Documentation
Get started in minutes.
Everything you need to know about setting up and using Crawlable.
Quick Start
Create your account
Sign up at the Crawlable dashboard. No credit card required for the 7-day free trial.
Add your site
Enter your domain (e.g. www.mysite.com) and your origin URL (where your app is actually hosted, like your-app.lovable.app or your-app.vercel.app).
Connect your domain
Follow the platform-specific instructions shown in the dashboard. For Lovable and Bolt, this is a DNS change. For Vercel and Netlify, it's a single config file.
Verify it's working
Use the test command in the dashboard to confirm crawlers are receiving your rendered HTML. That's it!
Platform Setup Guides
Click into any site in the Crawlable dashboard to see step-by-step instructions for your specific platform.
Lovable
DNSPoint your CNAME to Crawlable. No code changes needed in your Lovable project.
Bolt / Replit
DNSSame DNS approach. Works with Bolt Cloud, Replit, and similar platforms.
Vercel
ConfigAdd a vercel.json file to your project root. Vercel handles the rest.
Netlify
ConfigAdd a _redirects file to your public folder. One line of config.
Next.js
MiddlewareAdd a middleware.ts file. Works with both App Router and Pages Router.
Any platform
APIUse Crawlable's render API endpoint to integrate with any server or platform.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. Human visitors are served directly from your origin with zero overhead. Only bot traffic gets the pre-rendered version, and those results are cached at the edge for 24 hours.
For Lovable, Bolt, and Replit apps: no. You only need a DNS change. For Vercel, Netlify, or Next.js apps: you add a single config file. Either way, your app code stays untouched.
No. Google explicitly documents dynamic rendering as an acceptable approach for JavaScript-heavy sites. It's recommended when you can't implement server-side rendering.
Crawlable renders it in real-time at the edge (typically 5-15 seconds), caches the result, and returns the HTML. Subsequent visits are served from cache in under 50ms.
Yes. Crawlable detects GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Gemini, and other AI crawlers. This means your content can appear in AI-generated answers and summaries.
Crawlable serves rendered HTML to Twitter, LinkedIn, Slack, Discord, WhatsApp, and Facebook bots — so your link previews show the correct title, description, and image.
Prerender.io uses centralized servers. Crawlable operates at the edge across a global network — lower latency, faster cache hits, and significantly cheaper. Plus we include AI SEO, AEO, rank tracking, and backlink monitoring — features Prerender.io doesn't offer.
Yes. Crawlable offers a render API endpoint that you can integrate with any server, CDN, or reverse proxy. See the integration guide in the dashboard for details.
Crawlable's AI SEO analyzes your pages and generates optimized meta titles, descriptions, schema markup, and AEO enhancements. These are deployed to crawlers at the edge — no code changes needed. You can review and approve changes in the dashboard.
AEO optimizes your content to be cited by AI systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI Overviews. Crawlable generates FAQ schema, direct answer blocks, and scores your content for citation-worthiness — helping your site appear in AI-generated answers.
No. Sign up for free, add your site in "SEO Only" mode, and subscribe to AI SEO — no pre-rendering plan required. This is perfect for server-rendered sites like WordPress, Next.js SSR, or PHP. Crawlable fetches your existing HTML and injects AI-optimized meta.
AI SEO is a per-site add-on at $5/mo base + $0.15 per page per month (auto-detected from your sitemap). For a 50-page site, that's $12.50/mo. Includes everything: meta optimization, schema injection, rank tracking, backlink monitoring, content gap analysis, AI citation monitoring, and more. No pre-rendering plan required for SEO-only sites.