# Cloudflare DNS Hacker Approved page: https://hackerapproved.com/p/cloudflare-dns/ 39 people recommended Cloudflare DNS in Hacker News comments, 8 had mixed feelings and 51 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026. It was recommended in 11 of 12 months, in 33 threads. It does not meet the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** Criticized more than recommended: critics distrust the company over US legal exposure and past blocking; those who recommend it see it as a fast, free, simple resolver that works reliably and is easy to set up. Summary written by Claude from the comments below. ## What people warn about - Distrust over politics and legal exposure (4 comments in the sample): "Instead of being a neutral web infra, they actively participate in political agendas and censor things they "think" is wrong." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47475598)) "subject to the whim of the provider, who subject to court orders would have to oblige to continue operating as US entity" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47476527)) "The fact that Cloudflare and Google have convinced us all to use Cloudflare's and Google's resolvers is the problem." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48041588)) - Blocks or fails some domains (4 comments in the sample): "Yesterday 1.1.1.1 failed to resolved "theinformation.com" (hosted on CF itself!) for many hours, answering NXDOMAIN." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48706420)) "Many years ago I used Cloudflare, and more than once I had issues with them blocking websites I wanted to access." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47476344)) "Cloudflare DNS isn't fully functional (at least for me). Can't be used for general purpose DNS hosting imho." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47068861)) - Record handling deviates from RFC (4 comments in the sample): "Cloudflare does not forward EDNS to the origin, so the records it returns are suboptimal for services that use DNS-based service affinity" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45983481)) "CloudFlare really doesn't understand RFC1034, their DNS authoritative interface only blocks A and AAAA if there is a CNAME defined" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46685108)) "it's really not okay that CloudFlare allows setting up other record types (e.g. TXT, but basically any) next to a CNAME" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46685349)) - Weak as general DNS host (3 comments in the sample): "CF and similar providers are not true DNS hosting providers. They do DNS, but only so their CDN stuff works" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49323629)) "I wish they'd be clearer about when they're being used and not pretend that this is some DNS feature" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49323883)) "they use Cloudflare DNS behind the scenes, so when Cloudflare goes down, your website goes down too" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50144039)) ## Why people recommend it - Reliable and works consistently (6 comments in the sample): "After switching my DNS servers to Cloud Flare DNS (1.1.1.1, 1.0.0.1), it works fine." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46929501)) "Cloudflare's business is being reliable; few sites would be a better choice." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49975180)) "If you set your DNS to 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8 everything works fine." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49129961)) - Fast, often fastest resolver (4 comments in the sample): "Cloudflare can short circuit the recursive lookup for any of their properties, providing potential speedups at the resolution stage" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48709127)) "is always the fastest, though Quad9 is a very close second" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49572080)) "using 1.1.1.1 for performance rather than privacy" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48707234)) - Simple, easy setup (4 comments in the sample): "Cloudflare put a lot more thought into making it simple and intuitive to use." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48405602)) "extremely low effort to set up and has never once failed me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48848512)) "they make it very easy to set this up with just an API key" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45955265)) - Privacy-respecting company practices (3 comments in the sample): "I don’t keep DNS logs at all. But I also don’t show up 7 years later trash talking a company or product based on guesswork…" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47476697)) "But all other things being equal, Cloudflare's privacy policy is better than Google's." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47481164)) "it has good privacy and works with archive.is" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45887722)) ## Other DNS resolvers people recommend - [Quad9 DNS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/quad9/): 42 recommend, 12 mixed, 33 criticize - [Unbound DNS resolver](https://hackerapproved.com/p/unbound/): 36 recommend, 6 mixed, 3 criticize - [Google Public DNS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/google-public-dns/): 17 recommend, 0 mixed, 9 criticize - [Mullvad DNS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mullvad-dns/): 16 recommend, 5 mixed, 5 criticize ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://one.one.one.one/) ## The badge A product earns the Hacker Approved badge when at least 10 people recommend it, recommenders outnumber critics at least 2 to 1 (mixed feelings count toward neither side), it was recommended in at least 4 of the 12 months and in at least 5 different threads, and no single thread supplies more than half of the people who recommend it. Health and money products are never badged. ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Cloudflare DNS", https://hackerapproved.com/p/cloudflare-dns/ (39 recommend, 8 mixed, 51 criticize; Hacker News comments, November 2025 to October 2026). Counts updated 2 Nov 2026, with data through October 31, 2026.