{"slug": "cloudflared", "name": "cloudflared", "category": "networking", "category_name": "Networking and VPN", "description": "", "recommenders": 5, "commenters": 9, "warners": 1, "score": 4.367, "rising": 2.35, "first": "2025-11-16", "latest": "2026-10-30", "why": "Running \"cloudflared tunnel\" sets up a temp solution. No log in needed, pretty convenient.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 4, "neutral": 4, "compare": 0, "warn": 1}, "spark": [1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "Running \"cloudflared tunnel\" sets up a temp solution. No log in needed, pretty convenient.", "kind": "", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": "github.com/cloudflare/cloudflared", "official_url": "https://github.com/cloudflare/cloudflared", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["cloudflared"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 796185280, "item_id": 49761580, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49761580", "by": "judge2020", "date": "2026-09-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "cloudflared is a bit unique in that it makes multiple outbound connections to CF DCs", "excerpt": "cloudflared is a bit unique in that it makes multiple outbound connections to CF DCs to do the tunneling and fails over if a DC has an issue (or, more likely, when a DC is near-capacity and they need to divert lower-tier traffic away from it[0]). SSH would reintroduce a single point of failure to this. Also, the _main_ use case of `cloudflared` tunneling is using it as a long-term way to host production websites on y", "context": "", "use_case": "Tunnels for hosting sites", "switched_from": "", "story": "Cloudflare Quick Tunnels"}, {"id": 796117056, "item_id": 49757316, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49757316", "by": "rinconrex", "date": "2026-09-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Running \"cloudflared tunnel\" sets up a temp solution. No log in needed, pretty convenient.", "excerpt": "I use for the exact same thing. Running \"cloudflared tunnel\" sets up a temp solution. No log in needed, pretty convenient.", "context": "", "use_case": "temporary demo tunnels", "switched_from": "", "story": "Cloudflare Quick Tunnels"}, {"id": 789188630, "item_id": 49324289, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49324289", "by": "alexjplant", "date": "2026-08-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "expose it via cloudflared so you can use it on the go", "excerpt": "If you don't have regulatory hurdles to jump over then there are a whole raft of open-weight models that perform basically as well as Anthropic's offerings (and, in many cases, better because they're pulling fewer capacity-stretching shenanigans). Check out Kimi, DeepSeek, and GLM series models in particular with something like OpenCode or Pi as a coding harness. If you need a Claude-alike web UI then spin up Open We", "context": "", "use_case": "exposing self-hosted UI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Claude Seems Down"}, {"id": 745372178, "item_id": 46585761, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46585761", "by": "arjie", "date": "2026-01-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "with cloudflared running your server doesn't have to be Internet-routable", "excerpt": "I used to do that, but Tailscale with your own headscale server is pretty snazzy. The other thing is with cloudflared running your server doesn't have to be Internet-routable. Everything is tunneled.", "context": "", "use_case": "Tunnel to origin server", "switched_from": "", "story": "2026 is the Year of Self-hosting"}, {"id": 735181424, "item_id": 45948839, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45948839", "by": "mandelken", "date": "2025-11-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "My free account runs cloudflared tunnel just fine for jellyfin.", "excerpt": "My free account runs cloudflared tunnel just fine for jellyfin. Is it just plex? I use the tunnel because my girlfriend cant install tailscale on her work laptop, so this way she can still login to jellyfin while traveling.", "context": "", "use_case": "Tunnel to self-hosted services", "switched_from": "", "story": "I finally understand Cloudflare Zero Trust tunnels"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 796115184, "item_id": 49757199, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49757199", "by": "adamfeldman", "date": "2026-09-18", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Cloudflare doesn't really seem to care about their tunnel product.", "excerpt": "Cloudflare doesn't really seem to care about their tunnel product. \"cloudflared service install broken on macOS\" since 2021: https://github.com/cloudflare/cloudflared/issues/327", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Cloudflare Quick Tunnels"}]}], "who": [{"by": "0x457", "context": "self-hoster", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50307107", "date": "2026-10-30"}, {"by": "alexjplant", "context": "building a FOSS forum", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49238193", "date": "2026-08-09"}, {"by": "Akuehne", "context": "self-hosts on a cheap mini PC on an isolated VLAN", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47974964", "date": "2026-05-01"}, {"by": "nihiven", "context": "self-hosts small sites at home", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45969845", "date": "2025-11-18"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["exposing home services", "tunnels for hosting sites", "temporary demo tunnels", "exposing self-hosted ui", "exposing self-hosted service", "exposing self-hosted apps"], "compared": [{"slug": "tailscale", "name": "Tailscale", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49754785", "title": "Cloudflare Quick Tunnels", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50305573", "title": "The federated code forge", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49324078", "title": "Claude Seems Down", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49233423", "title": "Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47973939", "title": "Ask HN: How do you self-host your apps?", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46580326", "title": "2026 is the Year of Self-hosting", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-09": {"warn": 1, "recommend": 2}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 804913712, "item_id": 50307107, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50307107", "by": "0x457", "date": "2026-10-30", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use