Render Static Sites

Render Static Sites

Deploys static frontends (React, Vue, Hugo, Gatsby, Docusaurus, Jekyll, etc.) to Render's global CDN with automatic TLS, Brotli compression, HTTP/2, and DDoS protection. Free tier available.

When to Use

• Deploying a static site or SPA (no server-side rendering)

• Choosing between a Static Site and a Web Service for a frontend

• Configuring SPA fallback routing, redirects/rewrites, or custom headers

• Setting up PR preview environments for a static site

• Troubleshooting build failures or stale content on a CDN-hosted site

For SSR frameworks (Next.js, Nuxt, SvelteKit) that need a running server, use render-web-services instead. For Blueprint authoring, see render-blueprints.

When choosing between a static site and a web service, read references/service-types.md.

Static Site vs Web Service

Key constraint: Static sites are not on the private network. They cannot communicate with other Render services over internal hostnames.

Build and Publish

Render auto-detects and installs dependencies. Set SKIP_INSTALL_DEPS=true to handle installation yourself in the build command.

Common frameworks

SPA Routing and Redirects

Single-page apps need a catch-all rule so the CDN serves index.html for all routes instead of returning 404.

Configure Redirect/Rewrite Rules in the Dashboard (Settings > Redirects/Rewrites) or via the Blueprint routes field:

routes:
  - type: rewrite
    source: /*
    destination: /index.html

For multi-path redirects (e.g. old blog URLs), add specific rules above the catch-all so they take priority.

See references/routing-and-headers.md for redirect types, header rules, and caching patterns.

Custom Response Headers

Add security and performance headers from the Dashboard (Settings > Headers) or the Blueprint headers field:

headers:
  - path: /*
    name: X-Frame-Options
    value: DENY
  - path: /assets/*
    name: Cache-Control
    value: public, max-age=31536000, immutable

PR Previews

Static sites support automatic PR previews—each pull request gets a unique URL with the built site.

• Enable in Dashboard: Settings > PR Previews

• Blueprint: set previews.generation to automatic or manual

• Preview URLs follow the pattern <service>-<pr-id>.onrender.com

Blueprint Configuration

services:
  - type: web
    runtime: static
    name: my-frontend
    buildCommand: npm ci && npm run build
    staticPublishPath: dist
    routes:
      - type: rewrite
        source: /*
        destination: /index.html
    headers:
      - path: /*
        name: X-Frame-Options
        value: DENY
    previews:
      generation: automatic

Note: Static sites use type: web with runtime: static in Blueprints. There is no separate type: static.

CDN and Performance

• Global CDN with edge caching worldwide

• Brotli compression (better than gzip)

• HTTP/2 by default

• Immediate cache invalidation on every deploy (zero-downtime, atomic deploys)

• DDoS protection included

Billing

Static sites have a free tier. They count against workspace-level monthly included amounts for:

• Outbound bandwidth (data served to users)

• Pipeline minutes (build time)

Usage beyond included allowances can incur additional cost. Confirm current allowances and charges at Render pricing.

References

Related Skills

• render-web-services — For SSR frameworks that need a running server

• render-blueprints — Full render.yaml schema for static site fields

• render-domains — Custom domain and TLS setup

• render-deploy — Deploy flows, CLI, MCP operations

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Current documentation retrieval

Whenever this skill directs you to consult current Render documentation:

1. Retrieve the linked Markdown document directly with an available URL-fetching tool or HTTP client, such as curl. Do not substitute web-search summaries for the document.

2. Confirm that retrieval succeeded and returned the expected document, then read its contents. Saving a file or printing its path is not sufficient.

3. If the request fails or your tool cannot read the Markdown response, open and read the linked HTML version instead.

4. If neither version can be retrieved, disclose that the current reference is unavailable and follow any topic-specific fallback in the skill. Use bundled guidance only for stable constraints, and do not guess at changeable platform details.

When a task requires multiple references, apply this workflow to each one and distinguish the documents you verified from those that remain unavailable.

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