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.

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 free

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)

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