What is Cloudflare?
Cloudflare is a web infrastructure company that provides a content delivery network (CDN), DNS hosting, DDoS protection, and security services. It sits between your visitors and your hosting server, caching and serving your content from locations close to your users.
Disclosure: What's Hosting operates a GoDaddy reseller storefront. Competitor guides are editorial research, not products we sell.
Overview
When your website uses Cloudflare, visitors connect to the nearest Cloudflare server rather than directly to your hosting server. This speeds up page loads for visitors around the world and reduces the load on your hosting. Cloudflare also filters out malicious traffic before it reaches your site.
Many websites you use every day are protected and delivered by Cloudflare. When you visit a site and you see Cloudflare in the error page or security check, that site is using Cloudflare as its CDN and security layer.
Cloudflare offers a free plan that covers basic CDN and DNS hosting, which is sufficient for most small websites. Paid plans add advanced security features, image optimisation, DDoS mitigation, and performance analytics.
Cloudflare also operates as a domain registrar at cost, meaning it charges exactly what the domain registry charges with no markup. If you want to minimise the cost of domain registration and do not need the features of a full-service registrar, Cloudflare Registrar is worth considering.
What was Cloudflare Railgun?
Railgun is a legacy Cloudflare acceleration feature discussed in older hosting guides, not a feature to assume is available today.
Old instructions can mention a Railgun listener or a hosting partner setting. Do not install abandoned software or purchase a plan solely because an old review lists that feature.
For a current site, review Cloudflare's supported caching and delivery options in its current documentation. Test cache rules carefully for account, checkout and personalised pages rather than applying an old Railgun tutorial.
How can you tell whether a site uses Cloudflare?
DNS and response headers can suggest Cloudflare use, but they do not reliably reveal a site's origin host.
A proxied DNS answer may show a Cloudflare IP shared by many unrelated sites. Nameservers can show Cloudflare DNS even when web traffic is not proxied; headers can also be absent or changed.
For your own site, check the Cloudflare account and registrar delegation. Treat third-party detection tools as clues, not authoritative account records, and do not attempt to bypass another site's security to find its origin.
Common questions
What does Cloudflare do?
Cloudflare speeds up your website by caching and serving content from servers worldwide, protects against DDoS attacks, provides DNS hosting, and offers security tools to filter malicious traffic.
Is Cloudflare free?
Cloudflare has a generous free plan that includes CDN, basic DDoS protection, and DNS hosting. Paid plans start at $20 per month and add advanced security and performance features.
Do I need Cloudflare for my website?
Not necessarily, but it is beneficial for most websites. Adding Cloudflare is free and typically improves page load speeds and security without requiring changes to your hosting setup.
What was Cloudflare Railgun?
Railgun is a legacy Cloudflare acceleration feature discussed in older hosting guides, not a feature to assume is available today.
How can you tell whether a site uses Cloudflare?
DNS and response headers can suggest Cloudflare use, but they do not reliably reveal a site's origin host.