Static Site Redirects and Rewrites

You can add redirect and rewrite rules to static sites in the Render Dashboard:

These two rules are used by this very documentation site!

When the path of an incoming request matches a rule’s Source, Render automatically redirects or rewrites the request to the corresponding Destination. For details, see Rule matching and ordering.

You can’t apply redirect/rewrite rules to your domain root. Each Source requires at least one URL path component (such as /blog, or even /).

Which action to use?

Set each rule’s Action to Redirect or Rewrite according to your needs:

Action	Description
Redirect	Instructs the browser (or any other client) to switch URLs to the rule’s destination via a 301 Moved Permanently response code. Create a redirect rule if you’re moving an existing resource from one path to another (for example, if you move your site’s documentation content from /documentation to /docs).
Rewrite	Does not redirect the browser. Instead, your site serves the content from the rule’s destination at the original path. The browser can’t detect that content was served from a different path or URL. Create a rewrite rule if: You want to serve the same content from multiple paths. Your static site uses a framework with client-side routing (such as react-router or Vue Router), and you’ll handle all requests from a single path like /index.html.

Rule matching and ordering

Render does not apply redirect or rewrite rules to a path if a resource exists at that path. Instead, Render simply serves the resource at that path. This protects against overwriting valid paths with a rule, especially when using wildcards.

Here’s what the full path-matching process looks like:

If this process results in a redirect to another site path, the process repeats with the new path.

Rule syntax

• Source must be a path (not a full URL). This is matched against the path of the incoming request.
• Destination can be either a path or a full, publicly accessible URL.

Basic examples

Source	Destination
/home	/
/blog/index.html	/blog
/web-host	https://render.com

Wildcards

Use a wildcard (*) to match arbitrary strings in a path.

• In Source, * matches any string that appears starting at that position in the path.
  • Specify /* to match all paths.
• In Destination, * applies the entire string captured by the wildcard in Source.

Source	Destination	Example Effect
/*	/blog/*	/path1/path2 → /blog/path1/path2
/*	/index.html	All requests → /index.html

Placeholders

Use placeholders to include specific path components from Source in Destination:

Source	Destination	Example Effect
/blog/posts/:postid	/blog/:postid	/blog/posts/my-post → /blog/my-post
/updates/:month/:year	/changelog/:year/:month	/updates/03/2024 → /changelog/2024/03