[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":580},["ShallowReactive",2],{"\u002Fblog\u002Ffree-cloudflare\u002F:en":3,"\u002Fblog\u002Ffree-cloudflare\u002F-surround:en":475,"blog-all-posts:en":476},{"id":4,"title":5,"author":6,"body":10,"date":457,"description":458,"extension":459,"image":460,"locale":461,"meta":462,"minRead":463,"navigation":464,"original":465,"path":466,"pinned":465,"seo":467,"source":468,"sourceUrl":23,"stem":469,"tags":470,"updated":460,"__hash__":474},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Ffree-cloudflare.en.md","How free users can squeeze Cloudflare dry — how far does the free tier actually get you?",{"name":7,"avatar":8},"Chen Dahuang",{"src":9,"alt":7},"\u002Favatar.jpg",{"type":11,"value":12,"toc":439},"minimark",[13,28,31,36,39,42,45,48,51,86,89,92,96,99,102,106,109,138,141,145,148,151,154,157,161,164,168,171,175,178,181,219,223,226,230,233,256,260,263,266,280,283,310,313,317,320,334,337,341,344,347,370,373,376,380,383,386,406,409,413,416,419,430,433,436],[14,15,16],"blockquote",{},[17,18,19,20,27],"p",{},"Originally published on ",[21,22,26],"a",{"href":23,"rel":24},"https:\u002F\u002Fx.com\u002Frealchendahuang\u002Farticle\u002F2066528625378443300",[25],"nofollow","X Articles",".",[17,29,30],{},"Cloudflare can carry almost an entire personal internet infrastructure: domains, websites, CDN, object storage, databases, edge functions, tunneling, email forwarding, CAPTCHA, and an AI gateway — all of it can start on the free tier.",[32,33,35],"h2",{"id":34},"free-dns","Free DNS",[17,37,38],{},"Cloudflare is a domain registrar itself, with fairly transparent registration and renewal pricing. You can also buy domains on platforms like Spaceship and move DNS hosting to Cloudflare.",[17,40,41],{},"Once your domain is on Cloudflare, you get a solid DNS management system.",[17,43,44],{},"The key point: DNS resolution isn't billed per query. Unlike some big domestic providers, which are gross enough to charge by the number of resolution queries — talk about shameless.",[17,46,47],{},"Cloudflare is great for multi-domain, multi-subdomain, and small-project matrices.",[17,49,50],{},"You can run:",[52,53,54,61,66,71,76,81],"ul",{},[55,56,57],"li",{},[58,59,60],"code",{},"api.xxx.com",[55,62,63],{},[58,64,65],{},"img.xxx.com",[55,67,68],{},[58,69,70],{},"cdn.xxx.com",[55,72,73],{},[58,74,75],{},"docs.xxx.com",[55,77,78],{},[58,79,80],{},"status.xxx.com",[55,82,83],{},[58,84,85],{},"admin.xxx.com",[17,87,88],{},"Buy one domain, assign different subdomains to different services, and DNS resolution itself costs nothing extra.",[17,90,91],{},"For web traffic that needs proxying, flip on the orange cloud and let Cloudflare handle proxying, caching, and HTTPS certificates.",[32,93,95],{"id":94},"free-cdn","Free CDN",[17,97,98],{},"CDN caching is the coolest thing Cloudflare has — it's how most people first hear about the company. For blogs, official sites, and docs sites, the value is straightforward:",[17,100,101],{},"Faster visits, a lighter origin server, and less bandwidth. Especially if you're on a cheap VPS, putting Cloudflare in front makes a big felt difference.",[32,103,105],{"id":104},"free-pages","Free Pages",[17,107,108],{},"Pages can host static sites and frontend projects for free.",[52,110,111,114,117,120,123,126,129,132,135],{},[55,112,113],{},"Personal blogs",[55,115,116],{},"Product websites",[55,118,119],{},"Docs sites",[55,121,122],{},"Landing pages",[55,124,125],{},"Open-source project pages",[55,127,128],{},"Course material pages",[55,130,131],{},"Waitlist pages",[55,133,134],{},"Download instruction pages",[55,136,137],{},"Ebook promo pages",[17,139,140],{},"These can be hosted directly, no separate server purchase needed. Bind your own domain and it becomes a long-term personal site or project homepage.",[32,142,144],{"id":143},"free-workers","Free Workers",[17,146,147],{},"When your site needs APIs, auth, or other dynamic logic, use Workers. Your code runs on Cloudflare's network — no server maintenance on your end. Besides JavaScript\u002FTypeScript, it also supports WebAssembly and other runtimes.",[17,149,150],{},"The free tier includes 100k requests per day. If a personal project genuinely outgrows that, upgrade to paid — no rush.",[17,152,153],{},"Workers Paid starts at $5\u002Fmonth.",[17,155,156],{},"Many small projects don't need a full backend at all. One Worker is enough.",[32,158,160],{"id":159},"free-kv","Free KV",[17,162,163],{},"KV fits data that needs fast reads but not strong consistency — config, feature flags, cached results. It's not a full Redis replacement, but it covers a lot of simple needs in personal projects.",[32,165,167],{"id":166},"free-d1","Free