diff --git a/CHANGES b/CHANGES
index 511712ef8..b04467b1a 100644
--- a/CHANGES
+++ b/CHANGES
@@ -1221,4 +1221,5 @@
 * Merge multi-string DKIM records
 * scheduler: do not start cron jobs all at once
 * scheduler: give cron jobs a grace period of 30 minutes to complete
+* scheduler: tasks are now allocated twice the app memory limit
 
diff --git a/src/docker.js b/src/docker.js
index f7ac6da7b..98670c066 100644
--- a/src/docker.js
+++ b/src/docker.js
@@ -163,6 +163,10 @@ function createSubcontainer(app, name, cmd, options, callback) {
         memoryLimit = constants.DEFAULT_MEMORY_LIMIT;
     }
 
+    // give scheduler tasks twice the memory limit since background jobs take more memory
+    // if required, we can make this a manifest and runtime argument later
+    if (!isAppContainer) memoryLimit *= 2;
+
     // apparmor is disabled on few servers
     var enableSecurityOpt = config.CLOUDRON && safe(function () { return child_process.spawnSync('aa-enabled').status === 0; }, false);