Headless-Render-API vs PreRender24 (2026): which should you pick?

Pick Headless-Render-API if

• Fits if you run a Node.js or Next.js app and can add a middleware yourself
• Works for developers who also need screenshots or PDFs of pages from the same API

Look elsewhere if

• Watch out: going one request past 20,000 in a cycle moves the bill from $9 to $40
• Not for you if you want reports, as it's an API with no dashboard
• Tight if you use nginx, Apache, Ruby, Golang or IIS, whose integrations are examples and less well kept
• Tight if you stay free, at 500 requests a month and 15 an hour without a token
• Skip it if you can't edit your server, as setup is a middleware or proxy rule

Pick PreRender24 if

• Fits if your React, Vue or Lovable app looks empty to search crawlers
• Works for sites that want GPTBot and ClaudeBot to read their content

Look elsewhere if

• Watch out: setup moves your domain's nameservers to Cloudflare
• Skip it if you want a free plan, as a paid one is needed after the 14-day trial
• Tight if your content changes often, as Starter re-renders every 7 days with 2 manual recrawls a month
• Pricey if you want daily cache refreshes, which need Agency at €199 a month
• Watch out: prices are in euros, and going past your pageviews brings alerts and a prompt to upgrade

Headless-Render-API

• Billing is by API requests at the end of each 30-day cycle, so going just past 20,000 requests moves the bill from $9 to $40.
• Without billing details, use is capped at 500 requests a month.
• The nginx, Apache, Ruby, Golang and IIS integrations are offered as examples and are not as well maintained as the Node.js, Docker, Next.js and CloudFront ones.
• It is an API with no dashboard of reports; setup means adding middleware or a proxy rule to your server.

PreRender24

• Setup moves the domain's nameservers to Cloudflare; PreRender24 creates the zone, so no Cloudflare account of your own is needed.
• There is no free plan: after the 14-day trial a paid subscription is required, and prices are in euros.
• Starter refreshes its cache only every 7 days with 2 manual recrawls a month; daily refresh needs Agency at €199 a month.
• Going past the monthly pageview limit does not stop the service, but brings alerts at 80% and 100% and a prompt to upgrade.

Headless-Render-API

Pre-rendering for single-page apps

Proxy all requests, or only bots such as Googlebot and Twitterbot, through headless Chrome and get rendered HTML back for SEO and link previews.

Waits for data and keeps state

Rendering waits for XHR and WebSocket calls to finish, caches AJAX responses and can serialize app state into the HTML for the browser to pick up.

Screenshot API

Capture pages as PNG, WebP or JPEG, with options for device size, mobile viewport, high-DPI scale and cropping to an element.

PDF API

Print a page to PDF with page ranges, margins, paper size, landscape mode, background printing or a single page with no breaks.

Scrape API

Returns a rendered page's HTML, title, meta and Open Graph tags, links, status code and headers, with an optional screenshot.

Middleware and Docker server

A Node.js middleware and a ready-made pushstate server, run from npm or Docker, serve a build folder or an S3 bucket through the service.

PreRender24

Crawler detection at the edge

Recognizes search engine and AI crawlers such as Googlebot, Bingbot, GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot by user agent, and sends human visitors straight to the origin.

Cached rendered HTML

Runs on Cloudflare Workers: each page is rendered once, cached at the edge and served to crawlers as finished HTML instead of an empty JavaScript shell.

Scheduled cache refresh

Cached pages are re-rendered every 7 days, every 3 days or daily depending on the plan, with 2, 10 or unlimited manual recrawls a month.

Crawl log

The dashboard logs every bot visit as it happens, alongside the domain's SEO score, prerender status and origin URL.

SEO and AI visibility checks

Monitors an SEO score, Core Web Vitals from the PageSpeed Insights API and Google rankings for chosen keywords, and tests whether AI models mention a brand.

IndexNow, hreflang and free checks

Pings search engines through IndexNow when content changes and supports hreflang. Free SEO scan, bot check and DNS check tools are on the site.

Headless-Render-API

• Free$0

  Under 500 requests a month. Also the fallback tier if a card payment fails three times.

• Under 20,000 requests$9

  per month for under 20,000 requests, billed after use

  Charged at the end of each 30-day cycle; no rate limit once billing details are added.

• Under 100,000 requests$40

  per month for under 100,000 requests, billed after use

  The top flat tier. Above 100,000 requests the whole month is charged per request instead.

• 1 million requests$360

  per month for 1,000,000 requests, billed after use

  $0.00036 per request above 100,000 a month, so 1.5 million requests cost $540.

• 10 million requests$3,240

  per month for 10,000,000 requests, billed after use

  $0.000324 per request at this volume.

• 100 million requests$25,000

  per month for 100,000,000 requests, billed after use

  $0.00025 per request, so 150 million requests cost $37,500.

PreRender24

• Starter€9.99

  per month for 1 domain and 300 pages, billed monthly

  150k pageviews a month, cache refreshed every 7 days, 2 manual recrawls a month and email support.

• Pro€29.97

  per month for 3 domains and 1,500 pages, billed monthly

  600k pageviews a month, cache refreshed every 3 days, 10 manual recrawls a month and priority support.

• Agency€199

  per month for 100 domains and 50,000 pages, billed monthly

  5 million pageviews a month, daily cache refresh, unlimited manual recrawls and dedicated support.

• EnterpriseCustom

  Unlimited domains, a custom SLA, a dedicated account manager and an on-premise option, quoted on request.

Headless-Render-API

No public discounts listed.

PreRender24

• Annual discount

  Save 20% with yearly billing

  PreRender24's pricing page has a Monthly/Yearly toggle marked Save 20%, and its pricing FAQ says yearly billing saves 20%.