Is Bolt’s SEO Boost free?

No. Bolt’s documentation states plainly that SEO Boost is available with a paid plan. This means an app on the free tier is not merely unoptimised for search, it is fundamentally unreadable to crawlers until you upgrade, because search engines receive the JavaScript shell rather than your content.

Does Bolt SEO Boost work on a bolt.host address?

No. SEO Boost requires a custom domain to enable, and a free bolt.host address will not activate it. Buying and connecting your own domain is a prerequisite rather than a later refinement, so it belongs at the start of a Bolt launch plan and not at the end.

Why is my Bolt app still not indexed after upgrading?

Because SEO Boost does nothing until you explicitly request it, and it does not infer your metadata. This is the condition that surprises people who have already bought the plan and connected the domain. Two of three gates are passed and nothing happens, because the third step was never taken.

What is the correct order to set up SEO on Bolt?

Buy the custom domain first, because SEO Boost cannot be enabled without it. Then move to a paid plan, since the feature is gated behind one. Then explicitly request the metadata page by page, because nothing is inferred. Doing these out of order produces the common experience of paying and seeing no change.

Does Bolt generate a sitemap or robots.txt?

Neither. Bolt does not generate a sitemap and does not generate a robots.txt, so both are your responsibility. List every real page in the sitemap, point robots.txt at it, and check that robots.txt is not disallowing anything you care about before you submit anything.

How does Bolt compare with other vibe coding platforms on SEO?

Bolt documents exactly what it does, which is unusual in this category. The trade-off is that its capability is gated behind a paid plan and a custom domain, where Base44 serves crawlers fully rendered pages and generates both a sitemap and a robots.txt automatically on free and paid tiers alike.

Bolt will not show your app to Google until you do three things

Bolt documents exactly what it does, which is unusual in this category. The trouble is that the defaults leave a new app completely unreadable to search engines until you take three deliberate steps.

Have Licheo make it findable

Bolt’s SEO Boost serves a pre-rendered HTML version of your pages to web crawlers instead of your JavaScript application. Three conditions gate it: it requires a paid plan, it requires a custom domain so a free bolt.host address will not activate it, and it does nothing until you explicitly ask Bolt to set the metadata you want. All three are easy to pass once you know they exist.

What is Bolt’s SEO Boost?

Bolt’s capability here has a name: SEO Boost. According to Bolt’s own support documentation, it serves a pre-rendered HTML version of your pages to web crawlers instead of your JavaScript application.

That is the right approach and it solves the fundamental problem. A crawler asking for your page gets real HTML with real content in it, rather than an empty shell waiting for JavaScript to run. But three conditions sit in front of it, and every one of them catches people.

Does Bolt SEO Boost need a paid plan?

Bolt’s documentation states plainly that SEO Boost is available with a paid plan. This is worth sitting with, because it changes how you should think about launching on Bolt.

On the free tier your app is not being pre-rendered for crawlers. Search engines receive your JavaScript shell. Whatever else you do, however many pages you write, however good the content is, none of it is reaching Google in a readable form.

There is nothing improper about this arrangement, it is a normal commercial decision. But it means that on Bolt, unlike on some other platforms, being findable is a paid feature and no amount of technique gets around it.

Will Bolt index my app on a bolt.host address?

SEO Boost requires a custom domain to enable, and your free bolt.host address will not activate it. So the free address is not merely less impressive than your own domain. On Bolt specifically, it is the thing keeping the pre-rendering switched off.

Buying a domain is not a branding decision here, it is a technical prerequisite. There is a useful consequence: buy the domain before you write a lot of pages. If you build twenty pages on the bolt.host address and then move, you are into redirects, and redirects arranged in a hurry lose things.

Why is nothing happening after I enabled SEO Boost?

This is the one that surprises people who have already done the first two. SEO Boost does not infer your metadata. Bolt’s documentation says you must ask Bolt to set the exact metadata you want.

That covers the page title and description, Open Graph tags, Twitter and X card tags, the canonical URL, and structured data. You prompt for it, in the chatbox, page by page. Images you upload yourself.

