Cloudflare
Connectivity cloud offering CDN, DNS, DDoS protection, domain registration and serverless developer tools.
Liked for its generous free tier and cheap domain registration,12345 for free DNS and bot protection in front of small sites and VPS boxes,678910 and for its Workers, R2 and Durable Objects developer platform.111213 The most common complaint is repeated global outages with no way to isolate failures,14151617 followed by bot challenges and captchas that block legitimate visitors.18192021
Why people recommend it
Free tier value · 3
Commenters say small sites cost little beyond the domain, and they describe generous free tiers.
“It's seriously good value for small websites.”
“I love cloudflare, seriously.”
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“Cloudflare as a platform has been awesome for me”
Developer platform · 3
Workers, R2, Durable Objects and easy deployments are described as a strong, batteries-included platform.
“Cloudflare is exclusively what I use for any infra work I do”
“But for other caching, R2, workers, etc CF is great.”
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“Their featureset and DX is the best in the industry IMO”
Bot protection · 3
Putting sites behind Cloudflare stopped bot and scraper traffic for several self-hosters.
“Highly recommend people throw Cloudflare in front of their stuff.”
“Solved the issue by putting the site behind Cloudflare proxy and enabling it's magic to protect from the bot.”
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“I do. I only have so much energy and I'd rather apply it to my software than fighting bots”
DNS and domains · 3
Users praise free DNS with API access, dynamic DNS and cheap at-cost domain registration.
“I use Cloudflare for DNS and it is free to use the API.”
“I'm using Cloudflare for dynamic DNS, no extra fee and works perfectly”
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“I use cloudflare and it's great.”
Pleasant to use · 3
Products are called delightful and simple, and users note they never have to talk to sales.
“Every cloudflare product I've ever used has been a legit delight to use. I use it for lots of stuff on my homelab.”
“now it seems a lot simpler using things like cloudflare”
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“I don't have to talk to any sales person thats the reason I use it.”
Global by default · 1
Content and code run globally without thinking about regions.
“A lot of what Cloudflare offers now feels like magic in a good way.”
Caveats and dissent
Global outages · 3
Repeated outages and a single global fault zone led some users to stop recommending it or move off.
“I can no longer recommend them.”
“I used to be all in on CF a while ago, now I am moving off them almost entirely.”
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“If there were an alternative to Cloudflare, I'd leave your service and move my systems elsewhere.”
Blocking real users · 3
Captcha loops, accessibility problems and overblocking managed rules affect legitimate visitors.
“I despise cloudflare. They've decided that my home IP address is bad, so I have to capchas for most websites.”
“tools like Cloudflare and Anubis can create serous accessibility issues”
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“I love them as well, but i’ve had to be careful with the default managed rules”
Routing and support · 3
Traffic is routed through distant locations on lower plans, and support is slow or unresponsive.
“cloudflare routes even india-to-india, hell, even mumbai-to-mumbai and aws_mumbai-to-cloudflare_mumbai traffic via Marsaille!!”
“I'm having a terrible experience with Cloudflare”
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“Getting a response from Cloudflare community is like taking a lottery if you are free plan.”
US jurisdiction · 2
Some commenters avoid it because it is a US company with weak data sovereignty features.
“we do whatever we can to avoid anything US-based tech such as Cloudflare”
“Their featureset and DX is the best in the industry IMO”
Runtime parity · 2
Commenters describe runtime and framework compatibility problems when running apps on Workers.
“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”
Plan restrictions · 3
Some settings require paid plans, there are no pricing caps, and one user's payment was refused.
“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.”
