How to reduce Bitbucket Cloud repository size after local cleanup and force push?

[Numan Shahid]

Hi Bitbucket Team,

This repository

We recently cleaned up our Git repository to reduce its size. Locally, we ran the following commands:

git reflog expire --expire=now --all
git reflog expire --expire-unreachable=now --all
git prune --expire=now -v
git gc --aggressive --prune=now

We also removed large files and cleaned the commit history using BFG Repo-Cleaner. After that, we force-pushed all branches and tags back to Bitbucket:

git push --force --all
git push --force --tags

Now, the local repository size has been significantly reduced, but the repository size on Bitbucket Cloud still shows the old size and usage warnings remain.

Could you please run a **server-side garbage collection (GC)** on our repository to finalize the size reduction?

[Vitalii Rybka]

Hi Numan 

Great job on performing the local cleanup — sounds like you've followed all the right steps with BFG and aggressive GC.

However, in Bitbucket Cloud, server-side garbage collection is not triggered automatically after a force push, and unfortunately, users can’t manually trigger it either.

Here's what you can do:

1. Raise a support ticket with Atlassian
   Since you're on Bitbucket Cloud, only Atlassian Support can trigger a server-side GC for your repo.
   👉 Submit a support ticket here

   Be sure to include:

   • A link to the repository

   • Confirmation that you've force-pushed all cleaned branches and tags

   • Mention that you're requesting server-side GC to reflect the reduced size

2. Wait a bit
   Sometimes Bitbucket eventually performs GC as part of its background maintenance, but this can take days or even weeks.

Tip:

Make sure all refs (branches, tags, pull requests) referencing old data are deleted — orphaned references can prevent GC from reclaiming space.

Let me know if you need help double-checking those!