{"slug": "cloudflare", "name": "Cloudflare", "category": "infra", "category_name": "Infrastructure and DevOps", "description": "Connectivity cloud offering CDN, DNS, DDoS protection, domain registration and serverless developer tools.", "recommenders": 40, "commenters": 88, "warners": 20, "score": 25.964, "rising": 9.47, "first": "2025-11-15", "latest": "2026-10-25", "why": "Liked for its generous free tier and cheap domain registration, for free DNS and bot protection in front of small sites and VPS boxes, and for its Workers, R2 and Durable Objects developer platform.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 41, "neutral": 27, "compare": 2, "warn": 20}, "spark": [5, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 1, 2, 3, 3, 5, 10], "listed": true, "loved": ["Free tier value", "Developer platform"], "caveat": "Global outages", "short_quote": "I put my personal website behind Cloudflare, and I recommend that you do too.", "icon": true, "domain": "cloudflare.com", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://www.cloudflare.com/", "pricing": "freemium", "aliases": ["Cloudflare"], "verdict": [{"text": "Liked for its generous free tier and cheap domain registration,", "cites": [{"id": 793728656, "item_id": 49608041, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49608041", "by": "jillesvangurp", "date": "2026-09-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It's seriously good value for small websites.", "excerpt": "It's seriously good value for small websites. Basically, there is no cost aside from the domain. And for registering and managing domains, they are pretty much the most affordable option as well. And they have a few other things that aren't half bad to use with pretty generous freemium layers. We used Google's CDN for the last six years or so but it's pretty annoying to deal with and you have to pay for a load balanc", "context": "small team that migrated off gcloud", "use_case": "CDN, domains, static site hosting", "switched_from": "Google Cloud CDN", "story": "Among European Companies That Use a CDN, Nearly 9 in 10 Use Cloudflare"}, {"id": 746379762, "item_id": 46648735, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46648735", "by": "nmaleki", "date": "2026-01-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Cheapest domain prices and cloudflare works great for everything for me.", "excerpt": "Minecraft $26.95. Thousands of hours of gameplay. Ear Fun Free Pro 3 $50 wireless earbuds. Great sound, quick pairing, good noise cancelling, in-app equalizer, great price. Probably buy direct from them, bought from Woot! Amazon once and didn't get a very good model. Web Video Caster $5. I stream tons of content and this lets me connect to just about anything. You can use it for free with ads. Cloudflare domain ~$10/", "context": "", "use_case": "domains", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What are your best purchases under $100?"}, {"id": 739058640, "item_id": 46191165, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46191165", "by": "NoahZuniga", "date": "2025-12-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use cloudflare and it's great.", "excerpt": "I use cloudflare and it's great. It feels like the only registrar that has a business case for at cost domains. Also if you're worried about cloudflare downtime, you can only use them for dns resolution (which hasn't been impacted) and not for proxying.", "context": "", "use_case": "domain registrar and DNS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Which domain name registrar do you use?"}, {"id": 802215472, "item_id": 50138467, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50138467", "by": "daniel_iversen", "date": "2026-10-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love cloudflare, seriously.", "excerpt": "I love cloudflare, seriously. Not sure what it is about the brand, but their products feel delightful, they feel like an honest business, they have great free tiers, their tech is \u201ccool\u201d and they seem to innovate a lot (I.e the recent AI blocking program etc). Just moved all my domains over from Whois.com (who on the other hand seem sneaky, don\u2019t have auto renewals and slam you with an 80$ restoration fine for domain", "context": "", "use_case": "domain registration and hosting", "switched_from": "Whois.com", "story": "Matthew Prince on why Cloudflare offers a free version and always will (2016)"}, {"id": 757486081, "item_id": 47342880, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47342880", "by": "notryanquinn", "date": "2026-03-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Cloudflare as a platform has been awesome for me", "excerpt": "I\u2019ve used RedwoodJS (now CedarJS) and still will for some GraphQL focused apps I have around. I always thought of old Redwood as the easiest way to get a GraphQL React app setup for success off the bat with nice deployment targets. Now with RedwoodSDK I get the absolute easiest way to spin up a production-ready RSC app. Especially true if I don\u2019t want to be on Vercel (I have loved Vercel\u2019s value prop. Many old apps o", "context": "", "use_case": "hosting apps", "switched_from": "Vercel", "story": "RedwoodSDK v1.0 released \u2013 We stopped breaking everything"}]}, {"text": " for free DNS and bot protection in front of small sites and VPS boxes,", "cites": [{"id": 782061952, "item_id": 48878872, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48878872", "by": "graton", "date": "2026-07-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Cloudflare for DNS and it is free to use the API.", "excerpt": "> I'm using the free DNS my registrar provides, which doesn't provide API access unless you upgrade to their paid DNS service I use Cloudflare for DNS and it is free to use the API.", "context": "", "use_case": "DNS with API for ACME challenges", "switched_from": "", "story": "TLS certificates for internal services done right"}, {"id": 803680385, "item_id": 50230024, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50230024", "by": "jonathanlydall", "date": "2026-10-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm using Cloudflare for dynamic DNS, no extra fee and works perfectly", "excerpt": "In some situations it is most convenient/practical to have your router do dynamic DNS updates and depending on your router the options may be limited giving you no \"great\" options. Regarding your valid concerns about the PSL, as long as you have a domain already, you can just make a CNAME record to a free dynamic DNS provider's sub-domain record, I've done this for years with a No-IP ddns.net record. I don't especial", "context": "has pfSense box at home", "use_case": "dynamic DNS", "switched_from": "No-IP", "story": "FreeDNS"}, {"id": 787387552, "item_id": 49211722, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49211722", "by": "rglover", "date": "2026-08-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Highly recommend people throw Cloudflare in front of their stuff.", "excerpt": "All of my boxes are cheap VPS. Highly recommend people throw Cloudflare in front of their stuff. I switched all of my load balancers over to there and all of that bot crap went away. That combined with a proper UFW setup keeps the weather clear for me.", "context": "runs cheap VPS boxes", "use_case": "bot protection, load balancing", "switched_from": "", "story": "99% of My Website Traffic Is Bots"}, {"id": 787382945, "item_id": 49211434, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49211434", "by": "SlavikCA", "date": "2026-08-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Solved the issue by putting the site behind Cloudflare proxy and enabling it's magic to protect from the bot.", "excerpt": "I have 5Gbps fiber at home. LAN is mostly 10Gbps. I'm hosting few hobbyist public websites. One is the library of hymns, songs, ... - mostly PDF, MP3, MIDI. OpnSense router -> Traefik -> Docker container. That Docker container runs on NAS, which is connected via 1Gbps port. Suddenly, last week I started to get over 1000 RPS. Was it scanner, parser, crawler, DDOS? I can't tell, as user agent was default Mac OS. It was", "context": "hosts hobbyist public websites at home", "use_case": "bot protection / CDN", "switched_from": "", "story": "The web server deployment model breaks at hobby scale"}, {"id": 793153568, "item_id": 49572098, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49572098", "by": "abstractspoon", "date": "2026-09-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I do. I only have so much energy and I'd rather apply it to my software than fighting bots", "excerpt": "I do. I only have so much energy and I'd rather apply it to my software than fighting bots", "context": "", "use_case": "bot and DDoS protection", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Do all of you use Cloudflare for preventing DDoS, Bot and more attacks?"}]}, {"text": " and for its Workers, R2 and Durable Objects developer platform.", "cites": [{"id": 802212736, "item_id": 50138296, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50138296", "by": "asadm", "date": "2026-10-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Cloudflare is exclusively what I use for any infra work I do", "excerpt": "Cloudflare is exclusively what I use for any infra work I do (and I do a lot for various projects and startups of my own/others I advice). If something doesn\u2019t fit cloudflare primitives, I try to rethink my design before reaching for gcloud etc. They even do docker containers now which is great but durable objects and workers are game changer for me. The easy nextjs deployment is also my go-to now that vercel isn\u2019t m", "context": "does infra work for own and others' startups", "use_case": "infrastructure for projects", "switched_from": "Vercel", "story": "Matthew Prince on why Cloudflare offers a free version and always will (2016)"}, {"id": 762848817, "item_id": 47678051, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47678051", "by": "stickfigure", "date": "2026-04-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "But for other caching, R2, workers, etc CF is great.", "excerpt": "This isn't an either/or, you can use features from both and you have to compare carefully. I used to do a lot of image manipulation and had pluggable implementations for imgix, cloudflare images, and bunny. Bunny is by far the cheapest and that ended up being the mature solution (plus some custom processing). But for other caching, R2, workers, etc CF is great.", "context": "", "use_case": "caching, R2, Workers", "switched_from": "", "story": "Dropping Cloudflare for Bunny.net"}, {"id": 