## The problem
Issue vespa-engine/vespa#26350 (closed, 29 comments): **Describe the bug** Vespa proton taking 20GB upon start-up with zero documents **To Reproduce** Steps to reproduce the behavior: deploy attached schema. We have total 39 schemas. **Expected behavior** Expect to use minimal memory with zero documents. **Screenshots** If applicable, add screenshots to help explain your problem.

## The fix
If Vespa proton uses a lot of memory on startup with zero documents, know there is a fixed cost per document type and per field (the reporter had 39 schemas). Memory accounting and usage were improved in 8.140.13, and 8.181.15 cut static memory of multivalue attributes by up to 40 percent, so upgrade if you are on an older 8.x. You can inspect per-document-type usage via the searchnode metrics or the proton state API.

## Notes
Thread: https://github.com/vespa-engine/vespa/issues/26350. Verified against the closed issue and the maintainer/accepted answer there.