diff --git a/CURATOR-REPORT.md b/CURATOR-REPORT.md
index 7b84e229..3573d12b 100644
--- a/CURATOR-REPORT.md
+++ b/CURATOR-REPORT.md
@@ -193,8 +193,17 @@ Not bugs, so as not to waste your time:
 ## Waiting on someone else
 
 - **The render service runs in a container now** (`restart: unless-stopped`), so a
-  reboot no longer stops GIF and PPTX. Still outstanding before this fronts
-  reactome.org: rate limiting in front of it.
+  reboot no longer stops GIF and PPTX. **Rate limiting is now in front of it**, so
+  the condition this listed is met: nginx gives `/RenderService/` its own budget
+  of 2 requests a second with a burst of 8 — the service's own queue depth, past
+  which it is rejecting anyway. The same budget now covers the Java exporters
+  that draw (`/ContentService/exporter/diagram|fireworks|document|event`), which
+  had none; the reaction-diagram JSON on the same prefix is deliberately outside
+  it, being 2.9 KB in 0.17s and on every reaction page's critical path. The site-wide limit it previously fell under is
+  100 a second, which is sized for page assets, not for a headless browser
+  drawing a 12000-pixel canvas. Crawlers on the old
+  `/ContentService/exporter/*` URLs are what exhausted Tomcat's heap and took the
+  origin down; this is the bound that stops that repeating.
 - **Cloudflare cache purge** — one-off, for figures cached before 2026-08-20.
   Nothing new is cached now.
 - **[#139](https://github.com/reactome/WebsiteAngular/issues/139) native cytoscape
diff --git a/deploy/nginx/common/routes.conf b/deploy/nginx/common/routes.conf
index 0d339f5b..acca254d 100644
--- a/deploy/nginx/common/routes.conf
+++ b/deploy/nginx/common/routes.conf
@@ -64,6 +64,36 @@ location ~ ^/ContentService/data/person/[^/]+/(authored|reviewed)(Pathways|React
     proxy_pass http://content_node;
 }
 
+# The exporters that actually draw something, which are the expensive part of
+# ContentService and the only part with a history of taking the origin down:
+# crawlers on these URLs exhausted Tomcat's heap. They have had no budget of
+# their own until now -- only the site-wide 100r/s, which is sized for page
+# assets.
+#
+# Named individually rather than as `/exporter/`, because that prefix is not all
+# one thing. `/exporter/reaction/{id}/diagram` is a 2.9 KB JSON document served
+# in 0.17s and it is on the critical path for every reaction page; a render of
+# R-HSA-109606 is 454 KB in 0.55s, and at full quality 7 MB. Measured, after
+# writing the prefix version and realising it would throttle reaction pages to
+# protect something they do not use.
+#
+# A regex location, so it is tried before the `/ContentService/` prefix below and
+# anything not listed here -- the reaction JSON included -- falls through to it
+# unbudgeted.
+#
+# Shares `render_rate` with /RenderService/ deliberately. The budget belongs to
+# the work -- drawing a diagram -- rather than to which implementation happens
+# to serve it, so a caller cannot spend it twice by alternating between the Java
+# exporter and the node renderer. That also means it is already on the right
+# path for #273, which moves these exports to node under these same URLs.
+location ~ ^/ContentService/exporter/(diagram|fireworks|document|event)/ {
+    limit_req zone=render_rate burst=8 nodelay;
+    include /etc/nginx/common/upstream-proxy.conf;
+    proxy_pass http://content;
+    proxy_read_timeout 300s;
+    proxy_send_timeout 300s;
+}
+
 location /ContentService/ {
     include /etc/nginx/common/upstream-proxy.conf;
     proxy_pass http://content/ContentService/;
@@ -186,6 +216,25 @@ location /mcp {
     proxy_read_timeout 300s;
 }
 
+# The render service. Routed here rather than left to fall through to the site
+# server -- which proxies it via proxy.conf.js and would still work -- because
+# a budget can only be applied where the path is named.
+#
+# `/RenderService/` with a trailing slash on both sides, so the prefix is
+# stripped: the service serves `/render/{id}.{ext}` at its root. That matches
+# what proxy.conf.js already does with `pathRewrite`.
+location /RenderService/ {
+    limit_req zone=render_rate burst=8 nodelay;
+    include /etc/nginx/common/upstream-proxy.conf;
+    proxy_pass http://render/;
+    # A large diagram takes tens of seconds and returns megabytes. The site's
+    # 300s matches what the exporters needed; buffering off so a slow render
+    # streams rather than being held whole in nginx first.
+    proxy_buffering off;
+    proxy_read_timeout 300s;
+    proxy_send_timeout 300s;
+}
+
 # The site itself.
 location / {
     include /etc/nginx/common/upstream-proxy.conf;
diff --git a/deploy/nginx/dev.conf b/deploy/nginx/dev.conf
index b8d57c03..a2aea2e3 100644
--- a/deploy/nginx/dev.conf
+++ b/deploy/nginx/dev.conf
@@ -93,6 +93,18 @@ upstream mcp {
     keepalive 16;
 }
 
+# The headless render service, which draws diagram figures (PNG, SVG, GIF,
+# PPTX, PDF) with the site's own renderer.
+#
+# Reached today through the site server, which proxies /RenderService from
+# proxy.conf.js. Named here so nginx can put a budget in front of it before it
+# ever fronts reactome.org -- which CURATOR-REPORT.md lists as the outstanding
+# condition on that.
+upstream render {
+    server 127.0.0.1:4310;
+    keepalive 16;
+}
+
 include /etc/nginx/common/websocket.conf;
 include /etc/nginx/common/cloudflare-real-ip.conf;
 include /etc/nginx/common/block-ai-crawlers.conf;
@@ -113,6 +125,20 @@ limit_req_zone  $binary_remote_addr zone=dev_rate:10m rate=100r/s;
 # page assets and would let one client queue analyses as fast as it can ask.
 limit_req_zone $binary_remote_addr zone=mcp_rate:10m rate=2r/s;
 