754485888, "item_id": 47155368, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47155368", "by": "capevace", "date": "2026-02-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Their featureset and DX is the best in the industry IMO", "excerpt": "I really wish there was a EU alternative to Cloudflare. Their featureset and DX is the best in the industry IMO but their data sovereignty features are sadly not really good enough for most EU enterprises we talk to. The fact they\u2019re an American company is unfortunately the dealbraker. We could store data outside of CF network but that defeats the point of the one stop shop.", "context": "works with EU enterprises", "use_case": "one-stop infrastructure", "switched_from": "", "story": "Danish Gov agency to ditch Microsoft software in push for digital independence"}]}, {"text": " The most common complaint is repeated global outages with no way to isolate failures,", "cites": [{"id": 742112752, "item_id": 46382047, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46382047", "by": "h27", "date": "2025-12-24", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I can no longer recommend them.", "excerpt": "I love Cloudflare. A lot. But I don't love that they refuse to address the fact their cloud has a single fault zone. Customers can not, no matter how hard they try, build highly available services using Cloudflare. They are quite proud of it too if you read the smugness in their blogs about having just 1 region: Earth... Yet they keep having global outages. I can no longer recommend them.", "context": "", "use_case": "cloud hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Just Fucking Use Cloudflare \u2013 A satirical guide to the CF stack"}, {"id": 788979808, "item_id": 49311238, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49311238", "by": "minraws", "date": "2026-08-15", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I used to be all in on CF a while ago, now I am moving off them almost entirely.", "excerpt": "Bugs happen all the time yes, outages don't. If outages are increasing with scale you get 1 or maybe 2 free passes. After that you either have in-ept Engineering or just in-ept leadership. I used to be all in on CF a while ago, now I am moving off them almost entirely. Same issue with GitHub, I can understand if you can't build for the scale when you couldn't predict it but if after over 12-18 months things don't see", "context": "infra/dev person with side projects", "use_case": "infrastructure", "switched_from": "", "story": "Cloudflare's AI Psychosis"}, {"id": 735600976, "item_id": 45975061, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45975061", "by": "snoppy45", "date": "2025-11-18", "stance": "warn", "quote": "If there were an alternative to Cloudflare, I'd leave your service and move my systems elsewhere.", "excerpt": "I think you should give me a credit for all the income I lost due to this outage. Who authorized a change to the core infrastructure during the period of the year when your customers make the most income? Seriously, this is a management failure at the highest levels of decision-making. We don't make any changes to our server infrastructure/stack during the busiest time of the year, and neither should you. If there we", "context": "runs an online business", "use_case": "hosting infrastructure", "switched_from": "", "story": "Cloudflare Global Network experiencing issues"}, {"id": 738554880, "item_id": 46159680, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46159680", "by": "LightBug1", "date": "2025-12-05", "stance": "warn", "quote": "at what point is \"We use Cloudflare\" going to be a supply-chain red marker?", "excerpt": "Ok, at what point is \"We use Cloudflare\" going to be a supply-chain red marker? At what point does the cost outweigh the benefit?", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Cloudflare Down Again \u2013 and DownDetector Is Also Down"}]}, {"text": " followed by bot challenges and captchas that block legitimate visitors.", "cites": [{"id": 787405616, "item_id": 49212851, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49212851", "by": "oaw93j4oij", "date": "2026-08-07", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I despise cloudflare. They've decided that my home IP address is bad, so I have to capchas for most websites.", "excerpt": "I despise cloudflare. They've decided that my home IP address is bad, so I have to capchas for most websites. Sometimes on infinite loop and I never get to the website. I even reset my home IP address more than once, but it instantly continues. Especially if I use any VPN, even my work VPN.", "context": "", "use_case": "bot protection captchas", "switched_from": "", "story": "99% of My Website Traffic Is Bots"}, {"id": 785216546, "item_id": 49076034, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49076034", "by": "exiguus", "date": "2026-07-27", "stance": "warn", "quote": "tools like Cloudflare and Anubis can create serous accessibility issues", "excerpt": "In my view, if blocking is necessary, whitelisting is generally more effective than blacklisting. And if whitelisting isn't feasible, this might be a poor solution. On the other hand, tools like Cloudflare and Anubis can create serous accessibility issues; some more than others. I prefer rate limiting; it's elegant and avoids accessibility problems. For temporary issues, short-term IP bans can also work well. Persona", "context": "", "use_case": "bot blocking", "switched_from": "", "story": "How to Block Some of the Bots"}, {"id": 741229232, "item_id": 46326827, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46326827", "by": "zackmorris", "date": "2025-12-19", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Cloudflare is not the answer, in fact, I think that they lost their geek cred when they added their \"verify you are human\" challenge screen", "excerpt": "This is very hacker-like thinking, using tech's biases against it! I can't help but feel like we're all doing it wrong against scraping. Cloudflare is not the answer, in fact, I think that they lost their geek cred when they added their \"verify you are human\" challenge screen to become the new gatekeeper of the internet. That must remain a permanent stain on their reputation until they make amends. Are there any open", "context": "", "use_case": "anti-scraper protection", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Stop AI scrapers from hammering your self-hosted blog (using porn)"}, {"id": 802217248, "item_id": 50138578, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50138578", "by": "dzink", "date": "2026-10-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love them as well, but i\u2019ve had to be careful with the default managed rules", "excerpt": "I love them as well, but i\u2019ve had to be careful with the default managed rules - 800+ rules that sometimes overblock need to be easier to curate / select from.", "context": "", "use_case": "WAF and CDN", "switched_from": "", "story": "Matthew Prince on why Cloudflare offers a free version and always will (2016)"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Free tier value", "summary": "Commenters say small sites cost little beyond the domain, and they describe generous free tiers.", "quotes": [{"id": 793728656, "item_id": 49608041, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49608041", "by": "jillesvangurp", "date": "2026-09-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It's seriously good value for small websites.", "excerpt": "It's seriously good value for small websites. Basically, there is no cost aside from the domain. And for registering and managing domains, they are pretty much the most affordable option as well. And they have a few other things that aren't half bad to use with pretty generous freemium layers. We used Google's CDN for the last six years or so but it's pretty annoying to deal with and you have to pay for a load balanc", "context": "small team that migrated off gcloud", "use_case": "CDN, domains, static site hosting", "switched_from": "Google Cloud CDN", "story": "Among European Companies That Use a CDN, Nearly 9 in 10 Use Cloudflare"}, {"id": 802215472, "item_id": 50138467, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50138467", "by": "daniel_iversen", "date": "2026-10-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love cloudflare, seriously.", "excerpt": "I love cloudflare, seriously. Not sure what it is about the brand, but their products feel delightful, they feel like an honest business, they have great free tiers, their tech is \u201ccool\u201d and they seem to innovate a lot (I.e the recent AI blocking program etc). Just moved all my domains over from Whois.com (who on the other hand seem sneaky, don\u2019t have auto renewals and slam you with an 80$ restoration fine for domain", "context": "", "use_case": "domain registration and hosting", "switched_from": "Whois.com", "story": "Matthew Prince on why Cloudflare offers a free version and always will (2016)"}, {"id": 757486081, "item_id": 47342880, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47342880", "by": "notryanquinn", "date": "2026-03-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Cloudflare as a platform has been awesome for me", "excerpt": "I\u2019ve used RedwoodJS (now CedarJS) and still will for some GraphQL focused apps I have around. I always thought of old Redwood as the easiest way to get a GraphQL React app setup for success off the bat with nice deployment targets. Now with RedwoodSDK I get the absolute easiest way to spin up a production-ready RSC app. Especially true if I don\u2019t want to be on Vercel (I have loved Vercel\u2019s value prop. Many old apps o", "context": "", "use_case": "hosting apps", "switched_from": "Vercel", "story": "RedwoodSDK v1.0 released \u2013 We stopped breaking everything"}]}, {"label": "Developer platform", "summary": "Workers, R2, Durable Objects and easy deployments are described as a strong, batteries-included platform.", "quotes": [{"id": 802212736, "item_id": 50138296, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50138296", "by": "asadm", "date": "2026-10-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Cloudflare is exclusively what I use for any infra work I do", "excerpt": "Cloudflare is exclusively what I use for any infra work I do (and I do a lot for various projects and startups of my own/others I advice). If something doesn\u2019t fit cloudflare primitives, I try to rethink my design before reaching for gcloud etc. They even do docker containers now which is great but durable objects and workers are game changer for me. The easy nextjs deployment