Cloudflare is a global network platform providing CDN, DDoS protection, DNS, zero trust security, and edge computing for websites and APIs.
About
Cloudflare is one of the most widely deployed internet infrastructure companies in the world, operating a global network that provides content delivery, DDoS mitigation, DNS, zero trust security, and edge computing services to millions of websites, APIs, and organizations. Founded in 2009 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Cloudflare's network spans more than 310 cities in over 100 countries and handles a significant fraction of global internet traffic.
Cloudflare CDN (Content Delivery Network) accelerates websites and APIs by caching content at edge locations close to end users, reducing latency and origin server load. Cloudflare's smart routing technology, Argo Smart Routing, uses real-time network intelligence to route requests over the fastest available network path, delivering performance improvements beyond traditional CDN caching benefits.
Cloudflare DDoS Protection provides unlimited, unmetered mitigation against distributed denial-of-service attacks at the network and application layer, using Cloudflare's global network to absorb and filter malicious traffic before it reaches origin infrastructure. Cloudflare's anycast network architecture spreads attack traffic across all 310+ data centers simultaneously, making it extremely difficult to overwhelm the protection capacity.
Cloudflare Zero Trust provides a comprehensive secure access platform including Cloudflare Access for application-level zero trust access control, Cloudflare Gateway for DNS and HTTP filtering and secure web gateway, Cloudflare WARP as a corporate VPN replacement, and Browser Isolation for protecting endpoint devices from web-based threats. The Cloudflare Zero Trust platform replaces traditional VPN architectures with identity-based, application-aware access controls enforced at the edge.
Cloudflare Workers is an edge serverless computing platform that enables developers to deploy JavaScript, WebAssembly, or Python code to Cloudflare's global network with sub-millisecond cold start times. Workers KV, Durable Objects, and R2 object storage provide storage primitives for building stateful edge applications. Cloudflare Pages provides a Jamstack deployment platform with global edge distribution, CI/CD integration, and native Functions support for full-stack edge applications.
Positioning
Cloudflare operates one of the largest networks in the world, positioned between users and origin servers. This network position allows Cloudflare to provide performance, security, and reliability services that work at the edge — closer to users than traditional solutions.
From CDN and DDoS protection to serverless computing and zero trust networking, Cloudflare's platform covers the full spectrum of web infrastructure needs.
What You Get
- CDN
Global content delivery network with 300+ points of presence - DDoS Protection
Unlimited, unmetered DDoS mitigation for any size attack - WAF
Web application firewall with managed rulesets and custom rules - Workers
Serverless computing at the edge with V8 isolates - Zero Trust
Replace VPN with identity-based access to applications and networks - DNS
Authoritative DNS with global anycast and sub-millisecond resolution
Core Areas
Performance
CDN, image optimization, and edge caching for faster web experiences
Security
DDoS protection, WAF, bot management, and API security
Serverless
Workers, Pages, R2 storage, and D1 database at the edge
Network Services
Magic Transit, Argo routing, and zero trust networking
Why It Matters
Every website and API faces threats from DDoS attacks, bots, and exploits. At the same time, users expect fast, reliable experiences regardless of location. Cloudflare addresses both challenges from a single platform.
The generous free tier makes Cloudflare accessible to personal sites and small businesses, while the enterprise offerings protect some of the largest properties on the internet.
Reviews
1 reviewWe started with Cloudflare's free plan for DNS and DDoS protection, and gradually adopted Workers, R2, and their WAF. The performance improvement was noticeable immediately. Their edge network is massive and the API is well-documented. Enterprise features are expensive but the free tier is genuinely generous.
— Daniel K., CTO
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