Cloudflare is a US-based internet infrastructure company that operates one of the world's largest networks. It sits between website visitors and web servers, providing security, performance and reliability services to millions of websites worldwide.
Cloudflare caches website content on servers close to the visitor. Instead of loading everything from a central server in one location, content is delivered from the nearest Cloudflare data center – making websites significantly faster worldwide.
Cloudflare absorbs DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks before they reach the origin server. Its network can handle attacks of several terabits per second, making it virtually impossible to take down a Cloudflare-protected website.
Cloudflare offers fast and reliable DNS hosting for domains. Their public DNS resolver 1.1.1.1 is the fastest in the world and does not log user queries. Many websites use Cloudflare as their DNS provider.
The Cloudflare WAF blocks malicious requests before they reach the web server – including SQL injection, XSS attacks and other common attack patterns. It analyzes traffic in real time and applies security rules automatically.
| Service | Description | Free? |
|---|---|---|
| CDN | Content delivery & caching | Yes |
| DDoS protection | Unlimited DDoS mitigation | Yes |
| DNS hosting | Fast authoritative DNS | Yes |
| SSL/TLS | Free SSL certificates | Yes |
| WAF | Web Application Firewall | Paid |
| Workers | Serverless computing at the edge | Limited free |
| 1.1.1.1 | Public DNS resolver | Yes |
| Tunnel | Secure access to internal services | Yes |
Cloudflare acts as an intermediary between website visitors and web servers, providing CDN, DDoS protection, DNS, SSL and firewall services. By routing traffic through its global network of 300+ data centers, Cloudflare makes websites faster, more secure and more reliable. Its free tier makes enterprise-grade security accessible to websites of all sizes.