is also my go-to now that vercel isn\u2019t m", "context": "does infra work for own and others' startups", "use_case": "infrastructure for projects", "switched_from": "Vercel", "story": "Matthew Prince on why Cloudflare offers a free version and always will (2016)"}, {"id": 762848817, "item_id": 47678051, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47678051", "by": "stickfigure", "date": "2026-04-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "But for other caching, R2, workers, etc CF is great.", "excerpt": "This isn't an either/or, you can use features from both and you have to compare carefully. I used to do a lot of image manipulation and had pluggable implementations for imgix, cloudflare images, and bunny. Bunny is by far the cheapest and that ended up being the mature solution (plus some custom processing). But for other caching, R2, workers, etc CF is great.", "context": "", "use_case": "caching, R2, Workers", "switched_from": "", "story": "Dropping Cloudflare for Bunny.net"}, {"id": 754485888, "item_id": 47155368, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47155368", "by": "capevace", "date": "2026-02-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Their featureset and DX is the best in the industry IMO", "excerpt": "I really wish there was a EU alternative to Cloudflare. Their featureset and DX is the best in the industry IMO but their data sovereignty features are sadly not really good enough for most EU enterprises we talk to. The fact they\u2019re an American company is unfortunately the dealbraker. We could store data outside of CF network but that defeats the point of the one stop shop.", "context": "works with EU enterprises", "use_case": "one-stop infrastructure", "switched_from": "", "story": "Danish Gov agency to ditch Microsoft software in push for digital independence"}]}, {"label": "Bot protection", "summary": "Putting sites behind Cloudflare stopped bot and scraper traffic for several self-hosters.", "quotes": [{"id": 787387552, "item_id": 49211722, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49211722", "by": "rglover", "date": "2026-08-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Highly recommend people throw Cloudflare in front of their stuff.", "excerpt": "All of my boxes are cheap VPS. Highly recommend people throw Cloudflare in front of their stuff. I switched all of my load balancers over to there and all of that bot crap went away. That combined with a proper UFW setup keeps the weather clear for me.", "context": "runs cheap VPS boxes", "use_case": "bot protection, load balancing", "switched_from": "", "story": "99% of My Website Traffic Is Bots"}, {"id": 787382945, "item_id": 49211434, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49211434", "by": "SlavikCA", "date": "2026-08-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Solved the issue by putting the site behind Cloudflare proxy and enabling it's magic to protect from the bot.", "excerpt": "I have 5Gbps fiber at home. LAN is mostly 10Gbps. I'm hosting few hobbyist public websites. One is the library of hymns, songs, ... - mostly PDF, MP3, MIDI. OpnSense router -> Traefik -> Docker container. That Docker container runs on NAS, which is connected via 1Gbps port. Suddenly, last week I started to get over 1000 RPS. Was it scanner, parser, crawler, DDOS? I can't tell, as user agent was default Mac OS. It was", "context": "hosts hobbyist public websites at home", "use_case": "bot protection / CDN", "switched_from": "", "story": "The web server deployment model breaks at hobby scale"}, {"id": 793153568, "item_id": 49572098, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49572098", "by": "abstractspoon", "date": "2026-09-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I do. I only have so much energy and I'd rather apply it to my software than fighting bots", "excerpt": "I do. I only have so much energy and I'd rather apply it to my software than fighting bots", "context": "", "use_case": "bot and DDoS protection", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Do all of you use Cloudflare for preventing DDoS, Bot and more attacks?"}]}, {"label": "DNS and domains", "summary": "Users praise free DNS with API access, dynamic DNS and cheap at-cost domain registration.", "quotes": [{"id": 782061952, "item_id": 48878872, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48878872", "by": "graton", "date": "2026-07-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Cloudflare for DNS and it is free to use the API.", "excerpt": "> I'm using the free DNS my registrar provides, which doesn't provide API access unless you upgrade to their paid DNS service I use Cloudflare for DNS and it is free to use the API.", "context": "", "use_case": "DNS with API for ACME challenges", "switched_from": "", "story": "TLS certificates for internal services done right"}, {"id": 803680385, "item_id": 50230024, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50230024", "by": "jonathanlydall", "date": "2026-10-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm using Cloudflare for dynamic DNS, no extra fee and works perfectly", "excerpt": "In some situations it is most convenient/practical to have your router do dynamic DNS updates and depending on your router the options may be limited giving you no \"great\" options. Regarding your valid concerns about the PSL, as long as you have a domain already, you can just make a CNAME record to a free dynamic DNS provider's sub-domain record, I've done this for years with a No-IP ddns.net record. I don't especial", "context": "has pfSense box at home", "use_case": "dynamic DNS", "switched_from": "No-IP", "story": "FreeDNS"}, {"id": 739058640, "item_id": 46191165, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46191165", "by": "NoahZuniga", "date": "2025-12-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use cloudflare and it's great.", "excerpt": "I use cloudflare and it's great. It feels like the only registrar that has a business case for at cost domains. Also if you're worried about cloudflare downtime, you can only use them for dns resolution (which hasn't been impacted) and not for proxying.", "context": "", "use_case": "domain registrar and DNS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Which domain name registrar do you use?"}]}, {"label": "Pleasant to use", "summary": "Products are called delightful and simple, and users note they never have to talk to sales.", "quotes": [{"id": 789038768, "item_id": 49314923, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49314923", "by": "daishi55", "date": "2026-08-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Every cloudflare product I've ever used has been a legit delight to use. I use it for lots of stuff on my homelab.", "excerpt": "Every cloudflare product I've ever used has been a legit delight to use. I use it for lots of stuff on my homelab. Everything works well and is simply pleasant. Maybe if you use it heavily for enterprise that changes, but it just hasn't been my experience.", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "homelab services", "switched_from": "", "story": "Cloudflare's AI Psychosis"}, {"id": 800234336, "item_id": 50014646, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50014646", "by": "keithnz", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "now it seems a lot simpler using things like cloudflare", "excerpt": "which is fine if you have good reasons not to depend on them (you can actually do the same kind of thing with a bunch of things) and somehow depend on whoever provides your cheap VPS instead? I have a VPS as well for bots (digital ocean), though VPS hosts containers and the containers run the bots. A decade or so ago I used VPS for websites, but now it seems a lot simpler using things like cloudflare. Thing about web", "context": "runs bots on a VPS", "use_case": "hosting websites", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?"}, {"id": 793757920, "item_id": 49609870, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49609870", "by": "christkv", "date": "2026-09-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I don't have to talk to any sales person thats the reason I use it.", "excerpt": "I don't have to talk to any sales person thats the reason I use it.", "context": "", "use_case": "CDN", "switched_from": "", "story": "Among European Companies That Use a CDN, Nearly 9 in 10 Use Cloudflare"}]}, {"label": "Global by default", "summary": "Content and code run globally without thinking about regions.", "quotes": [{"id": 793752752, "item_id": 49609547, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49609547", "by": "snorremd", "date": "2026-09-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "A lot of what Cloudflare offers now feels like magic in a good way.", "excerpt": "Before I went European sovereign for my own personal stack I used Cloudflare for hosting static and somewhat dynamic websites and it has become really nice the later years. There is almost no mention of \"regions\" in Cloudflare. Your content and code runs globally by default. With traditional clouds you need to think about how you distribute your application. At least that is my experience. Maybe they provide global C", "context": "", "use_case": "hosting websites and serverless", "switched_from": "", "story": "Among European Companies That Use a CDN, Nearly 9 in 10 Use Cloudflare"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "Global outages", "summary": "Repeated outages and a single global fault zone led some users to stop recommending it or move off.", "quotes": [{"id": 742112752, "item_id": 46382047, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46382047", "by": "h27", "date": "2025-12-24", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I can no longer recommend them.", "excerpt": "I love Cloudflare. A lot. But I don't love that they refuse to address the fact their cloud has a single fault zone. Customers can not, no matter how hard they try, build highly available services using Cloudflare. They are quite proud of it too if you read the smugness in their blogs about having just 1 region: Earth... Yet they keep having global outages. I can no longer recommend them.", "context": "", "use_case": "cloud hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Just Fucking Use Cloudflare \u2013 A satirical guide to the CF stack"}, {"id": 788979808, "item_id": 49311238, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49311238", "by": "minraws", "date": "2026-08-15", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I used to be all in on CF a while ago, now I am moving off them almost entirely.", "excerpt": "Bugs