Cloudflare (United States) runs one of the world’s largest edge networks. It started as a CDN and DNS service and now covers security, performance and a developer platform at the edge.
What it does
- Speeds up sites and APIs with caching and global routing
- Protects against DDoS, bots and application-layer attacks
- Manages DNS with fast, redundant answers
- Runs edge functions (Workers) and uses R2 storage
How it works
- Traffic passes through Cloudflare’s network before reaching the origin
- Configured via panel, API and Terraform
- A free plan to start, with per-resource upgrades
Public pricing
- Free plan with CDN and DNS
- Pro and Business plans billed monthly
- Enterprise under contract; R2 and Workers billed by usage
Strengths
- Consolidated global network with low latency
- Mature security layer with WAF and DDoS mitigation
- A free plan that works for real projects
Points of attention
- Advanced features depend on the plan
- Cache and rule setup needs care to avoid stale content
- Single edge-provider dependency in simple architectures