“I moved away from Cloudflare over a month ago because I didn't understand how they don't have pricing caps”
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“I recently tried buying a domain in cloudflare, they refused the payment”
Often compared with
4 moved from Cloudflare to Bunny.net
2 moved from Vercel to Cloudflare
1 moved from Let's Encrypt to Cloudflare
1 moved from AWS to Cloudflare
1 moved from Namecheap to Cloudflare
1 moved from Cloudflare to Porkbun
Who recommends it in their own words
Threads where it came up
- Among European Companies That Use a CDN, Nearly 9 in 10 Use Cloudflare 5 mentions
- Matthew Prince on why Cloudflare offers a free version and always will (2016) 4 mentions
- New York Wants to Ctrl+Alt+Delete Your 3D Printer 4 mentions
- 99% of My Website Traffic Is Bots 3 mentions
- Dropping Cloudflare for Bunny.net 3 mentions
- Cloudflare was down 3 mentions
Data: cloudflare.json. Quotes are verbatim; the verdict and theme labels are written by a model from these comments, and every clause links to its sources.
All comments 49
“I'm using Cloudflare for dynamic DNS, no extra fee and works perfectly”
“I use cloudflare for domain reg”
“Moved my domain from namecheap to cloudflare that I use for Fastmail.”
“I have had good experiences with Cloudflare for other services so feel predisposed to them.”
“we do whatever we can to avoid anything US-based tech such as Cloudflare”
“I use CFs load balancers to simplify steering to instances, but also appreciate that you get traffic filtering”
“I love them as well, but i’ve had to be careful with the default managed rules”
“I love cloudflare, seriously.”
“Cloudflare is exclusively what I use for any infra work I do”
“as I use Cloudflare for DNS, and it doesn't allow to precisely control access to subdomains”
“I use CloudFlare for alot of API DNS stuff”
“Codex/Claude Code alongside things like Cloudflare and Tailscale make self hosting far easier”
“now it seems a lot simpler using things like cloudflare”
“CloudFlare for the domain”
“Im a big fan of their tech stack and operating model.”
“because Cloudflare doesn't proxy deeper wildcard subdomains for free, I'd have to manually create each subdomain in Cloudflare DNS”
“there’s really not much else out there that can offer what Cloudflare does for the price (free)”
“Personally I love using cloudflare.”
“I don't have to talk to any sales person thats the reason I use it.”
“A lot of what Cloudflare offers now feels like magic in a good way.”
“cloudflare routes even india-to-india, hell, even mumbai-to-mumbai and aws_mumbai-to-cloudflare_mumbai traffic via Marsaille!!”
“It's seriously good value for small websites.”
“CF is a good and easy service until you need something else”
“I do. I only have so much energy and I'd rather apply it to my software than fighting bots”
“set up both a website (cloudflare)”
“Cloudflare or Railway which is where most of my infra runs these days”
“Every cloudflare product I've ever used has been a legit delight to use. I use it for lots of stuff on my homelab.”
“I used to be all in on CF a while ago, now I am moving off them almost entirely.”
“I'm desperately trying to avoid resorting to Cloudflare”
“I despise cloudflare. They've decided that my home IP address is bad, so I have to capchas for most websites.”
“Highly recommend people throw Cloudflare in front of their stuff.”
“Solved the issue by putting the site behind Cloudflare proxy and enabling it's magic to protect from the bot.”
“as I use Cloudflare for my DNS”
“Cloudflare spreads everywhere and kills the drive to do nice things. It is akin to a disease.”
“tools like Cloudflare and Anubis can create serous accessibility issues”
“I do use Cloudflare everywhere”
“currently I use Cloudflare to block known bad ASNs using a list I found on GitHub.”
“I use Cloudflare for DNS and it is free to use the API.”
“So I use my public zone on cloudflare.”
“Cloudflare might be an exception if latency, ddos protection and global reach are important.”
“But for other caching, R2, workers, etc CF is great.”
“Cloudflare as a platform has been awesome for me”
“Their featureset and DX is the best in the industry IMO”
“Cheapest domain prices and cloudflare works great for everything for me.”
“I can no longer recommend them.”
“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”
“I use cloudflare and it's great.”
“at what point is "We use Cloudflare" going to be a supply-chain red marker?”
“If there were an alternative to Cloudflare, I'd leave your service and move my systems elsewhere.”