happen all the time yes, outages don't. If outages are increasing with scale you get 1 or maybe 2 free passes. After that you either have in-ept Engineering or just in-ept leadership. I used to be all in on CF a while ago, now I am moving off them almost entirely. Same issue with GitHub, I can understand if you can't build for the scale when you couldn't predict it but if after over 12-18 months things don't see", "context": "infra/dev person with side projects", "use_case": "infrastructure", "switched_from": "", "story": "Cloudflare's AI Psychosis"}, {"id": 735600976, "item_id": 45975061, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45975061", "by": "snoppy45", "date": "2025-11-18", "stance": "warn", "quote": "If there were an alternative to Cloudflare, I'd leave your service and move my systems elsewhere.", "excerpt": "I think you should give me a credit for all the income I lost due to this outage. Who authorized a change to the core infrastructure during the period of the year when your customers make the most income? Seriously, this is a management failure at the highest levels of decision-making. We don't make any changes to our server infrastructure/stack during the busiest time of the year, and neither should you. If there we", "context": "runs an online business", "use_case": "hosting infrastructure", "switched_from": "", "story": "Cloudflare Global Network experiencing issues"}]}, {"label": "Blocking real users", "summary": "Captcha loops, accessibility problems and overblocking managed rules affect legitimate visitors.", "quotes": [{"id": 787405616, "item_id": 49212851, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49212851", "by": "oaw93j4oij", "date": "2026-08-07", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I despise cloudflare. They've decided that my home IP address is bad, so I have to capchas for most websites.", "excerpt": "I despise cloudflare. They've decided that my home IP address is bad, so I have to capchas for most websites. Sometimes on infinite loop and I never get to the website. I even reset my home IP address more than once, but it instantly continues. Especially if I use any VPN, even my work VPN.", "context": "", "use_case": "bot protection captchas", "switched_from": "", "story": "99% of My Website Traffic Is Bots"}, {"id": 785216546, "item_id": 49076034, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49076034", "by": "exiguus", "date": "2026-07-27", "stance": "warn", "quote": "tools like Cloudflare and Anubis can create serous accessibility issues", "excerpt": "In my view, if blocking is necessary, whitelisting is generally more effective than blacklisting. And if whitelisting isn't feasible, this might be a poor solution. On the other hand, tools like Cloudflare and Anubis can create serous accessibility issues; some more than others. I prefer rate limiting; it's elegant and avoids accessibility problems. For temporary issues, short-term IP bans can also work well. Persona", "context": "", "use_case": "bot blocking", "switched_from": "", "story": "How to Block Some of the Bots"}, {"id": 802217248, "item_id": 50138578, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50138578", "by": "dzink", "date": "2026-10-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love them as well, but i\u2019ve had to be careful with the default managed rules", "excerpt": "I love them as well, but i\u2019ve had to be careful with the default managed rules - 800+ rules that sometimes overblock need to be easier to curate / select from.", "context": "", "use_case": "WAF and CDN", "switched_from": "", "story": "Matthew Prince on why Cloudflare offers a free version and always will (2016)"}]}, {"label": "Routing and support", "summary": "Traffic is routed through distant locations on lower plans, and support is slow or unresponsive.", "quotes": [{"id": 793743826, "item_id": 49608989, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49608989", "by": "ghoul2", "date": "2026-09-08", "stance": "warn", "quote": "cloudflare routes even india-to-india, hell, even mumbai-to-mumbai and aws_mumbai-to-cloudflare_mumbai traffic via Marsaille!!", "excerpt": "I also believed that, but at least for India, this doesn't work in practice. Unless you atleast do the 25$ pro plan, cloudflare routes even india-to-india, hell, even mumbai-to-mumbai and aws_mumbai-to-cloudflare_mumbai traffic via Marsaille!! Not even Singapore. The unstated reason is that indian transit is expensive, though I fail to believe its cheaper to go from mumbai to marsaille and back to mumbai. I am guessi", "context": "", "use_case": "CDN in India", "switched_from": "", "story": "Among European Companies That Use a CDN, Nearly 9 in 10 Use Cloudflare"}, {"id": 757296160, "item_id": 47331010, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47331010", "by": "pqdbr", "date": "2026-03-10", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I'm having a terrible experience with Cloudflare", "excerpt": "Off-topic, but I'm having a terrible experience with Cloudflare and would love to know if someone could offer some help. All of a sudden, about 1/3 of all traffic to our website is being routed via EWR (New York) - me included -, even tough all our users and our origin servers are in Brazil. We pay for the Pro plan but support has been of no help: after 20 days of 'debugging' and asking for MTRs and traceroutes, they", "context": "pays for Pro plan, users in Brazil", "use_case": "CDN for website", "switched_from": "", "story": "Cloudflare Crawl Endpoint"}, {"id": 753392977, "item_id": 47087061, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47087061", "by": "sreekanth850", "date": "2026-02-20", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Getting a response from Cloudflare community is like taking a lottery if you are free plan.", "excerpt": "We use bunny.net dns for Geo DNS with their dns based load balancing for my websocket infra. They have awesome community and support is top-notch. Getting a response from Cloudflare community is like taking a lottery if you are free plan.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "I tried building my startup entirely on European infrastructure"}]}, {"label": "US jurisdiction", "summary": "Some commenters avoid it because it is a US company with weak data sovereignty features.", "quotes": [{"id": 802272625, "item_id": 50142039, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50142039", "by": "m-p-3", "date": "2026-10-18", "stance": "warn", "quote": "we do whatever we can to avoid anything US-based tech such as Cloudflare", "excerpt": "We host a website in Canada (physical server hosting VMs in a Canadian DC) and with the ongoing trade-war we do whatever we can to avoid anything US-based tech such as Cloudflare. So far we use Anubis to protect our services from scraping and it's been a decent experience.", "context": "hosts website in Canada on own physical server", "use_case": "scraping protection", "switched_from": "", "story": "Websites are closing their doors to AI agents"}, {"id": 754485888, "item_id": 47155368, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47155368", "by": "capevace", "date": "2026-02-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Their featureset and DX is the best in the industry IMO", "excerpt": "I really wish there was a EU alternative to Cloudflare. Their featureset and DX is the best in the industry IMO but their data sovereignty features are sadly not really good enough for most EU enterprises we talk to. The fact they\u2019re an American company is unfortunately the dealbraker. We could store data outside of CF network but that defeats the point of the one stop shop.", "context": "works with EU enterprises", "use_case": "one-stop infrastructure", "switched_from": "", "story": "Danish Gov agency to ditch Microsoft software in push for digital independence"}]}, {"label": "Runtime parity", "summary": "Commenters describe runtime and framework compatibility problems when running apps on Workers.", "quotes": [{"id": 749401984, "item_id": 46837624, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46837624", "by": "verdverm", "date": "2026-01-31", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I highly recommend removing CF from any considerations for (1) this (2) you will fight parity issues in runtimes and your language packages, it's not worth the pain", "excerpt": "The top ten from this PR piece, among other data points in there, seem to work against their argument imo. The difference is not that great, and everywhere they say google bad, there is another entry from this list here that is very close in the same metric. What it sounds like they want is a version of the new permissioned / ethical licenses we have seen in OSS for website owners and their content. You made it publi", "context": "paying user", "use_case": "hosting and domain services", "switched_from": "", "story": "Google's AI advantage: why crawler separation is the only path to fair Internet"}, {"id": 754344496, "item_id": 47146531, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47146531", "by": "srameshc", "date": "2026-02-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love Cloudflare", "excerpt": "I love Cloudflare but not a big fan of Next, I love Remix though :) But getting to make things work on Cloudflare is a pain, hopefully they will make it easier with OpenNext. On the other hand , maybe they can do something better at infrastrucute level , rather than make it easier, like a lot easier to bring your own JS flavor.", "context": "", "use_case": "hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "How we rebuilt Next.js with AI in one week"}]}, {"label": "Plan restrictions", "summary": "Some settings require paid plans, there are no pricing caps, and one user's payment was refused.", "quotes": [{"id": 755920944, "item_id": 47245059, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47245059", "by": "ferdzo", "date": "2026-03-04", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Specifically on Cloudflare it is on by default, and on the free tier you can't disable it and you need a business plan for it.", "excerpt": "It's an interesting feature, but it's pushing my buttons lately. Specifically on Cloudflare it is on by default, and on the free tier you can't disable it and you need a business plan for it. Which I think is stupid, but never the less it's causing us problems. We are trying some split-dns setup for a company \"intranet\", and if the site's have be accessed before, the ECH is remembered. So the browser tries and it eve", "context": "", "use_case": "proxying/WAF for intranet", "switched_from": "", "story": "RFC 9849. TLS Encrypted Client Hello"}, {"id": 738543440, "item_id": 46158965, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46158965", "by": "JeremyJaydan", "date": "2025-12-05", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I moved away from Cloudflare over a month ago because I didn't understand how they don't have pricing caps", "excerpt": "I moved away from Cloudflare over a month ago because I didn't understand how they don't have pricing caps for their upgraded plans, they genuinely seem like the mob but I haven't looked any further into it.. Either way it's been interesting to see the bullets I've been dodging.