How to exclude pages from the Varnish cache
Some pages must never be served from a shared full-page cache - the cart, checkout, customer account and admin - because they are personalized or change on every request. Caching them would risk showing one visitor another visitor's page.
What Varnish already skips
You usually do not need to configure anything:
-
Varnish only caches GET and HEAD requests, and by default does not cache requests that carry cookies - so logged-in and checkout traffic already bypasses the cache.
-
TurboStack ships an app-aware Varnish Configuration Language (VCL) for supported storefronts (Magento, Shopware) that already bypasses the admin, cart and checkout.
Add your own rule only for a custom path the built-in configuration does not cover.
Add a custom exclusion
The supported way to add your own rule is the varnish_customvcl key (a host advanced option, set in
the GUI under Advanced > Varnish Options or in the YAML view). Put
your vcl_recv rule in it:
varnish_customvcl: |
sub vcl_recv {
# Never cache these paths - send them straight to the backend
if (req.url ~ "^/(my-account|api/live)") {
return (pass);
}
}return (pass) tells Varnish to skip the cache and go straight to your application for matching
requests. Publish the change to apply it. See
Configure Varnish for the full list of Varnish keys.
Warning
Custom VCL is for expert use - a wrong rule can cache the wrong content or break the storefront. Match paths precisely and test before relying on it.
Note
Behind the scenes, VCL loads from /etc/varnish/conf.d/ in alphabetical order (the platform's own
rules load from a 50-prefixed file). When varnish_customvcl is set, the platform renders an
editable 50_main.vcl.sample on the host for reference. Do not create files there by hand over SSH:
route your rule through varnish_customvcl so it survives a redeploy.
Verify a page is not cached
Request the page twice and look at the Age response header. A cached response shows a non-zero Age
that grows on repeat requests; an excluded page stays at Age: 0 every time:
curl -sI https://www.example.com/my-account | grep -i age