web")
    .WithHttpEndpoint(port: 8080, targetPort: 8080, name: "http")
    .WithExternalHttpEndpoints();

builder.Build().Run();

TypeScript

apphost.ts

import { createBuilder } from './.modules/aspire.js';

const builder = await createBuilder();

await builder.addAzureContainerAppEnvironment("aca-env");

await builder
    .addDockerfile("web", "./web")
    .withHttpEndpoint({ port: 8080, targetPort: 8080, name: "http" })
    .withExternalHttpEndpoints();

await builder.build().run();

For a standard Azure Container Apps deployment, you only need the environment and the app resource. Use PublishAsAzureContainerApp only when you want to customize the generated Container App resource.

For general Azure resource customization such as naming, existing resources, role assignments, and outputs, see Customize Azure resources. For environment configuration, see Configure Azure Container Apps environments.

How Aspire maps your app to Azure Container Apps

Supported compute resources

Compute resources assigned to an Azure Container Apps environment are deployed to Azure Container Apps. If one AppHost uses multiple Azure environments, assign each resource to the environment you want it to use.

Note

Azure Container Apps can host both your app containers and supporting service containers such as databases, caches, or brokers. That flexibility is useful in development and some specialized deployments, but managed services are still the recommended production default for those dependencies.

Default mapping

Start with the common cases:

AppHost endpoint shape	Azure Container Apps result
One external HTTP endpoint	One public HTTP ingress, exposed through the platform HTTPS endpoint by default
One internal HTTP endpoint	One internal-only HTTP ingress inside the Container Apps environment
One TCP endpoint	One TCP ingress

How Aspire decides

Aspire groups endpoints by target port before it generates Azure Container Apps ingress settings. In practice, that means:

• Azure Container Apps supports http, http2, and tcp transports for deployment.
• One HTTP or HTTP/2 target-port group becomes the main ingress.
• The environment can host both internal and external endpoints.
• HTTP and TCP traffic can’t share the same target port.

HTTP and HTTPS behavior

Azure Container Apps uses an Envoy-based HTTP edge proxy for HTTP ingress:

• public HTTP-style ingress is exposed through the platform HTTPS endpoint by default
• HTTP requests sent to the app are redirected to HTTPS
• you can turn off that default upgrade behavior on the environment if you need to keep HTTP behavior

Constraints and edge cases

Most apps map cleanly from one endpoint group to one ingress. When an app exposes more than one endpoint group, keep these rules in mind:

• each app gets one HTTP ingress
• additional endpoint groups are published as additional TCP ports
• built-in HTTP ingress features apply only to the main HTTP ingress
• external non-HTTP endpoints aren’t supported
• Azure Container Apps supports up to five additional ports per app

Volumes and bind mounts

When you deploy to Azure Container Apps, Aspire translates both named volumes and bind mounts into Azure Files-backed mounts in the Container Apps environment.

• Aspire provisions Azure Storage file shares and managed environment storage entries for the mounts used by deployed resources.
• Both named volumes and bind mounts become mounted Azure Files shares in the deployed app.
• A bind mount’s local host path isn’t preserved as a host bind mount in Azure deployment.

Use these mounts as persistent storage for the deployed app, not as a way to project files from the AppHost machine into the deployed environment.

Image publishing and identity

During aspire deploy, Aspire:

• provisions or attaches an Azure Container Registry
• builds container images for the compute resources in the environment
• pushes those images to the registry
• creates a user-assigned managed identity
• grants the deployed Container Apps permission to pull images

This lets Container Apps pull deployed images without manual registry credentials.

Health checks and probes

Probe traffic stays on the internal container network. If a probe is associated with an ingress-enabled endpoint, Aspire still configures the probe against the container target port instead of sending probe traffic through Container Apps ingress.

Customize generated Container Apps

Use PublishAsAzureContainerApp when you want to customize the generated Container App resource for a project, container, or executable. It isn’t required for a standard Container Apps deployment.

