RenderSwap

Install RenderSwap

Pick the setup you already run, copy the snippet and set your token. A crawler gets a rendered page; everyone else gets your site as before.

Moving from Prerender.io? See the switch steps

Your setup

You need a token first: Sign up, or open the dashboard if you have one.

Move from Prerender.io

Change the service URL and the token; your middleware stays.

Service URL
Where your middleware sends a page to be rendered. In prerender-node this is the PRERENDER_SERVICE_URL variable.
Token
Your RenderSwap token, sent in the X-Prerender-Token header. Sign up to get one.

RenderSwap is not affiliated with or endorsed by Prerender.io.

Check that it works

Request your home page as a crawler would. When RenderSwap answered, the response carries an X-RenderSwap-Cache header; the command below prints it. Replace the example address with your own site.

After you purge a domain, the change spreads within about a minute.

A page that fails to render is listed under Failures in the dashboard, with the reason.

The RenderSwap Failures view: 200 failed pages, each row with a URL on acme-storefront.example, a reason such as Timed out, Blocked as a bot, Render failed or Empty page, a count, the last time seen and a Copy button.
The Failures view, captured with sample data.

If your own firewall blocks the renderer

A web application firewall in front of your site can challenge the renderer, and the page then comes back as a challenge instead of your content. On Cloudflare you can add a custom rule with the Skip action for the renderer's requests.

Whether to add that rule is your choice, on your own site. The renderer does not hide what it is: it sends X-Prerender: 1 and a User-Agent that contains RenderSwapBrowser, and a rule can match on either.

Any client can send the same header or User-Agent, so a rule that skips on them also lets those requests through. Weigh that before you add it.