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Cloudflare was down"}, {"id": 768615889, "item_id": 48038493, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48038493", "by": "lugao", "date": "2026-05-06", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I recently tried buying a domain in cloudflare, they refused the payment", "excerpt": "I recently tried buying a domain in cloudflare, they refused the payment -- even using my account which I use actively for years -- tried to pay with paypal, no luck. Went to porkbun and bought the same domain in 5 minutes and pointed it to cloudflare name server. Maybe they should fix the regular flow before automating it with agents?", "context": "has used the account actively for years", "use_case": "domain registration", "switched_from": "", "story": "Agents can now create Cloudflare accounts, buy domains, and deploy"}]}], "who": [{"by": "jonathanlydall", "context": "has pfSense box at home", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50230024", "date": "2026-10-25"}, {"by": "asadm", "context": "does infra work for own and others' startups", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50138296", "date": "2026-10-18"}, {"by": "binarin", "context": "self-hoster", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50115458", "date": "2026-10-16"}, {"by": "keithnz", "context": "runs bots on a VPS", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50014646", "date": "2026-10-09"}, {"by": "jillesvangurp", "context": "small team that migrated off gcloud", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49608041", "date": "2026-09-08"}, {"by": "daishi55", "context": "homelab user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49314923", "date": "2026-08-15"}, {"by": "rglover", "context": "runs cheap VPS boxes", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49211722", "date": "2026-08-07"}, {"by": "SlavikCA", "context": "hosts hobbyist public websites at home", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49211434", "date": "2026-08-07"}, {"by": "arjie", "context": "blogger", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49061756", "date": "2026-07-26"}, {"by": "raffraffraff", "context": "home network user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48848512", "date": "2026-07-09"}, {"by": "epolanski", "context": "Italian developer", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48817880", "date": "2026-07-07"}, {"by": "amotinga", "context": "vibecoding a Romanian learning app", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48539238", "date": "2026-06-15"}], "tags": ["for small websites", "for homelabs", "for VPS-hosted sites", "for startups", "for dynamic DNS"], "use_cases": ["cdn", "protecting site from scraping and ddos", "domain registration", "domain registrar", "dns hosting", "hosting websites"], "compared": [{"slug": "bunny-net", "name": "Bunny.net", "co": 18, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 4}, {"slug": "vercel", "name": "Vercel", "co": 9, "switched_from": 2, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "let-s-encrypt", "name": "Let's Encrypt", "co": 7, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "aws", "name": "AWS", "co": 5, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "namecheap", "name": "Namecheap", "co": 4, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "anubis", "name": "Anubis", "co": 6, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "next-js", "name": "Next.js", "co": 5, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "porkbun", "name": "Porkbun", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49607443", "title": "Among European Companies That Use a CDN, Nearly 9 in 10 Use Cloudflare", "mentions": 5}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50138087", "title": "Matthew Prince on why Cloudflare offers a free version and always will (2016)", "mentions": 4}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46872540", "title": "New York Wants to Ctrl+Alt+Delete Your 3D Printer", "mentions": 4}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49211386", "title": "99% of My Website Traffic Is Bots", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47675013", "title": "Dropping Cloudflare for Bunny.net", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46158191", "title": "Cloudflare was down", "mentions": 3}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"neutral": 2, "recommend": 5, "warn": 1}, "2025-12": {"recommend": 4, "neutral": 1, "warn": 4}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 2, "warn": 2, "neutral": 4}, "2026-02": {"neutral": 3, "warn": 1, "recommend": 2}, "2026-03": {"warn": 2, "neutral": 2, "recommend": 2}, "2026-04": {"compare": 1, "recommend": 2, "neutral": 1}, "2026-05": {"warn": 2, "neutral": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-06": {"neutral": 2, "recommend": 2}, "2026-07": {"warn": 3, "recommend": 3, "neutral": 2}, "2026-08": {"neutral": 2, "recommend": 3, "warn": 3}, "2026-09": {"neutral": 3, "recommend": 5, "warn": 1}, "2026-10": {"compare": 1, "recommend": 10, "neutral": 4, "warn": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 803680385, "item_id": 50230024, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50230024", "by": "jonathanlydall", "date": "2026-10-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm using Cloudflare for dynamic DNS, no extra fee and works perfectly", "excerpt": "In some situations it is most convenient/practical to have your router do dynamic DNS updates and depending on your router the options may be limited giving you no \"great\" options. Regarding your valid concerns about the PSL, as long as you have a domain already, you can just make a CNAME record to a free dynamic DNS provider's sub-domain record, I've done this for years with a No-IP ddns.net record. I don't especial", "context": "has pfSense box at home", "use_case": "dynamic DNS", "switched_from": "No-IP", "story": "FreeDNS"}, {"id": 803675329, "item_id": 50229708, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50229708", "by": "p0d", "date": "2026-10-25", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use cloudflare for domain reg", "excerpt": "I went down this road and reversed. I use cloudflare for domain reg, fastmail as my mail provider and free Gmail as my mail client.", "context": "", "use_case": "domain registration", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: How do people self host email and maintain deliverability?"}, {"id": 802368352, "item_id": 50148022, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50148022", "by": "actualwill", "date": "2026-10-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Moved my domain from namecheap to cloudflare that I use for Fastmail.", "excerpt": "Moved my domain from namecheap to cloudflare that I use for Fastmail. There was a bit of a song and dance because CF requires you use its own name servers, but I had codex do it for me in chrome. Would recommend.", "context": "", "use_case": "domain registrar", "switched_from": "Namecheap", "story": "Namecheap just seized and disabled all my domains"}, {"id": 802359840, "item_id": 50147490, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50147490", "by": "soul_grafitti", "date": "2026-10-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have had good experiences with Cloudflare for other services so feel predisposed to them.", "excerpt": "I moved to NameCheap many years ago precisely because GoDaddy was such a miserable company to work with. Disappointed in the VC move but I don't have any complaints at the moment. I have had good experiences with Cloudflare for other services so feel predisposed to them.", "context": "", "use_case": "domain registrar", "switched_from": "", "story": "Namecheap just seized and disabled all my domains"}, {"id": 802272625, "item_id": 50142039, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50142039", "by": "m-p-3", "date": "2026-10-18", "stance": "warn", "quote": "we do whatever we can to avoid anything US-based tech such as Cloudflare", "excerpt": "We host a website in Canada (physical server hosting VMs in a Canadian DC) and with the ongoing trade-war we do whatever we can to avoid anything US-based tech such as Cloudflare. So far we use Anubis to protect our services from scraping and it's been a decent experience.", "context": "hosts website in Canada on own physical server", "use_case": "scraping protection", "switched_from": "", "story": "Websites are closing their doors to AI agents"}, {"id": 802258256, "item_id": 50141141, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50141141", "by": "rglover", "date": "2026-10-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use CFs load balancers to simplify steering to instances, but also appreciate that you get traffic filtering", "excerpt": "It's a trade off. I use CFs load balancers to simplify steering to instances, but also appreciate that you get traffic filtering (even if not perfect). I think it ultimately depends on context and goals of what you're building. I wouldn't use that setup for everything, but I've found it's a healthy default for getting stuff stood up. Long-term, I think it makes a ton of sense to build up your own solutions.", "context": "", "use_case": "load balancing and traffic filtering", "switched_from": "", "story": "Matthew Prince on why Cloudflare offers a free version and always will (2016)"}, {"id": 802217248, "item_id": 50138578, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50138578", "by": "dzink", "date": "2026-10-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love them as well, but i\u2019ve had to be careful with the default managed rules", "excerpt": "I love them as well, but i\u2019ve had to be careful with the default managed rules - 800+ rules that sometimes overblock need to be easier to curate / select from.", "context": "", "use_case": "WAF and CDN", "switched_from": "", "story": "Matthew Prince on why Cloudflare offers a free version and always