# Close the client to avoid the connections limit
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It is important to close the client when you are finished with it to ensure that the WebSocket connections are closed by the server and all resources associated with the connections are released. This happens automatically if you close the cluster using `Cluster.close( )`, because `client.close( )` is then called internally.

If the client is not closed properly, Neptune terminates all idle WebSocket connections after 20 to 25 minutes. However, if you don't explicitly close WebSocket connections when you're done with them and the number of live connections reaches the [WebSocket concurrent connection limit](limits.md#limits-websockets), additional connections are then refused with an HTTP `429` error code. At that point, you must restart the Neptune instance to close the connections.

The advice to call `cluster.close()` does not apply to Java Amazon Lambda functions. See [Managing Gremlin WebSocket connections in Amazon Lambda functions](lambda-functions-websocket-connections.md) for details.