# Cloudflare KV

Hacker Approved page: https://hackerapproved.com/p/cloudflare-kv/

8 people recommended Cloudflare KV in Hacker News comments and 12 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026. It was recommended in 7 of 12 months, in 8 threads. It does not meet the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Criticized more than recommended, mainly for cost at scale and eventual consistency; those who recommend it see it as a cheap, fast key-value store inside the Cloudflare Workers platform, often alongside D1 and R2.

Summary written by Claude from the comments below.

## What people warn about

- Very expensive at non-trivial scale (3 comments in the sample): "KV is so expensive that it’s barely usable, and like R2, is very slow." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45798127)) "KV is super expensive - once you’re operating at non-trivial scale" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45805436)) "Cloudflare KV is so extremely ridiculously absurdly expensive" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48671270))
- Locked in, hard to migrate away (3 comments in the sample): "It requires a rewrite and to migrate production systems away from it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50031619)) "those locked-in things (KV, D1, etc.) always made it hard to switch." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46456550)) "you can't run KV or Queues" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50025779))
- Slow writes and high latency (2 comments in the sample): "writes are way too slow for database-ish use and "eventually consistent" isn't what you want for state that is changing often" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48672342)) "KV checks/DB queries through their services can be double-to-triple digit ms latencies" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45884016))

## Why people recommend it

- Works well within Workers platform (3 comments in the sample): "Cloudflare had the superior infrastructure (Workers, R2, KV" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46718804)) "our site, which uses a TON of Cloudflare services" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46158315)) "Workers, D1, R2, queues, containers, KV" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48289346))
- Cheap, performant, better than AWS/GCP (2 comments in the sample): "workers and KV store are quite cheap and performant and powerful" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48672733)) "KV is better than AWS/GCP options" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45797929))
- Replaces Redis for caching and state (2 comments in the sample): "My share-link backend uses a sliding TTL (re-put on every cache miss" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47917107)) "use D1 Database and Cloudflare KV to replace Redis" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48083677))

## Other key-value stores people recommend

- [LMDB](https://hackerapproved.com/p/lmdb/): 17 recommend, 5 mixed, 12 criticize
- [RocksDB](https://hackerapproved.com/p/rocksdb/): 17 recommend, 3 mixed, 3 criticize

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://developers.cloudflare.com/kv/)

## 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 KV", https://hackerapproved.com/p/cloudflare-kv/ (8 recommend, 0 mixed, 12 criticize; Hacker News comments, November 2025 to October 2026).

Counts updated 3 Nov 2026, with data through October 31, 2026.