D1",[17,169,170],{},"D1 is Cloudflare's managed SQLite database, good for relational data. The free tier includes 5 GB of total storage, plus daily read\u002Fwrite quotas.",[32,172,174],{"id":173},"free-r2","Free R2",[17,176,177],{},"R2 is an S3-API-compatible object store, good for images, attachments, and backups. Its biggest advantage: no bandwidth fees when serving from R2 — you pay mainly for storage and operations. There's also a free tier with a quota for both.",[17,179,180],{},"You can put in it:",[52,182,183,186,189,192,195,198,201,204,207,210,213,216],{},[55,184,185],{},"Images",[55,187,188],{},"Attachments",[55,190,191],{},"PDFs",[55,193,194],{},"Course materials",[55,196,197],{},"Software packages",[55,199,200],{},"Backup files",[55,202,203],{},"User avatars",[55,205,206],{},"Markdown images",[55,208,209],{},"Static assets",[55,211,212],{},"Datasets",[55,214,215],{},"Audio files",[55,217,218],{},"Small video assets",[32,220,222],{"id":221},"free-email-routing","Free Email Routing",[17,224,225],{},"Email Routing forwards email sent to your custom domain to an existing mailbox — available on the free tier. Cloudflare also has Email Sending for transactional email via Workers, but sending to arbitrary recipients requires Workers Paid, so don't confuse it with free inbound forwarding.",[32,227,229],{"id":228},"free-turnstile","Free Turnstile",[17,231,232],{},"Turnstile is Cloudflare's human verification, and users usually don't have to identify traffic lights or distorted letters. Good for:",[52,234,235,238,241,244,247,250,253],{},[55,236,237],{},"Login",[55,239,240],{},"Registration",[55,242,243],{},"Comments",[55,245,246],{},"Contact forms",[55,248,249],{},"Waitlists",[55,251,252],{},"Download pages",[55,254,255],{},"Email subscriptions",[32,257,259],{"id":258},"free-tunnel","Free Tunnel",[17,261,262],{},"Want to expose your home NAS, local dev machine, or game server to the internet? Use Tunnel to build a pipe that connects from your internal network out to Cloudflare, actively.",[17,264,265],{},"Your NAS, local dev boxes, internal services — can all be exposed through Cloudflare Tunnel. Core value:",[52,267,268,271,274,277],{},[55,269,270],{},"No public IP needed",[55,272,273],{},"No router port forwarding",[55,275,276],{},"No exposing origin IPs",[55,278,279],{},"Can attach your own domain",[17,281,282],{},"For example:",[52,284,285,290,295,300,305],{},[55,286,287],{},[58,288,289],{},"nas.xxx.com",[55,291,292],{},[58,293,294],{},"dev.xxx.com",[55,296,297],{},[58,298,299],{},"panel.xxx.com",[55,301,302],{},[58,303,304],{},"n8n.xxx.com",[55,306,307],{},[58,308,309],{},"home.xxx.com",[17,311,312],{},"This thing is a godsend for home-server tinkerers.",[32,314,316],{"id":315},"free-access","Free Access",[17,318,319],{},"Access sits in front of admin panels, staging environments, and internal tools, verifying identity before letting people in. Email OTP, Google, GitHub, or team identity providers all work — no need to write another registration\u002Flogin system just for an internal page. For example:",[52,321,322,325,328,331],{},[55,323,324],{},"Only specific emails get in",[55,326,327],{},"Only Google login gets in",[55,329,330],{},"Only GitHub login gets in",[55,332,333],{},"Only team members get in",[17,335,336],{},"This is very handy for protecting backends, staging, and internal tools.",[32,338,340],{"id":339},"free-ai-gateway","Free AI Gateway",[17,342,343],{},"AI Gateway can sit in front of multiple model providers, uniformly logging requests, latency, errors, and cache hits, plus rate limiting and fallback. When building an AI product early, managing multiple compatible APIs through one entry point saves a lot of hassle.",[17,345,346],{},"It lets you observe:",[52,348,349,352,355,358,361,364,367],{},[55,350,351],{},"Request volume",[55,353,354],{},"Latency",[55,356,357],{},"Errors",[55,359,360],{},"Cache hits",[55,362,363],{},"Model calls",[55,365,366],{},"Rate limiting",[55,368,369],{},"Fallback",[17,371,372],{},"Whether you're using OpenAI, Anthropic, Workers AI, or assorted compatible APIs, you can wrap one layer in front of them.",[17,374,375],{},"For early AI products, it makes a great unified entry point.",[32,377,379],{"id":378},"free-browser-run","Free Browser Run",[17,381,382],{},"Cloudflare now calls this capability Browser Run. It launches full browser sessions in the cloud, controllable via code or AI.",[17,384,385],{},"Good for:",[52,387,388,391,394,397,400,403],{},[55,389,390],{},"Webpage screenshots",[55,392,393],{},"Webpage to Markdown",[55,395,396],{},"Webpage automation testing",[55,398,399],{},"Page content scraping",[55,401,402],{},"Dynamic page parsing",[55,404,405],{},"Webpage to