Cloudflare CDN
Ranked 4 of 7 CDNs by recommenders
People recommend it for a free CDN tier with no bandwidth fees, speed and reliability; critics object to its centralizing power and its traffic inspection.
People recommend it for a free CDN tier with no bandwidth fees, speed and reliability; critics object to its centralizing power and its traffic inspection.
27 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 12
- criticize it
- 15
- approval share
- 44%
Recommended in 9 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 12 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 0.8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 9 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Generous free CDN tier
“They also offer a decently-sized free tier, and there's no fees for moving data in or out of their CDN if its in cache.”
Comment from 4 Sep 2026 in “25% of all websites now use Cloudflare as CDN” “The fact that Cloudflare offers these services for FREE, is a pretty good (perhaps Faustian) deal.”
Comment from 18 Jan 2026 in “Astro Joining Cloudflare” “It would be $0 if they spent 10 minutes just throwing Cloudflare CDN in front.”
Comment from 10 Feb 2026 in “Vercel's CEO offers to cover expenses of 'Jmail'” - Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “We're making Bunny DNS free: because a faster internet won't build itself”
- Comment from 10 Feb 2026 in “Vercel's CEO offers to cover expenses of 'Jmail'”
- Comment from 8 Sep 2026 in “Among European Companies That Use a CDN, Nearly 9 in 10 Use Cloudflare”
Fast, cheap and reliable
“Cloudflare is often cheaper, simpler and provides a better service compared to it's competitors”
Comment from 8 Sep 2026 in “Among European Companies That Use a CDN, Nearly 9 in 10 Use Cloudflare” “Extremely fast, extremely cheap and reliable.”
Comment from 14 Mar 2026 in “The Browser Becomes Your WordPress”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Centralization and monopoly concerns
“A monopolist has little reason to care about downstream effects, since customers have nowhere else to turn.”
Comment from 6 Dec 2025 in “Cloudflare outage on December 5, 2025” “something like that is when this centralization hurts the most”
Comment from 8 Sep 2026 in “Among European Companies That Use a CDN, Nearly 9 in 10 Use Cloudflare” “the irrational belief that everything needs cloudflare”
Comment from 18 Nov 2025 in “Cloudflare Global Network experiencing issues” Traffic inspection and MITM concerns
“I'm more concerned about crimeflare's own incentive to analyze our traffic that people already willingly let them MITM”
Comment from 8 Sep 2026 in “Among European Companies That Use a CDN, Nearly 9 in 10 Use Cloudflare” “The MITM design of CF is what it is. It creates risks, but these risks are tolerated”
Comment from 9 Sep 2026 in “Among European Companies That Use a CDN, Nearly 9 in 10 Use Cloudflare” Unnecessary for most sites
“CDN is something you do once you run out of options, not something you should reach for immediately, it makes no sense in most cases of just hosting a website.”
Comment from 8 Sep 2026 in “Among European Companies That Use a CDN, Nearly 9 in 10 Use Cloudflare” “Cloudflare tells people they need a CDN, and hey, look, what a convenient free CDN right there.”
Comment from 7 Jun 2026 in “Cloudflare CEO Is Lying to You About the Bot Traffic Jump” Connection and request handling problems
“Cloudflare CDN wouldn't stop when the client stop, causing the gateway to send the whole file.”
Comment from 18 Nov 2025 in “Do not put your site behind Cloudflare if you don't need to” “It's not every request, it's spurious connection failures.”
Comment from 20 Dec 2025 in “Cloudflare has been broken for 15 hours”
Other CDNs people recommend
The four most recommended other CDNs, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare | 744 | 1,249 | 37% | 13 | 3 yrs26 owners | — |
| Bunny.net | 121 | 52 | 70% | 12 | 2 yrs16 owners | Approved |
| Amazon CloudFront | 24 | 11 | 69% | 9 | — | Approved |
| Cloudflare CDNThis page | 12 | 15 | 44% | 9 | — | — |
| Fastly CDN | 10 | 7 | 59% | 8 | — | — |
What people said
All 27 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“If it is as described it would seems to me like poor due diligence either on Cloudflare or Googles part.”
“The MITM design of CF is what it is. It creates risks, but these risks are tolerated”
“Because they are free. Almost for everyone.”
“I'm more concerned about crimeflare's own incentive to analyze our traffic that people already willingly let them MITM”
“something like that is when this centralization hurts the most”
“Cloudflare is often cheaper, simpler and provides a better service compared to it's competitors”
“CDN is something you do once you run out of options, not something you should reach for immediately, it makes no sense in most cases of just hosting a website.”
“They also offer a decently-sized free tier, and there's no fees for moving data in or out of their CDN if its in cache.”
“Use a cdn like cloudflare or AWS CloudFront or depending on size”
“This is not a trustworthy action, period.”
“Cloudflare actually prefers that geo-DNS is broken.”
“having a free tier for CDN is what makes cloudflare attractive”
“Cloudflare tells people they need a CDN, and hey, look, what a convenient free CDN right there.”
“I really enjoy Cloudflare's CDN.”
“It’s precisely because CloudFlare isn’t responding like other CDNs to reasonable demands to cut off pirate origin sites that this mess exists.”
“Extremely fast, extremely cheap and reliable.”
“Cloudflare offers a CDN for free with unlimited bandwidth”
“It would be $0 if they spent 10 minutes just throwing Cloudflare CDN in front.”
“The fact that Cloudflare offers these services for FREE, is a pretty good (perhaps Faustian) deal.”
“The only reason it's still online is because of CloudFlare CDN!”
“You cannot imagine what a pest that is even for legit users of legit collateral damage pages.”
“It's not every request, it's spurious connection failures.”
“A monopolist has little reason to care about downstream effects, since customers have nowhere else to turn.”
“someone else has to be up at 2am fixing it”
“Their app just crashes with a config file, and nobody evaluates it?!”
“Cloudflare CDN wouldn't stop when the client stop, causing the gateway to send the whole file.”
“the irrational belief that everything needs cloudflare”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.