So it is entirely possible to be on a paid plan, on a custom domain, with SEO Boost technically enabled, and still have every page carrying whatever generic title came out of the original build. The pre-rendering is working. It is just faithfully pre-rendering the wrong labels.

What will Bolt not do for my SEO?

The documentation is refreshingly direct about the limits, and knowing them saves you from trying things that cannot work.

No custom pre-rendering workflows. In Bolt’s words it only supports SEO Boost for pre-rendering and cannot run tools like react-snap, so general React SEO advice recommending those does not apply.
No automatic sitemap. Bolt does not generate one, so you create it and keep it current yourself.
No automatic robots.txt. You add it, point it at your sitemap, and check it is not blocking anything it should not be.

In what order should I set up SEO on Bolt?

The sequence is not arbitrary. Doing these out of order produces the common experience of paying and seeing no change.

Buy the domain first, because SEO Boost will not turn on without it. Connect it in project settings and check the SSL status has gone green before continuing.
Move to a paid plan and enable SEO Boost. Without this the rest of the work sits behind a wall and produces nothing.
Prompt for metadata on every page, one title and description each, plus Open Graph and card tags and the canonical URL. Do not accept one title shared across the app.
Ask for structured data where it genuinely applies: SoftwareApplication on the homepage, FAQPage on real questions and answers, Article on guides.
Add sitemap.xml and robots.txt yourself, since Bolt generates neither, and decide deliberately whether you allow the AI crawlers.
Submit the sitemap in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Bing is worth the ten minutes because it reports AI citations, which Google does not.

Is my Bolt app done once SEO Boost is on?

Everything above is a prerequisite. It gets you readable. It does not, by itself, get you found.

Being found comes from having pages that answer the specific questions people actually ask about the problem your product solves. Most Bolt apps are one screen, which means there is exactly one search they could conceivably rank for, and it is invariably the most contested phrase in the category. No platform setting fixes that.

Part of a larger guide

This page is one part of Why is nobody using the app you built?. The other parts:

Questions people ask

Is Bolt’s SEO Boost free?: No. Bolt’s documentation states plainly that SEO Boost is available with a paid plan. This means an app on the free tier is not merely unoptimised for search, it is fundamentally unreadable to crawlers until you upgrade, because search engines receive the JavaScript shell rather than your content.
Does Bolt SEO Boost work on a bolt.host address?: No. SEO Boost requires a custom domain to enable, and a free bolt.host address will not activate it. Buying and connecting your own domain is a prerequisite rather than a later refinement, so it belongs at the start of a Bolt launch plan and not at the end.
Why is my Bolt app still not indexed after upgrading?: Because SEO Boost does nothing until you explicitly request it, and it does not infer your metadata. This is the condition that surprises people who have already bought the plan and connected the domain. Two of three gates are passed and nothing happens, because the third step was never taken.
What is the correct order to set up SEO on Bolt?: Buy the custom domain first, because SEO Boost cannot be enabled without it. Then move to a paid plan, since the feature is gated behind one. Then explicitly request the metadata page by page, because nothing is inferred. Doing these out of order produces the common experience of paying and seeing no change.
Does Bolt generate a sitemap or robots.txt?: Neither. Bolt does not generate a sitemap and does not generate a robots.txt, so both are your responsibility. List every real page in the sitemap, point robots.txt at it, and check that robots.txt is not disallowing anything you care about before you submit anything.
How does Bolt compare with other vibe coding platforms on SEO?: Bolt documents exactly what it does, which is unusual in this category. The trade-off is that its capability is gated behind a paid plan and a custom domain, where Base44 serves crawlers fully rendered pages and generates both a sitemap and a robots.txt automatically on free and paid tiers alike.

Want us to walk through it with you

We will look at your Bolt app and show you exactly what is reaching Google and the AI assistants right now, then write the pages worth finding once the gates are open.

Have Licheo make it findable Read the full vibe coding guide