+# A budget for renders, two orders of magnitude tighter than the site's.
+#
+# A render is a headless browser drawing a canvas -- R-HSA-109606 comes back as
+# a 7 MB, 11952x6700 PNG -- so the cost per request is seconds of CPU rather
+# than a file read. The site's 100r/s is sized for page assets, and crawlers on
+# the old /ContentService/exporter/* URLs are what exhausted Tomcat's heap and
+# took the origin down. That is the failure this exists to prevent repeating.
+#
+# 2r/s with a burst of 8, which is the service's own queue depth
+# (RENDER_CONCURRENCY=2, RENDER_QUEUE=8): past that it is rejecting anyway, so
+# a burst larger than the queue only buys a deeper pile of work to throw away.
+limit_req_zone $binary_remote_addr zone=render_rate:10m rate=2r/s;
+
+
 limit_conn_zone $binary_remote_addr zone=dev_conn:10m;
 
 # The retired hostnames stay retired, and so does anything else pointed here.
diff --git a/deploy/nginx/production.conf b/deploy/nginx/production.conf
index 527cf3fd..42225b36 100644
--- a/deploy/nginx/production.conf
+++ b/deploy/nginx/production.conf
@@ -102,6 +102,18 @@ upstream mcp {
     keepalive 16;
 }
 
+# The headless render service, which draws diagram figures (PNG, SVG, GIF,
+# PPTX, PDF) with the site's own renderer.
+#
+# Reached today through the site server, which proxies /RenderService from
+# proxy.conf.js. Named here so nginx can put a budget in front of it before it
+# ever fronts reactome.org -- which CURATOR-REPORT.md lists as the outstanding
+# condition on that.
+upstream render {
+    server 127.0.0.1:4310;
+    keepalive 16;
+}
+
 include /etc/nginx/common/websocket.conf;
 include /etc/nginx/common/cloudflare-real-ip.conf;
 include /etc/nginx/common/block-ai-crawlers.conf;
@@ -119,6 +131,20 @@ limit_req_zone  $binary_remote_addr zone=prod_rate:20m rate=600r/s;
 # page assets and would let one client queue analyses as fast as it can ask.
 limit_req_zone $binary_remote_addr zone=mcp_rate:10m rate=2r/s;
 
+# A budget for renders, two orders of magnitude tighter than the site's.
+#
+# A render is a headless browser drawing a canvas -- R-HSA-109606 comes back as
+# a 7 MB, 11952x6700 PNG -- so the cost per request is seconds of CPU rather
+# than a file read. The site's 100r/s is sized for page assets, and crawlers on
+# the old /ContentService/exporter/* URLs are what exhausted Tomcat's heap and
+# took the origin down. That is the failure this exists to prevent repeating.
+#
+# 2r/s with a burst of 8, which is the service's own queue depth
+# (RENDER_CONCURRENCY=2, RENDER_QUEUE=8): past that it is rejecting anyway, so
+# a burst larger than the queue only buys a deeper pile of work to throw away.
+limit_req_zone $binary_remote_addr zone=render_rate:10m rate=2r/s;
+
+
 limit_conn_zone $binary_remote_addr zone=prod_conn:20m;
 
 server {
diff --git a/deploy/nginx/release.conf b/deploy/nginx/release.conf
index 05b7190a..8644d10b 100644
--- a/deploy/nginx/release.conf
+++ b/deploy/nginx/release.conf
@@ -96,6 +96,18 @@ upstream mcp {
     keepalive 16;
 }
 
+# The headless render service, which draws diagram figures (PNG, SVG, GIF,
+# PPTX, PDF) with the site's own renderer.
+#
+# Reached today through the site server, which proxies /RenderService from
+# proxy.conf.js. Named here so nginx can put a budget in front of it before it
+# ever fronts reactome.org -- which CURATOR-REPORT.md lists as the outstanding
+# condition on that.
+upstream render {
+    server 127.0.0.1:4310;
+    keepalive 16;
+}
+
 include /etc/nginx/common/websocket.conf;
 include /etc/nginx/common/cloudflare-real-ip.conf;
 include /etc/nginx/common/block-ai-crawlers.conf;
@@ -112,6 +124,20 @@ limit_req_zone  $binary_remote_addr zone=rel_rate:10m rate=100r/s;
 # page assets and would let one client queue analyses as fast as it can ask.
 limit_req_zone $binary_remote_addr zone=mcp_rate:10m rate=2r/s;
 
+# A budget for renders, two orders of magnitude tighter than the site's.
+#
+# A render is a headless browser drawing a canvas -- R-HSA-109606 comes back as
+# a 7 MB, 11952x6700 PNG -- so the cost per request is seconds of CPU rather
+# than a file read. The site's 100r/s is sized for page assets, and crawlers on
+# the old /ContentService/exporter/* URLs are what exhausted Tomcat's heap and
+# took the origin down. That is the failure this exists to prevent repeating.
+#
+# 2r/s with a burst of 8, which is the service's own queue depth
+# (RENDER_CONCURRENCY=2, RENDER_QUEUE=8): past that it is rejecting anyway, so
+# a burst larger than the queue only buys a deeper pile of work to throw away.
+limit_req_zone $binary_remote_addr zone=render_rate:10m rate=2r/s;
+
+
 limit_conn_zone $binary_remote_addr zone=rel_conn:10m;
 
 server {