Prerendering is one of the simplest ways to make your Lovable site load faster, index better on search engines, and feel instantly responsive. Whether you’re building a marketing page, documentation site, or lightweight SaaS landing page, prerendering ensures your content is ready the moment someone visits. Combined with Vercel, one of the fastest deployment platforms for frontend projects, you get a powerful, production-ready setup in minutes. Here’s how to make it happen.
Why Prerender Your Lovable Site?
Prerendering takes your Lovable-generated pages and turns them into static HTML. This offers several advantages:
- Faster load times
- Better SEO
- Lower hosting costs
- Fewer runtime errors
- More predictable performance
It’s especially helpful for sites where the content doesn’t change constantly—landing pages, blogs, documentation, product pages, or portfolio sites. When paired with Vercel’s global CDN, your prerendered Lovable site can feel nearly instant for visitors anywhere in the world.
Exporting Your Lovable Project
Lovable.dev allows you to export clean, production-ready code at any time. This is the first step in prerendering.
- Open your Lovable project.
- Use Export to GitHub or download the code ZIP.
- Ensure the exported project includes your pages, routes, components, and static assets.
Most Lovable sites are structured like typical React or Next.js projects. If your project already uses Next.js, you’re halfway there—Next has built-in support for prerendering. If your Lovable project uses another framework, similar static export tools will still apply.
Enabling Prerendering in Your Project
If your Lovable export is based on Next.js, enabling prerendering is simple. Next.js supports two main types of prerendering:
Static Generation
Perfect for pages that don’t change often.
Just use:
export async function getStaticProps() {
return { props: {} }
}
Or create .mdx or .md content and let static generation handle it.
Static Export
If your Lovable site is fully static, add this to next.config.js:
module.exports = {
output: 'export'
}
Then run:
npm run build
npm run export
This generates a /out directory with fully prerendered HTML files.
For other frameworks like VitePress, Astro, or SvelteKit (sometimes generated through Lovable workflows), you simply run:
npm run build
And the system automatically generates static files.
Preparing Your Project for Deployment
Once your prerendered build directory (/out, /dist, /build, etc.) is ready, check the following:
- All internal links work using static paths
- Images and assets load correctly
- API calls (if any) don’t run on prerendered pages unless intended
- Your site renders as expected locally
You can preview locally using:
npx serve out
Or for Vite/Astro:
npx serve dist
This ensures everything works before deploying to Vercel.
Deploying to Vercel
Vercel makes deployment delightfully easy.
Option 1: Deploy via GitHub
- Push your project (including build config) to GitHub.
- Visit vercel.com and import the repo.
- During setup, specify your output directory (usually
/outor/dist). - Click deploy.
Vercel automatically builds, optimizes, and distributes your site across its global CDN.
Option 2: Deploy via Vercel CLI
If you prefer local deployment:
npm i -g vercel
vercel
Follow the prompts:
- Select your project
- Enter the output directory
- Confirm framework settings
In seconds, Vercel gives you a live production URL.
Making Updates
Because your Lovable project is synced to GitHub, updates are easy:
- Open your Lovable project
- Make changes
- Sync to GitHub
- Vercel auto-deploys the new version
This gives you a smooth workflow where Lovable handles creation, GitHub handles version control, and Vercel handles hosting.
Tips for Better Prerendered Lovable Sites
- Use clear file-based routing—Vercel handles static routes extremely well
- Cache images using Next.js
Imagecomponent if available - Add SEO metadata using Lovable’s meta tags or Next.js
<Head> - Keep pages lightweight for instant loads
- Use environment variables carefully—prerendered pages don’t have access to server-side secrets
If your site needs dynamic behavior later (auth, dashboards, etc.), you can still mix prerendered pages with client-side rendering or API routes deployed on Vercel.
Conclusion
Prerendering your Lovable site and deploying it to Vercel gives you the best of both worlds: lightning-fast performance and effortless deployment. With Lovable’s AI-assisted generation and Vercel’s global CDN, you can build professional-grade static sites in minutes—perfect for marketing pages, launch sites, blogs, and more. Once set up, your workflow becomes incredibly smooth: build in Lovable, sync to GitHub, deploy automatically on Vercel.