will (2016)"}, {"id": 802215472, "item_id": 50138467, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50138467", "by": "daniel_iversen", "date": "2026-10-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love cloudflare, seriously.", "excerpt": "I love cloudflare, seriously. Not sure what it is about the brand, but their products feel delightful, they feel like an honest business, they have great free tiers, their tech is \u201ccool\u201d and they seem to innovate a lot (I.e the recent AI blocking program etc). Just moved all my domains over from Whois.com (who on the other hand seem sneaky, don\u2019t have auto renewals and slam you with an 80$ restoration fine for domain", "context": "", "use_case": "domain registration and hosting", "switched_from": "Whois.com", "story": "Matthew Prince on why Cloudflare offers a free version and always will (2016)"}, {"id": 802212736, "item_id": 50138296, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50138296", "by": "asadm", "date": "2026-10-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Cloudflare is exclusively what I use for any infra work I do", "excerpt": "Cloudflare is exclusively what I use for any infra work I do (and I do a lot for various projects and startups of my own/others I advice). If something doesn\u2019t fit cloudflare primitives, I try to rethink my design before reaching for gcloud etc. They even do docker containers now which is great but durable objects and workers are game changer for me. The easy nextjs deployment is also my go-to now that vercel isn\u2019t m", "context": "does infra work for own and others' startups", "use_case": "infrastructure for projects", "switched_from": "Vercel", "story": "Matthew Prince on why Cloudflare offers a free version and always will (2016)"}, {"id": 801847329, "item_id": 50115458, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50115458", "by": "binarin", "date": "2026-10-16", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "as I use Cloudflare for DNS, and it doesn't allow to precisely control access to subdomains", "excerpt": "I renew it automatically via DNS. But as I use Cloudflare for DNS, and it doesn't allow to precisely control access to subdomains, I use a separate locked down VM that is only responsible for issuance and makes the resulting certs available for download.", "context": "self-hoster", "use_case": "DNS hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "What I self-host"}, {"id": 800570608, "item_id": 50035663, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50035663", "by": "ygjb", "date": "2026-10-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use CloudFlare for alot of API DNS stuff", "excerpt": "Same question, I use CloudFlare for alot of API DNS stuff but register with name cheap because it's been a a good service provider so far.", "context": "", "use_case": "API DNS management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Bitwarden Dual License Model"}, {"id": 800322723, "item_id": 50020170, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50020170", "by": "mrngld", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Codex/Claude Code alongside things like Cloudflare and Tailscale make self hosting far easier", "excerpt": "I use a Raspberry Pi, not a VPS -- as others state, Codex/Claude Code alongside things like Cloudflare and Tailscale make self hosting far easier. People have commented a lot already, but one thing I do that I haven't seen others already doing yet is I run a news summarization pipeline with Miniflux and Flatnotes. All my feeds are in one of two categories; Summarize and NoSummarize. Once a day, a script fires at ever", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?"}, {"id": 800234336, "item_id": 50014646, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50014646", "by": "keithnz", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "now it seems a lot simpler using things like cloudflare", "excerpt": "which is fine if you have good reasons not to depend on them (you can actually do the same kind of thing with a bunch of things) and somehow depend on whoever provides your cheap VPS instead? I have a VPS as well for bots (digital ocean), though VPS hosts containers and the containers run the bots. A decade or so ago I used VPS for websites, but now it seems a lot simpler using things like cloudflare. Thing about web", "context": "runs bots on a VPS", "use_case": "hosting websites", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?"}, {"id": 799338801, "item_id": 49958675, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49958675", "by": "jibalt", "date": "2026-10-04", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "CloudFlare for the domain", "excerpt": "I just dealt with this due to the impending termination of .name email. I use a combination of gmail as my mail agent, CloudFlare for the domain, and SMTP2Go for low volume outbound with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. I don't have any Apple usage or requirements. Oh, I just remembered that I send mail received by my CloudFlare domain to both gmail and zohomail, and use Thunderbird as the mail agent for the latter.", "context": "", "use_case": "domain and email routing", "switched_from": "", "story": "All I wanted was a custom domain email"}, {"id": 799292064, "item_id": 49955754, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49955754", "by": "cregy", "date": "2026-10-04", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Im a big fan of their tech stack and operating model.", "excerpt": "Lot of negativity here. I've been using cloud flare for years on many small projects. (For free and paid). Im a big fan of their tech stack and operating model. I also quite like their scraping api. Their AI needs more regional support though.", "context": "", "use_case": "small projects", "switched_from": "", "story": "We want you to build the next Git platform on Cloudflare"}, {"id": 799109475, "item_id": 49944342, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49944342", "by": "weightedreply", "date": "2026-10-03", "stance": "compare", "quote": "because Cloudflare doesn't proxy deeper wildcard subdomains for free, I'd have to manually create each subdomain in Cloudflare DNS", "excerpt": "The feature I don't want to pay for but would be nice to have: deeper level proxied wildcards. > If you want to proxy a wildcard DNS record on a deeper level like .www.mycoolwebpage.xyz you can subscribe to Cloudflare Advanced Certificate Manager and get a certificate that is covering that wildcard \u00b9 \u00b2 When building out services in my smart home, I started with something like 'home.domain.com'. I used Let's Encrypt f", "context": "smart home self-hoster", "use_case": "DNS and proxy", "switched_from": "", "story": "Cloudflare opens more Enterprise-only features to all customers"}, {"id": 794672704, "item_id": 49667044, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49667044", "by": "dawnerd", "date": "2026-09-11", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "there\u2019s really not much else out there that can offer what Cloudflare does for the price (free)", "excerpt": "Same, I\u2019d rather not use them but there\u2019s really not much else out there that can offer what Cloudflare does for the price (free). In particular I love the free egress from backblaze. I\u2019d gladly jump ship if there was a competent competitor, even if paid\u2026 within reason.", "context": "", "use_case": "domains and websites", "switched_from": "", "story": "DeCloudflare"}, {"id": 793789296, "item_id": 49611831, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49611831", "by": "nonethewiser", "date": "2026-09-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Personally I love using cloudflare.", "excerpt": "Yeah this is basically my reaction. 9/10 use it because it's obviously the best solution. The real point is what's between the lines: A growing number of European techies are not optimizing for the best technical solution. At least on hackernews. The observed stat says otherwise, up to this point in time at least. Personally I love using cloudflare. I am always surprised to see the hate from devs here. I would expect", "context": "", "use_case": "CDN", "switched_from": "", "story": "Among European Companies That Use a CDN, Nearly 9 in 10 Use Cloudflare"}, {"id": 793757920, "item_id": 49609870, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49609870", "by": "christkv", "date": "2026-09-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I don't have to talk to any sales person thats the reason I use it.", "excerpt": "I don't have to talk to any sales person thats the reason I use it.", "context": "", "use_case": "CDN", "switched_from": "", "story": "Among European Companies That Use a CDN, Nearly 9 in 10 Use Cloudflare"}, {"id": 793752752, "item_id": 49609547, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49609547", "by": "snorremd", "date": "2026-09-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "A lot of what Cloudflare offers now feels like magic in a good way.", "excerpt": "Before I went European sovereign for my own personal stack I used Cloudflare for hosting static and somewhat dynamic websites and it has become really nice the later years. There is almost no mention of \"regions\" in Cloudflare. Your content and code runs globally by default. With traditional clouds you need to think about how you distribute your application. At least that is my experience. Maybe they provide global C", "context": "", "use_case": "hosting websites and serverless", "switched_from": "", "story": "Among European Companies That Use a CDN, Nearly 9 in 10 Use Cloudflare"}, {"id": 793743826, "item_id": 49608989, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49608989", "by": "ghoul2", "date": "2026-09-08", "stance": "warn", "quote": "cloudflare routes even india-to-india, hell, even mumbai-to-mumbai and aws_mumbai-to-cloudflare_mumbai traffic via Marsaille!!", "excerpt": "I also believed that, but at least for India, this doesn't work in practice. Unless you atleast do the 25$ pro plan, cloudflare routes even india-to-india, hell, even mumbai-to-mumbai and aws_mumbai-to-cloudflare_mumbai traffic via Marsaille!! Not even Singapore. The unstated reason is that indian transit is expensive, though I fail to believe its cheaper to go from mumbai to marsaille and back to mumbai. I am guessi", "context": "", "use_case": "CDN in India", "switched_from": "", "story": "Among European Companies That Use a CDN, Nearly 9 in 10 Use Cloudflare"}, {"id": 793728656, "item_id": 49608041, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49608041", "by": "jillesvangurp", "date": "2026-09-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It's seriously good value for small websites.", "excerpt": "It's seriously good value for small websites. Basically, there is no cost aside from the domain. And for registering and managing domains, they are pretty much the most affordable option as well. And they have a few other things that aren't half bad to use with pretty generous freemium layers. We used Google's CDN for the last six years or so but it's pretty annoying to deal with and you have to pay for a load balanc", "context": "small team that migrated off gcloud", "use_case": "CDN, domains, static site hosting", "switched_from": "Google Cloud CDN", "story": "Among European Companies That Use a CDN, Nearly 9 in 10 Use Cloudflare"}, {"id": 793238272, "item_id": 49577392, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49577392", "by": "okship", "date": "2026-09-05", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "CF is a good and easy service until you need something else", "excerpt": "It also depends on what you are building, and who you are building for. Are most of your users or customers worry about data sovereignty? Will they be in the future? CF is a good and easy service until you need something else, if you go for a lock-in vendor, preferably you should atleast have some idea how to migrate off the choosen platform.", "context": "", "use_case": "DDoS protection", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Do all of you use Cloudflare for preventing DDoS, Bot and more attacks?"