Cache & billing — what counts as a render
How cache hits, misses, and overages are billed. Why caching saves you money.
Hit vs miss
Every bot request is one of two things:
- HIT — we already have a fresh rendered HTML for this
(project, url)and serve it from cache. - MISS — no fresh cache. We boot a headless browser, render, store the HTML, and serve it.
Response header X-Cache-Status: HIT|MISS tells you which one happened.
Why cache hits are free
Cache hits are the cheap part of the system — no browser, no CPU, no egress beyond a fast HTML response. Hits do not count toward your monthly render limit. Only MISS rows increment the counter and your bill.
That's why long cache durations are the single biggest lever to reduce cost: a 7-day cache on a 10,000-page site that gets crawled twice a week costs the same as a 30-day cache. Match cache duration to how often your content actually changes.
Cache duration by tier
| Plan | Cache duration |
|---|---|
| Trial | Fixed 72h |
| Starter (5K) | 6h – 7d |
| 15K | 6h – 14d |
| 50K | 6h – 21d |
| 125K and above | 6h – 30d |
Configurable per project under Settings → Cache.
Overages
| Plan | Overage policy |
|---|---|
| Trial | Hard cap at 1,000 — no overages |
| Starter (5K) | Hard cap, no overages |
| All other paid tiers | Metered at $1.25 per 1,000 renders, hard limit at 100% of base tier |
You can set a personal cap below the plan limit in Plans → Overage preferences. Email warnings fire at 80% and 95% of the cap.
Forecasting your usage
The Dashboard shows a 30-day forecast based on your current cache hit ratio and recent traffic. The "Cache value" card shows how much money cache hits saved you, calculated against the standard $1.25 / 1,000 overage rate.
Was this page helpful?