gatsbyjs/gatsby · error

<head><title>Failed to Server Render (SSR)</title></head><bo

Error message

<head><title>Failed to Server Render (SSR)</title></head><body><h1>Failed to Server Render (SSR)</h1><h2>Error message:</h2><p>${e.message}</p><h2>File:</h2><p>${e.filename}:${e.line}:${e.column}</p><h2>Stack:</h2><pre><code>${e.stack}</code></pre></body>

What it means

Error "<head><title>Failed to Server Render (SSR)</title></head><body><h1>Failed to Server Render (SSR)</h1><h2>Error message:</h2><p>${e.message}</p><h2>File:</h2><p>${e.filename}:${e.line}:${e.column}</p><h2>Stack:</h2><pre><code>${e.stack}</code></pre></body>" thrown in gatsbyjs/gatsby.

Source

Thrown at packages/gatsby/src/utils/start-server.ts:773

          res.send(clientOnlyShell)
        } catch (e) {
          report.error({
            id: `11616`,
            context: {
              sourceMessage: e.message,
            },
            filePath: e.filename,
            location: {
              start: {
                line: e.line,
                column: e.column,
              },
            },
          })

          const minimalHTML = `<head><title>Failed to Server Render (SSR)</title></head><body><h1>Failed to Server Render (SSR)</h1><h2>Error message:</h2><p>${e.message}</p><h2>File:</h2><p>${e.filename}:${e.line}:${e.column}</p><h2>Stack:</h2><pre><code>${e.stack}</code></pre></body>`

          res.send(minimalHTML).status(500)
        }
      }

      htmlActivity.end()

      return null
    })
  }

  if (
    process.env.GATSBY_QUERY_ON_DEMAND &&
    process.env.GATSBY_QUERY_ON_DEMAND_LOADING_INDICATOR === `true`
  ) {
    routeLoadingIndicatorRequests(app)
  }

  app.use(async (req, res) => {
    // in this catch-all block we don't support POST so we should 404

View on GitHub (pinned to e85d62f177)

Solutions

  1. Inspect the error message, file, line and stack included in the returned HTML to find the failing module
  2. Ensure the page component and its imports only use browser APIs inside useEffect/componentDidMount, not during SSR
  3. Verify all imports resolve in a Node context (no missing packages, no CSS/image imports in server-executed code without proper loader config)
  4. Reproduce with `gatsby build` for a cleaner stack trace, fix the error, and let the dev server hot-reload
Defensive patterns

Strategy: fallback

When it happens

Trigger: Thrown at packages/gatsby/src/utils/start-server.ts:773 when the library encounters an invalid state.

Common situations: See trigger scenarios.

AI-assisted analysis of gatsbyjs/gatsby@e85d62f177 (2026-08-26). Data as JSON: /api/errors/738b3747b49423c3. Report an issue: GitHub.