diff --git a/docker-compose.prod.yml b/docker-compose.prod.yml
index 71634b76..56f73689 100644
--- a/docker-compose.prod.yml
+++ b/docker-compose.prod.yml
@@ -121,8 +121,10 @@ services:
       - "8000"
     # Surya OCR loads ~5GB of transformer models at startup; first request
     # triggers a further ~1GB Kraken model download into ocr-cache.
-    mem_limit: 12g
-    memswap_limit: 12g
+    # CX42+ (16 GB RAM) honours the default. On a CX32 (8 GB) override with
+    # OCR_MEM_LIMIT=6g (slower first-request, fits the host).
+    mem_limit: ${OCR_MEM_LIMIT:-12g}
+    memswap_limit: ${OCR_MEM_LIMIT:-12g}
     volumes:
       - ocr-models:/app/models
       - ocr-cache:/root/.cache