Join us for localhost, our first conference, in San Francisco on June 18

Get your ticket
June 04, 2026
Improved

Reduced median build time for Node.js services by 25%

In recent weeks, we've gradually rolled out a number of build optimizations for Render's Node.js native runtime, including:

  • Tuning chunk size and parallelism for build image uploads
  • Caching of commonly used Node.js versions
  • Sharing universal layers across build images
  • Speeding up build scheduling on Render infrastructure

Together, these optimizations have reduced median build time for Node.js services by 25%:

Median Node.js build times by week
Median Node.js build times by week

Before these optimizations (week of March 22), median build time was 42 seconds, consistent with prior weeks. After all optimizations landed, the highest weekly median observed has been 31 seconds (a conservative 25% reduction). Build times remain in this range.