}, {"id": 793153568, "item_id": 49572098, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49572098", "by": "abstractspoon", "date": "2026-09-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I do. I only have so much energy and I'd rather apply it to my software than fighting bots", "excerpt": "I do. I only have so much energy and I'd rather apply it to my software than fighting bots", "context": "", "use_case": "bot and DDoS protection", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Do all of you use Cloudflare for preventing DDoS, Bot and more attacks?"}, {"id": 793118707, "item_id": 49569919, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49569919", "by": "godelski", "date": "2026-09-04", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "set up both a website (cloudflare)", "excerpt": "I'll third this. A few years ago I set up both a website (cloudflare) and started using Firefox Relay (proxy email addresses, with a mozmail domain). I did it to make gmail less sticky and control spam[0]. Then last year I switched to fastmail and it was so easy because I just had to point somewhere else. Even if you keep Gmail I highly suggest people do this as it's helped with spam and gives me more control. Becaus", "context": "", "use_case": "website/domain hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Gmail to end support for \"Send as\" for third-party addresses, such as @yahoo.com"}, {"id": 791626642, "item_id": 49476665, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49476665", "by": "hypendev", "date": "2026-08-28", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Cloudflare or Railway which is where most of my infra runs these days", "excerpt": "Glad to see I'm not the only one struggling with sideproject madness. I was meaning to do something similar for myself, but can't see it not ending up as a full on developer platform and another sideproject rabbithole to suck myself into. >an existing SQS audit queue subscribed to one of its Pub/Sub topics, so I used Encore's Terraform provider to read the underlying SNS ARN Exactly the rabbit hole I've been trying t", "context": "", "use_case": "hosting infrastructure", "switched_from": "", "story": "Making My Terraform AI Friendly"}, {"id": 789038768, "item_id": 49314923, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49314923", "by": "daishi55", "date": "2026-08-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Every cloudflare product I've ever used has been a legit delight to use. I use it for lots of stuff on my homelab.", "excerpt": "Every cloudflare product I've ever used has been a legit delight to use. I use it for lots of stuff on my homelab. Everything works well and is simply pleasant. Maybe if you use it heavily for enterprise that changes, but it just hasn't been my experience.", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "homelab services", "switched_from": "", "story": "Cloudflare's AI Psychosis"}, {"id": 788979808, "item_id": 49311238, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49311238", "by": "minraws", "date": "2026-08-15", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I used to be all in on CF a while ago, now I am moving off them almost entirely.", "excerpt": "Bugs happen all the time yes, outages don't. If outages are increasing with scale you get 1 or maybe 2 free passes. After that you either have in-ept Engineering or just in-ept leadership. I used to be all in on CF a while ago, now I am moving off them almost entirely. Same issue with GitHub, I can understand if you can't build for the scale when you couldn't predict it but if after over 12-18 months things don't see", "context": "infra/dev person with side projects", "use_case": "infrastructure", "switched_from": "", "story": "Cloudflare's AI Psychosis"}, {"id": 787514546, "item_id": 49219659, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49219659", "by": "aorth", "date": "2026-08-08", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I'm desperately trying to avoid resorting to Cloudflare", "excerpt": "This will resonate with anyone who operates a public-facing website and doesn't work at a big tech company. In the past few years I have also been down this exact same road. I'm desperately trying to avoid resorting to Cloudflare, but I'm running out of time and patience to keep tweaking nginx and firewall rules every few weeks. I had initial success with https://git.gammaspectra.live/git/go-away as a more powerful a", "context": "", "use_case": "bot protection", "switched_from": "", "story": "99% of My Website Traffic Is Bots"}, {"id": 787405616, "item_id": 49212851, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49212851", "by": "oaw93j4oij", "date": "2026-08-07", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I despise cloudflare. They've decided that my home IP address is bad, so I have to capchas for most websites.", "excerpt": "I despise cloudflare. They've decided that my home IP address is bad, so I have to capchas for most websites. Sometimes on infinite loop and I never get to the website. I even reset my home IP address more than once, but it instantly continues. Especially if I use any VPN, even my work VPN.", "context": "", "use_case": "bot protection captchas", "switched_from": "", "story": "99% of My Website Traffic Is Bots"}, {"id": 787387552, "item_id": 49211722, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49211722", "by": "rglover", "date": "2026-08-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Highly recommend people throw Cloudflare in front of their stuff.", "excerpt": "All of my boxes are cheap VPS. Highly recommend people throw Cloudflare in front of their stuff. I switched all of my load balancers over to there and all of that bot crap went away. That combined with a proper UFW setup keeps the weather clear for me.", "context": "runs cheap VPS boxes", "use_case": "bot protection, load balancing", "switched_from": "", "story": "99% of My Website Traffic Is Bots"}, {"id": 787382945, "item_id": 49211434, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49211434", "by": "SlavikCA", "date": "2026-08-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Solved the issue by putting the site behind Cloudflare proxy and enabling it's magic to protect from the bot.", "excerpt": "I have 5Gbps fiber at home. LAN is mostly 10Gbps. I'm hosting few hobbyist public websites. One is the library of hymns, songs, ... - mostly PDF, MP3, MIDI. OpnSense router -> Traefik -> Docker container. That Docker container runs on NAS, which is connected via 1Gbps port. Suddenly, last week I started to get over 1000 RPS. Was it scanner, parser, crawler, DDOS? I can't tell, as user agent was default Mac OS. It was", "context": "hosts hobbyist public websites at home", "use_case": "bot protection / CDN", "switched_from": "", "story": "The web server deployment model breaks at hobby scale"}, {"id": 786352192, "item_id": 49147012, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49147012", "by": "Caligatio", "date": "2026-08-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "as I use Cloudflare for my DNS", "excerpt": "Well, guess it's worth spending a little time looking at it. It appears that it's the Cloudflare Security Center scanning service? This would also explain how my unpublished service was located as I use Cloudflare for my DNS.", "context": "", "use_case": "DNS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Linux desktop market share has hit over 10% in North America"}, {"id": 785797776, "item_id": 49112361, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49112361", "by": "dormento", "date": "2026-07-30", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Cloudflare spreads everywhere and kills the drive to do nice things. It is akin to a disease.", "excerpt": "Cloudflare spreads everywhere and kills the drive to do nice things. It is akin to a disease. The question is, what is the alternative to cloudflare? We've tried (to various degrees) user id, micropayments, device attestation... I'm not hopeful we can actually solve this. Maybe if there was a neutral, \"NGO-like\" cloudflare of some sort?", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "RFC 8890 \u2013 The Internet is for End Users (2020)"}, {"id": 785216546, "item_id": 49076034, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49076034", "by": "exiguus", "date": "2026-07-27", "stance": "warn", "quote": "tools like Cloudflare and Anubis can create serous accessibility issues", "excerpt": "In my view, if blocking is necessary, whitelisting is generally more effective than blacklisting. And if whitelisting isn't feasible, this might be a poor solution. On the other hand, tools like Cloudflare and Anubis can create serous accessibility issues; some more than others. I prefer rate limiting; it's elegant and avoids accessibility problems. For temporary issues, short-term IP bans can also work well. Persona", "context": "", "use_case": "bot blocking", "switched_from": "", "story": "How to Block Some of the Bots"}, {"id": 784988096, "item_id": 