Skip to content
Contact us
  • There are no suggestions because the search field is empty.

What Should I Do If I Reach My Render Limit?

Ensure uninterrupted rendering and SEO performance by managing usage or upgrading your plan.

 

Overview

Render limits define how many times Prerender will serve or re-cache your pages per month. Your usage is split between on-demand renders (for uncached pages) and automatic recaching (based on sitemap updates). Reaching your limit can cause uncached pages to return errors to search engines, affecting crawlability and SEO.

Understanding your usage and making small adjustments—like fixing soft 404s or excluding irrelevant URLs—can dramatically reduce consumption. If needed, upgrading to a higher-tier plan ensures continued coverage and search engine visibility.

💡 Tip: Render limits don’t stop bots from indexing existing cached pages—but new, uncached pages may be skipped if your render quota is exhausted.

Render Usage Components

  1. On-Demand Renders: Triggered when a bot requests a page that isn’t already cached.

  2. Automatic Recaching: Triggered when your sitemap updates and Prerender re-fetches existing URLs.

Both contribute to your monthly quota.

 

How to Increase On-Demand Renders

Upgrade to a Higher Plan

  • Free Plan: Limited to 1,000 renders/month. Once exhausted, bots requesting uncached pages receive a 429 status code (Too Many Requests).

  • Paid Plans: Offer more renders, and additional renders are charged per 1,000 over the limit.

⚠️ Note: If your site uses clean, crawlable URLs and avoids soft 404s, hitting the Free plan limit likely means you need more render capacity. Upgrading helps ensure bots continue receiving your pages without interruption.

Steps to upgrade:

  1. Log into your Prerender dashboard.

  2. Go to the Billing > Subscription Plans section.

  3. Choose a plan that fits your expected monthly usage.

  4. Complete the upgrade to instantly unlock higher limits.

 

Possible Causes / Scenarios

1: Hitting the Free Plan Limit

  • The Free plan allows 1,000 renders/month. If your site exceeds this, Prerender returns 429 status codes for uncached pages.

2: Frequent Automatic Recaching

  • If your sitemap changes often or includes many URLs, Prerender may re-fetch pages frequently, consuming your quota.

3: Soft 404 Pages Trigger Unnecessary Renders

  • Pages that return a 200 OK status but display error-like content can mislead Prerender into treating them as valid and rendering them unnecessarily.

4: Redundant URLs From Query Parameters

  • Pages with tracking parameters (like ?utm_source=, ?sessionId=, etc.) generate multiple renders for what is effectively the same content.

 

How to Reduce Automatic Recaching

Reducing automatic recaching means fewer render requests, which preserves your monthly quota and improves performance.

1. Fix Soft 404 Pages

Pages returning a 200 status but showing error-like content can trigger unnecessary renders.

Use the following meta tag to mark these pages correctly:

<meta name="prerender-status-code" content="404">

Here's a guide on how to check for soft 404 pages and how to fix them.  

 

2. Ignore Unnecessary URL Parameters

Session IDs, tracking tokens, or other irrelevant query parameters can multiply your cache unnecessarily.

Guide: Ignore Query Parameters

 

3. Exclude Non-SEO Pages

Pages like user dashboards, checkout confirmation screens, or internal tools should be excluded from caching.

Here's a guide on How to ignore URLS and respond with 404s.

 

Why This Matters for SEO

  • Cached pages load faster, improving crawlability and page experience for bots.

  • Avoiding 429 errors ensures that search engines index all intended content.

  • Controlling what gets cached and re-cached ensures optimal use of rendering resources.

 

Additional Considerations

  • Non-200 status renders (like 404s and 500s) may still occur and count against your quota.

  • In some cases, eliminating them completely isn't feasible due to dynamic site behavior or server logic.

Additional Tips / Best Practices

  • Optimize Sitemap Submission: Keep your XML sitemap limited to important SEO pages to avoid unnecessary recaching.

  • Use /recache API selectively: Only recache product or dynamic pages when actual content changes.

  • Monitor usage: Check your render usage regularly in the dashboard to detect unexpected spikes.

  • Bots still get cached pages: If your limit is reached, bots will still receive previously cached pages—only new uncached pages are affected.

Get Support

Still have questions or need help? We’re here for you!

If you’ve followed the troubleshooting steps and still can’t resolve the issue, feel free to reach out to our support team. You can contact us via:

To help us resolve your issue as quickly as possible, please gather and include any relevant information, such as:

  • Error messages you're seeing
  • Steps you've already taken to troubleshoot
  • Screenshots or screen recordings (if applicable)

Providing these details up front will help our team diagnose the problem more efficiently and get you back on track faster.

 

Related Articles / FAQs