Computer-readable media, methods, and systems are disclosed for displaying paginated growing widgets. At generation time, a pagination service negotiates widget bounds. The pagination service transmits proposed bounds and a starting index to the growing widgets and receives a number of items that can be displayed as well as updated bounds for all items that can be displayed. The pagination service creates a cache entry including a widget identifier, updated widget bounds, and a starting and ending widget data item index. If a particular page is not present in the widget pagination cache, the pagination service performs another bounds negotiation. At display time, the pagination service instructs each of the paginated growing widgets to render updated widget data items based on a corresponding widget pagination cache entry, without reprocessing a document object model associated with a front-end application on which the paginated growing widgets are displayed.