cloudflared for other services that need to be exposed", "excerpt": "Are there plans to add http(s) support to knot? I was planning on hosting my own knot at home, but didn't want to expose my home IP (I use cloudflared for other services that need to be exposed)", "context": "self-hoster", "use_case": "exposing home services", "switched_from": "", "story": "The federated code forge"}, {"id": 796185280, "item_id": 49761580, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49761580", "by": "judge2020", "date": "2026-09-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "cloudflared is a bit unique in that it makes multiple outbound connections to CF DCs", "excerpt": "cloudflared is a bit unique in that it makes multiple outbound connections to CF DCs to do the tunneling and fails over if a DC has an issue (or, more likely, when a DC is near-capacity and they need to divert lower-tier traffic away from it[0]). SSH would reintroduce a single point of failure to this. Also, the _main_ use case of `cloudflared` tunneling is using it as a long-term way to host production websites on y", "context": "", "use_case": "Tunnels for hosting sites", "switched_from": "", "story": "Cloudflare Quick Tunnels"}, {"id": 796117056, "item_id": 49757316, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49757316", "by": "rinconrex", "date": "2026-09-18", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Running \"cloudflared tunnel\" sets up a temp solution. No log in needed, pretty convenient.", "excerpt": "I use for the exact same thing. Running \"cloudflared tunnel\" sets up a temp solution. No log in needed, pretty convenient.", "context": "", "use_case": "temporary demo tunnels", "switched_from": "", "story": "Cloudflare Quick Tunnels"}, {"id": 796115184, "item_id": 49757199, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49757199", "by": "adamfeldman", "date": "2026-09-18", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Cloudflare doesn't really seem to care about their tunnel product.", "excerpt": "Cloudflare doesn't really seem to care about their tunnel product. \"cloudflared service install broken on macOS\" since 2021: https://github.com/cloudflare/cloudflared/issues/327", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Cloudflare Quick Tunnels"}, {"id": 789188630, "item_id": 49324289, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49324289", "by": "alexjplant", "date": "2026-08-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "expose it via cloudflared so you can use it on the go", "excerpt": "If you don't have regulatory hurdles to jump over then there are a whole raft of open-weight models that perform basically as well as Anthropic's offerings (and, in many cases, better because they're pulling fewer capacity-stretching shenanigans). Check out Kimi, DeepSeek, and GLM series models in particular with something like OpenCode or Pi as a coding harness. If you need a Claude-alike web UI then spin up Open We", "context": "", "use_case": "exposing self-hosted UI", "switched_from": "", "story": "Claude Seems Down"}, {"id": 787811089, "item_id": 49238193, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49238193", "by": "alexjplant", "date": "2026-08-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "use cloudflared to expose their service to interested parties", "excerpt": "I'm going whole-hog on LLM-driven development to build out an old-school FOSS forum that can run in resource-constrained environments with a minimum of fuss. Think phpBB but written in Rust with modern UI niceties and a SQLite backend. My hope is that interested parties will be able to deploy this on random SBCs or Unikraft and use cloudflared to expose their service to interested parties. Watching old forums that I ", "context": "building a FOSS forum", "use_case": "exposing self-hosted service", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)"}, {"id": 767599424, "item_id": 47974964, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47974964", "by": "Akuehne", "date": "2026-05-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Running a cloudflared tunnel or reverse proxy to a vpc on digitalocean", "excerpt": "Cheap mini pc on an isolated vlan. Running a cloudflared tunnel or reverse proxy to a vpc on digitalocean, maybe moving to Hetzner soon, or in addition to for failover/ha. All containers. Some just docker/podman, some one k8s cluster. Mainly it's just for fun. Except the cloud and local backups for our phones/Gcloud, which my wife will get really mad if it doesn't work.", "context": "self-hosts on a cheap mini PC on an isolated VLAN", "use_case": "exposing self-hosted apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: How do you self-host your apps?"}, {"id": 745372178, "item_id": 46585761, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46585761", "by": "arjie", "date": "2026-01-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "with cloudflared running your server doesn't have to be Internet-routable", "excerpt": "I used to do that, but Tailscale with your own headscale server is pretty snazzy. The other thing is with cloudflared running your server doesn't have to be Internet-routable. Everything is tunneled.", "context": "", "use_case": "Tunnel to origin server", "switched_from": "", "story": "2026 is the Year of Self-hosting"}, {"id": 735517520, "item_id": 45969845, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45969845", "by": "nihiven", "date": "2025-11-18", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use cloudflared to proxy a bunch of small sites I serve from home.", "excerpt": "Thanks for all the discussion here. I use cloudflared to proxy a bunch of small sites I serve from home. I will take a look a other solutions mentioned in this thread.", "context": "self-hosts small sites at home", "use_case": "proxying home-hosted sites", "switched_from": "", "story": "Do not put your site behind Cloudflare if you don't need to"}, {"id": 735181424, "item_id": 45948839, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45948839", "by": "mandelken", "date": "2025-11-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "My free account runs cloudflared tunnel just fine for jellyfin.", "excerpt": "My free account runs cloudflared tunnel just fine for jellyfin. Is it just plex? I use the tunnel because my girlfriend cant install tailscale on her work laptop, so this way she can still login to jellyfin while traveling.", "context": "", "use_case": "Tunnel to self-hosted services", "switched_from": "", "story": "I finally understand Cloudflare Zero Trust tunnels"}]}