What s the difference between Cache-Control max-age 0 and no-cache

Question

The header Cache-Control  max-age 0 implies that the content is considered stale  and must be re-fetched  immediately  which is in effect the same thing as Cache-Control  no-cache

User · Answer

One thing that  surprisingly  hasn t been mentioned is that a request can explicitly indicate that it will accept stale data  using the max-stale directive  In that case  if the server responded with max-age 0  the cache would merely consider the response stale  and would be free to use it to satisfy the client s request  which asked for potentially-stale data   By contrast  if the server sends no-cache that really does trump any request by the client  with max-stale  for stale data  as the cache MUST revalidate

User · Answer

By the way  it s worth noting that some mobile devices  particularly Apple products like iPhone iPad completely ignore headers like no-cache  no-store  Expires  0  or whatever else you may try to force them to not re-use expired form pages   This has caused us no end of headaches as we try to get the issue of a user s iPad say  being left asleep on a page they have reached through a form process  say step 2 of 3  and then the device totally ignores the store cache directives  and as far as I can tell  simply takes what is a virtual snapshot of the page from its last state  that is  ignoring what it was told explicitly  and  not only that  taking a page that should not be stored  and storing it without actually checking it again  which leads to all kinds of strange Session issues  among other things   I m just adding this in case someone comes along and can t figure out why they are getting session errors with particularly iphones and ipads  which seem by far to be the worst offenders in this area    I ve done fairly extensive debugger testing with this issue  and this is my conclusion  the devices ignore these directives completely   Even in regular use  I ve found that some mobiles also totally fail to check for new versions via say  Expires  0 then checking last modified dates to determine if it should get a new one   It simply doesn t happen  so what I was forced to do was add query strings to the css js files I needed to force updates on  which tricks the stupid mobile devices into thinking it s a file it does not have  like  my css v 1  then v 2 for a css js update  This largely works   User browsers also  by the way  if left to their defaults  as of 2016  as I continuously discover  we do a LOT of changes and updates to our site  also fail to check for last modified dates on such files  but the query string method fixes that issue  This is something I ve noticed with clients and office people who tend to use basic normal user defaults on their browsers  and have no awareness of caching issues with css js etc  almost invariably fail to get the new css js on change  which means the defaults for their browsers  mostly MSIE   Firefox  are not doing what they are told to do  they ignore changes and ignore last modified dates and do not validate  even with Expires  0 set explicitly   This was a good thread with a lot of good technical information  but it s also important to note how bad the support for this stuff is in particularly mobile devices  Every few months I have to add more layers of protection against their failure to follow the header commands they receive  or to properly interpet those commands

User · Answer

In my recent tests with IE8 and Firefox 3 5  it seems that both are RFC-compliant  However  they differ in their  friendliness  to the origin server  IE8 treats no-cache responses with the same semantics as max-age 0 must-revalidate  Firefox 3 5  however  seems to treat no-cache as equivalent to no-store  which sucks for performance and bandwidth usage   Squid Cache  by default  seems to never store anything with a no-cache header  just like Firefox   My advice would be to set public max-age 0 for non-sensitive resources you want to have checked for freshness on every request  but still allow the performance and bandwidth benefits of caching  For per-user items with the same consideration  use private max-age 0   I would avoid the use of no-cache entirely  as it seems it has been bastardized by some browsers and popular caches to the functional equivalent of no-store   Additionally  do not emulate Akamai and Limelight  While they essentially run massive caching arrays as their primary business  and should be experts  they actually have a vested interest in causing more data to be downloaded from their networks  Google might not be a good choice for emulation  either  They seem to use max-age 0 or no-cache randomly depending on the resource

User · Answer

Old question now  but if anyone else comes across this through a search as I did  it appears that IE9 will be making use of this to configure the behaviour of resources when using the back and forward buttons  When max-age 0 is used  the browser will use the last version when viewing a resource on a back forward press   If no-cache is used  the resource will be refetched   Further details about IE9 caching can be seen on this msdn caching blog post

