Process.env user-defined variables missing in scheduled/background functions and async-workloads

Support
1

Site: https://autoaffiliate.netlify.app/

Issue: Since ~March 27, 2026, user-defined environment variables are no longer available via process.env in
scheduled functions, background functions, and the internally generated async-workloads-scheduler-aux
function. System variables (like AWS_LAMBDA_FUNCTION_NAME) are still present — only user-defined vars are
missing.

What works: The main API function using Functions v1 style (export const handler) — process.env contains all
user-defined variables as expected.

What doesn’t work: Scheduled and background functions using Functions v2 style (export default) — process.env
is empty for user-defined vars. I confirmed this by adding console.log(process.env) inside the handler at
runtime.

Impact:

  • All scheduled/background functions that rely on user-defined env vars crash on startup
  • The async-workloads-scheduler-aux function also crashes, which causes all async workload event sends to
    fail with 401 Unauthorized (the client can’t authenticate without env vars)

Error from triggers:
AsyncWorkloadsClient#send() did not get a event router ack - response status 401

What I’ve verified:

  • Env vars are configured with All scopes and Same value in all deploy contexts
  • No code changes were made to these functions before the issue appeared
  • Netlify.env.get() also returns undefined for user-defined vars in these functions
  • Hardcoding values directly in the function code works as a workaround
  • console.log(process.env) shows system vars are present but all user-defined vars are missing

No changes were made to function code, Netlify config, or environment variable settings before this started
happening. This appears to be a platform-level regression affecting Functions v2 and extension-generated
internal functions.

1 Like
2

Is this still an issue for you? I suddenly got env vars not being seen the last 24 hours, but it’s intermittent and I fixed it 3 times now by clearing deploy cache.

1 Like
3

OK I am still getting issue again with env vars not being seen intermittently

1 Like
4

Issue still there. Spend way too much time this weekend figuring out what was causing the issue, then finally found that redeploying and cache busting was the only solution. Thought I was going mad.

netlify deploy --prod --build --skip-functions-cache

Anyways, after fixing it yesterday, this morning the same issue was there. My debug-env-vars function I wrote confirmed the env vars were empty again.
Same command fixed it, but seriously, I need to depend on it.

5

Hi all, thanks for reporting this and we’re so sorry about this issue!

We currently have a status page up regarding env vars not being read at build time, and our engineers are currently investigating this with high priority! Please tune into the status page for updates.

6

Hey all,

Just a quick update on this one. We currently rolled out a fix and monitoring. Please do let us know if you continue to have issues.