49061756, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49061756", "by": "arjie", "date": "2026-07-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I do use Cloudflare everywhere", "excerpt": "Yeah, maybe like 10:1 bot to human traffic. I'm just a rando blogger so I have principally machine readers - which is not a thing I mind. But I do use Cloudflare everywhere and I could just as well have PEBKACked a setting somewhere to block the traffic. Amusingly, I used to have like 100x the readers in the 2000s posting just as inane takes. I've been left behind by the refinement of the craft!", "context": "blogger", "use_case": "blog hosting/CDN", "switched_from": "", "story": "Cloudflare's new AI traffic options for customers"}, {"id": 782555920, "item_id": 48909745, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48909745", "by": "seki285", "date": "2026-07-14", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "currently I use Cloudflare to block known bad ASNs using a list I found on GitHub.", "excerpt": "I would like to learn more how you maintain your table of IP ranges (or CIDR block). How do you decide when to add/remove a range? I'm most concerned about blocking innocent users, currently I use Cloudflare to block known bad ASNs using a list I found on GitHub.", "context": "", "use_case": "blocking bad ASNs", "switched_from": "", "story": "How the FSF sysadmins block botnets with reaction"}, {"id": 782061952, "item_id": 48878872, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48878872", "by": "graton", "date": "2026-07-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Cloudflare for DNS and it is free to use the API.", "excerpt": "> I'm using the free DNS my registrar provides, which doesn't provide API access unless you upgrade to their paid DNS service I use Cloudflare for DNS and it is free to use the API.", "context": "", "use_case": "DNS with API for ACME challenges", "switched_from": "", "story": "TLS certificates for internal services done right"}, {"id": 781576192, "item_id": 48848512, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48848512", "by": "raffraffraff", "date": "2026-07-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "So I use my public zone on cloudflare.", "excerpt": "Hmm. I don't really care enough about leaking home network host names because they are all super generic names like 'router', 'laptop', 'tv', 'nas'. So I use my public zone on cloudflare. I just use internal ip addresses (eg: nas.example.com = 10.1.2.3) on the public zone and DNS01 challenge for let's encrypt. Anyone can resolve the ip for any of my hosts, but obviously you'd need to be on the wireguard vpn to hit th", "context": "home network user", "use_case": "public DNS for internal hosts", "switched_from": "", "story": "TLS certificates for internal services done right"}, {"id": 781086084, "item_id": 48817880, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48817880", "by": "epolanski", "date": "2026-07-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Cloudflare might be an exception if latency, ddos protection and global reach are important.", "excerpt": "I'm italian too. For payments I've used Mollie, which is EU based and has good DX. It also has something critical that Stripe does not: proper customer service. Adyen is also good. You're a bit generic on other fronts but Scaleway is an excellent EU-based cloud provider. Haven't missed anything from AWS so far. > Just take a look at Neon Postgres as an example: where do you find a product like this in Europe? Why wou", "context": "Italian developer", "use_case": "edge, DDoS protection", "switched_from": "", "story": "Europe's company websites are mostly served by US vendors"}, {"id": 762848817, "item_id": 47678051, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47678051", "by": "stickfigure", "date": "2026-04-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "But for other caching, R2, workers, etc CF is great.", "excerpt": "This isn't an either/or, you can use features from both and you have to compare carefully. I used to do a lot of image manipulation and had pluggable implementations for imgix, cloudflare images, and bunny. Bunny is by far the cheapest and that ended up being the mature solution (plus some custom processing). But for other caching, R2, workers, etc CF is great.", "context": "", "use_case": "caching, R2, Workers", "switched_from": "", "story": "Dropping Cloudflare for Bunny.net"}, {"id": 757486081, "item_id": 47342880, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47342880", "by": "notryanquinn", "date": "2026-03-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Cloudflare as a platform has been awesome for me", "excerpt": "I\u2019ve used RedwoodJS (now CedarJS) and still will for some GraphQL focused apps I have around. I always thought of old Redwood as the easiest way to get a GraphQL React app setup for success off the bat with nice deployment targets. Now with RedwoodSDK I get the absolute easiest way to spin up a production-ready RSC app. Especially true if I don\u2019t want to be on Vercel (I have loved Vercel\u2019s value prop. Many old apps o", "context": "", "use_case": "hosting apps", "switched_from": "Vercel", "story": "RedwoodSDK v1.0 released \u2013 We stopped breaking everything"}, {"id": 754485888, "item_id": 47155368, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47155368", "by": "capevace", "date": "2026-02-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Their featureset and DX is the best in the industry IMO", "excerpt": "I really wish there was a EU alternative to Cloudflare. Their featureset and DX is the best in the industry IMO but their data sovereignty features are sadly not really good enough for most EU enterprises we talk to. The fact they\u2019re an American company is unfortunately the dealbraker. We could store data outside of CF network but that defeats the point of the one stop shop.", "context": "works with EU enterprises", "use_case": "one-stop infrastructure", "switched_from": "", "story": "Danish Gov agency to ditch Microsoft software in push for digital independence"}, {"id": 746379762, "item_id": 46648735, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46648735", "by": "nmaleki", "date": "2026-01-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Cheapest domain prices and cloudflare works great for everything for me.", "excerpt": "Minecraft $26.95. Thousands of hours of gameplay. Ear Fun Free Pro 3 $50 wireless earbuds. Great sound, quick pairing, good noise cancelling, in-app equalizer, great price. Probably buy direct from them, bought from Woot! Amazon once and didn't get a very good model. Web Video Caster $5. I stream tons of content and this lets me connect to just about anything. You can use it for free with ads. Cloudflare domain ~$10/", "context": "", "use_case": "domains", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What are your best purchases under $100?"}, {"id": 742112752, "item_id": 46382047, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46382047", "by": "h27", "date": "2025-12-24", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I can no longer recommend them.", "excerpt": "I love Cloudflare. A lot. But I don't love that they refuse to address the fact their cloud has a single fault zone. Customers can not, no matter how hard they try, build highly available services using Cloudflare. They are quite proud of it too if you read the smugness in their blogs about having just 1 region: Earth... Yet they keep having global outages. I can no longer recommend them.", "context": "", "use_case": "cloud hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Just Fucking Use Cloudflare \u2013 A satirical guide to the CF stack"}, {"id": 741229232, "item_id": 46326827, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46326827", "by": "zackmorris", "date": "2025-12-19", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Cloudflare is not the answer, in fact, I think that they lost their geek cred when they added their \"verify you are human\" challenge screen", "excerpt": "This is very hacker-like thinking, using tech's biases against it! I can't help but feel like we're all doing it wrong against scraping. Cloudflare is not the answer, in fact, I think that they lost their geek cred when they added their \"verify you are human\" challenge screen to become the new gatekeeper of the internet. That must remain a permanent stain on their reputation until they make amends. Are there any open", "context": "", "use_case": "anti-scraper protection", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Stop AI scrapers from hammering your self-hosted blog (using porn)"}, {"id": 739058640, "item_id": 46191165, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46191165", "by": "NoahZuniga", "date": "2025-12-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use cloudflare and it's great.", "excerpt": "I use cloudflare and it's great. It feels like the only registrar that has a business case for at cost domains. Also if you're worried about cloudflare downtime, you can only use them for dns resolution (which hasn't been impacted) and not for proxying.", "context": "", "use_case": "domain registrar and DNS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Which domain name registrar do you use?"}, {"id": 738554880, "item_id": 46159680, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46159680", "by": "LightBug1", "date": "2025-12-05", "stance": "warn", "quote": "at what point is \"We use Cloudflare\" going to be a supply-chain red marker?", "excerpt": "Ok, at what point is \"We use Cloudflare\" going to be a supply-chain red marker? At what point does the cost outweigh the benefit?", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Cloudflare Down Again \u2013 and DownDetector Is Also Down"}, {"id": 735600976, "item_id": 45975061, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45975061", "by": "snoppy45", "date": "2025-11-18", "stance": "warn", "quote": "If there were an alternative to Cloudflare, I'd leave your service and move my systems elsewhere.", "excerpt": "I think you should give me a credit for all the income I lost due to this outage. Who authorized a change to the core infrastructure during the period of the year when your customers make the most income? Seriously, this is a management failure at the highest levels of decision-making. We don't make any changes to our server infrastructure/stack during the busiest time of the year, and neither should you. If there we", "context": "runs an online business", "use_case": "hosting infrastructure", "switched_from": "", "story": "Cloudflare Global Network experiencing issues"}]}