# Stream length exceeds limit.

> Canonical HTML version: https://rocketvalidator.com/html-validation/stream-length-exceeds-limit
> Attribution: Rocket Validator (https://rocketvalidator.com)
> License: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

The validator reports "Stream length exceeds limit" when the submitted document is larger than the maximum input size the checker accepts, so it stops before parsing the markup.

This is not a markup mistake. The checker reads your page as a byte stream and refuses input past a fixed size cap, which is why the report names no element or attribute. The whole document was rejected for being too big.

Oversized HTML usually comes from content embedded directly in the page rather than from the hand-written markup. The common culprits are base64 data URIs for images or fonts, large inline `<script>` blocks carrying JSON or generated code, and big inline `<style>` sheets. A runaway template or a loop that repeats a fragment thousands of times can also push a page past the limit.

Start by measuring the document, then move large inline content into external files the page links to. If the page is genuinely large, validate a representative section on its own instead of the full document.

## Check the document size

```bash
curl -s https://example.com/page.html | wc -c
```

## Before: a large inline image

```html
<img src="data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAA...">
```

## After: reference an external file

```html
<img src="/images/logo.png" alt="Company logo">
```