What is Cloudflare?
The short answer
Cloudflare is a global network that provides DNS, CDN, security (DDoS protection and a web application firewall) and edge hosting for websites.
Cloudflare, explained
Many sites sit behind it simply for DNS and protection; Cloudflare Pages and Workers can also host and run the site itself.
Questions people ask about Cloudflare
What is Cloudflare?
Cloudflare is a global network that provides DNS, CDN, security (DDoS protection and a web application firewall) and edge hosting for websites.
Related terms
A CDN is a network of servers around the world that keeps copies of a site's files and serves each visitor from the location nearest to them.
DNSDNS is the internet's address book: it translates a domain name like example.com into the IP address of the server that hosts the site.
DDoS attackA DDoS attack floods a website with traffic from many machines at once to overwhelm it and knock it offline.
Web application firewallA web application firewall filters incoming requests to a website and blocks known attack patterns before they reach the application.
Part of the Web Encyclopedia by Apex Flow Digital. Definitions are general knowledge, kept current, with no invented statistics.