User · Answer

max-age 0  This is equivalent to clicking Refresh  which means  give me the latest copy unless I already have the latest copy   no-cache   This is holding Shift while clicking Refresh  which means  just redo everything no matter what

User · Answer

I m hardly a caching expert  but Mark Nottingham is  Here are his caching docs  He also has excellent links in the References section   Based on my reading of those docs  it looks like max-age 0 could allow the cache to send a cached response to requests that came in at the  same time  where  same time  means close enough together they look simultaneous to the cache  but no-cache would not

User · Answer

I had this same question  and found some info in my searches  your question came up as one of the results    Here s what I determined     There are two sides to the Cache-Control header   One side is where it can be sent by the web server  aka   origin server     The other side is where it can be sent by the browser  aka   user agent       When sent by the origin server  I believe max-age 0 simply tells caches  and user agents  the response is stale from the get-go and so they SHOULD revalidate the response  eg  with the If-Not-Modified header  before using a cached copy  whereas  no-cache tells them they MUST revalidate before using a cached copy   From 14 9 1 What is Cacheable      no-cache         a cache MUST NOT use the response   to satisfy a subsequent request   without successful revalidation with   the origin server   This allows an   origin server to prevent caching even   by caches that have been configured to   return stale responses to client   requests    In other words  caches may sometimes choose to use a stale response  although I believe they have to then add a Warning header   but no-cache says they re not allowed to use a stale response no matter what   Maybe you d want the SHOULD-revalidate behavior when baseball stats are generated in a page  but you d want the MUST-revalidate behavior when you ve generated the response to an e-commerce purchase   Although you re correct in your comment when you say no-cache is not supposed to prevent storage  it might actually be another difference when using no-cache   I came across a page  Cache Control Directives Demystified  that says  I can t vouch for its correctness       In practice  IE and Firefox have   started treating the no-cache   directive as if it instructs the   browser not to even cache the page     We started observing this behavior   about a year ago   We suspect that   this change was prompted by the   widespread  and incorrect  use of this   directive to prevent caching                Notice that of late   cache-control    no-cache  has also started behaving   like the  no-store  directive    As an aside  it appears to me that Cache-Control  max-age 0  must-revalidate should basically mean the same thing as Cache-Control  no-cache   So maybe that s a way to get the MUST-revalidate behavior of no-cache  while avoiding the apparent migration of no-cache to doing the same thing as no-store  ie  no caching whatsoever      When sent by the user agent  I believe shahkalpesh s answer applies to the user agent side   You can also look at 13 2 6 Disambiguating Multiple Responses   If a user agent sends a request with Cache-Control  max-age 0  aka   end-to-end revalidation    then each cache along the way will revalidate its cache entry  eg  with the If-Not-Modified header  all the way to the origin server   If the reply is then 304  Not Modified   the cached entity can be used   On the other hand  sending a request with Cache-Control  no-cache  aka   end-to-end reload   doesn t revalidate and the server MUST NOT use a cached copy when responding

User · Answer

max-age     When an intermediate cache is forced  by means of a max-age 0 directive  to revalidate  its own cache entry  and the client has supplied its own validator in the request  the  supplied validator might differ from the validator currently stored with the cache entry   In this case  the cache MAY use either validator in making its own request without  affecting semantic transparency        However  the choice of validator might affect performance  The best approach is for the  intermediate cache to use its own validator when making its request  If the server replies  with 304  Not Modified   then the cache can return its now validated copy to the client  with a 200  OK  response  If the server replies with a new entity and cache validator   however  the intermediate cache can compare the returned validator with the one provided in  the client s request  using the strong comparison function  If the client s validator is  equal to the origin server s  then the intermediate cache simply returns 304  Not  Modified   Otherwise  it returns the new entity with a 200  OK  response        If a request includes the no-cache directive  it SHOULD NOT include min-fresh   max-stale  or max-age     courtesy  http   www w3 org Protocols rfc2616 rfc2616-sec14 html sec14 9 4  Don t accept this as answer - I will have to read it to understand the true usage of it

[http] What's the difference between Cache-Control: max-age=0 and no-cache?

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