C#

AppHost.cs

var builder = DistributedApplication.CreateBuilder(args);

builder.AddAzureContainerAppEnvironment("env");

builder.AddProject<Projects.Api>("api")
    .PublishAsAzureContainerApp((infrastructure, app) =>
    {
        app.Template.Scale.MinReplicas = 1;
        app.Template.Scale.MaxReplicas = 10;
    });

builder.Build().Run();

TypeScript

apphost.ts

import { createBuilder } from './.modules/aspire.js';

const builder = await createBuilder();

await builder.addAzureContainerAppEnvironment("env");

const api = await builder.addProject("api", "../Api/Api.csproj", "http");
await api.publishAsAzureContainerApp(async (_infrastructure, _app) => {
    // Customize the generated Container App here.
});

await builder.build().run();

Custom domains

Use ConfigureCustomDomain when you want Aspire to configure a custom domain and managed certificate on the generated Container App.

C#

AppHost.cs

var builder = DistributedApplication.CreateBuilder(args);

var customDomain = builder.AddParameter("customDomain");
var certificateName = builder.AddParameter("certificateName");

builder.AddAzureContainerAppEnvironment("env");

#pragma warning disable ASPIREACADOMAINS001
builder.AddProject<Projects.Api>("api")
    .PublishAsAzureContainerApp((infrastructure, app) =>
    {
        app.ConfigureCustomDomain(customDomain, certificateName);
    });
#pragma warning restore ASPIREACADOMAINS001

builder.Build().Run();

Caution

The ConfigureCustomDomain API is experimental and may change or be removed in future updates. For more information, see ASPIREACADOMAINS001.

TypeScript

Note

The ConfigureCustomDomain API is not yet available in the TypeScript AppHost SDK.

Internal service discovery

Services deployed to Azure Container Apps use internal DNS for service discovery. Use WithExternalHttpEndpoints() only for endpoints you want reachable outside the Container Apps environment.

C#

AppHost.cs

builder.AddProject<Projects.Api>("api")
    .WithExternalHttpEndpoints();

TypeScript

apphost.ts

const api = await builder.addProject("api", "../Api/Api.csproj", "http");
await api.withExternalHttpEndpoints();

Optional environment settings

Use a specific Azure Container Registry

By default, Aspire provisions an Azure Container Registry for the environment. If you want to use a shared or explicitly named registry instead, add an Azure Container Registry resource and attach it to the environment:

C#

AppHost.cs

var builder = DistributedApplication.CreateBuilder(args);

var acr = builder.AddAzureContainerRegistry("shared-acr");

builder.AddAzureContainerAppEnvironment("aspire-env")
    .WithAzureContainerRegistry(acr);

TypeScript

apphost.ts

import { createBuilder } from './.modules/aspire.js';

const builder = await createBuilder();

const acr = await builder.addAzureContainerRegistry("shared-acr");
const env = await builder.addAzureContainerAppEnvironment("aspire-env");
await env.withAzureContainerRegistry(acr);

For more information, see Azure Container Registry integration.

Aspire Dashboard

The Azure Container Apps environment includes the Aspire Dashboard by default. It helps you inspect the compute resources deployed into that environment. Managed Azure backing services aren’t shown as dashboard resources there. If you don’t want to deploy it, disable it on the environment:

C#

AppHost.cs

var builder = DistributedApplication.CreateBuilder(args);

builder.AddAzureContainerAppEnvironment("aspire-env")
    .WithDashboard(false);

TypeScript

apphost.ts

import { createBuilder } from './.modules/aspire.js';

const builder = await createBuilder();

const env = await builder.addAzureContainerAppEnvironment("aspire-env");
await env.withDashboard(false);

Deploy with aspire deploy

Once your AppHost is configured, deploy it with:

Deploy to Azure Container Apps

aspire deploy

Aspire can prompt for missing Azure settings and AppHost parameters during an interactive deploy, then provisions and deploys the Container Apps resources behind the scenes.

For Azure authentication, shared Azure settings, and Parameters__* inputs, see Deploy to Azure and Environments.

After deployment

After deployment, use the dashboard URL in the CLI output, the Azure portal, or az containerapp show to inspect the deployed compute resources and application URLs.

Clean up resources

To remove deployed resources, delete the resource group:

Delete resource group

az group delete --name <resource-group-name>

Danger

This command deletes all resources in the resource group, including any resources not created by the Aspire CLI.

See also

• Deploy to Azure
• Azure Container Registry integration
• Configure Azure Container Apps environments
• aspire deploy command reference
• Azure Container Apps overview
• Ingress in Azure Container Apps
• Networking in Azure Container Apps environment