PDF",[17,407,408],{},"There's a daily free quota.",[32,410,412],{"id":411},"free-images-transform","Free Images Transform",[17,414,415],{},"Cloudflare Images has a transformation quota for resizing, cropping, and format conversion. Heavy usage is billed separately, or you can run your own transcoding service on paid Workers with Containers.",[17,417,418],{},"Pair it with R2:",[52,420,421,424,427],{},[55,422,423],{},"R2 stores originals",[55,425,426],{},"Images makes thumbnails and format conversions",[55,428,429],{},"Cloudflare cache distributes",[17,431,432],{},"Good for blog covers, avatars, product images, and article illustrations.",[17,434,435],{},"Cloudflare's free quota already covers plenty of personal projects. If you genuinely need higher request volume, compute time, or paid features, upgrade from the $5\u002Fmonth Workers Paid tier and scale up.",[17,437,438],{},"And here I want to say: Cloudflare, please wire me the money!!",{"title":440,"searchDepth":441,"depth":441,"links":442},"",2,[443,444,445,446,447,448,449,450,451,452,453,454,455,456],{"id":34,"depth":441,"text":35},{"id":94,"depth":441,"text":95},{"id":104,"depth":441,"text":105},{"id":143,"depth":441,"text":144},{"id":159,"depth":441,"text":160},{"id":166,"depth":441,"text":167},{"id":173,"depth":441,"text":174},{"id":221,"depth":441,"text":222},{"id":228,"depth":441,"text":229},{"id":258,"depth":441,"text":259},{"id":315,"depth":441,"text":316},{"id":339,"depth":441,"text":340},{"id":378,"depth":441,"text":379},{"id":411,"depth":441,"text":412},"2026-06-15","Cloudflare's free tier can carry an entire personal internet infrastructure: DNS, CDN, Pages, Workers, KV, D1, R2, email, Tunnel, AI Gateway and more.","md",null,"en",{},8,true,false,"\u002Fblog\u002Ffree-cloudflare",{"title":5,"description":458},"x-article","blog\u002Ffree-cloudflare.en",[471,472,473],"Cloudflare","Free tier","Deployment","QYJ55DOiQIqswU9CwUrSMakg21k4VCFpk_GgOd7BWkg",[460,460],[477,486,493,502,509,511,518,526,534,540,547,556,563,571],{"path":478,"title":479,"description":480,"date":481,"minRead":482,"tags":483},"\u002Fblog\u002Fagent-harness-selection","After tinkering with Pi Agent, OMP, Codex, and ZCode, why I finally chose OpenCode + OpenChamber","A retrospective on choosing an Agent Harness: three criteria — GUI experience, vendor lock-in, and freedom for secondary development — ruled out Pi Agent, OMP, Codex, and ZCode, and finally settled on the OpenCode core + OpenChamber interface.","2026-08-06",6,[484,485],"AI Agent","Tool selection",{"path":487,"title":488,"description":489,"date":457,"minRead":482,"tags":490},"\u002Fblog\u002Fcloudflare-broke-stack","2026 indie dev best practices: the Cloudflare \"broke-ass all-in-one\" stack","The zero-cost tech stack for indie developers: Codex for writing code, GitHub for version control, Stripe for payments, TanStack Start for frontend, Hono + Workers for backend, D1 for database, R2 for storage, KV for caching — all running on Cloudflare.",[471,491,492],"Indie development","Tech stack",{"path":494,"title":495,"description":496,"date":497,"minRead":482,"tags":498},"\u002Fblog\u002Fdeepseek-api-web-search","DeepSeek's API has built-in web search — freeload the official search via the Responses API","DeepSeek built web search straight into the API: call deepseek-v4-flash through the Responses interface and declare the web_search tool. No third-party search engine integration, no search API key required.","2026-08-05",[499,500,501],"DeepSeek","API","AI tools",{"path":503,"title":504,"description":505,"date":497,"minRead":506,"tags":507},"\u002Fblog\u002Fdeepseek-v4-flash-review","DeepSeek V4 Flash stable release, hands-on: cheap, fast, 1M context, built-in search","A few days deep-diving the stable DeepSeek V4 Flash release: aggressively cheap, lightning fast, 1M context, official built-in web search, fully open source. The one weakness is multimodality — but you can patch it by combining other models.",7,[499,508,501],"Model review",{"path":466,"title":5,"description":458,"date":457,"minRead":463,"tags":510},[471,472,473],{"path":512,"title":513,"description":514,"date":515,"minRead":463,"tags":516},"\u002Fblog\u002Fmodel-harness-decoupling","The First-Party Harness Isn't Always the Best Answer: In the Open-Model Era, Pick Your Model and Harness Separately","Using Claude? Go Claude Code. In the open-model era that instinct deserves an upgrade. The first-party advantage is real, but training a good model and building a good harness are two different kinds of engineering — here's why models and harnesses are now separable choices, plus a positioning map of five harnesses.","2026-09-09",[484,517,485],"Harness",{"path":519,"title":520,"description":521,"date":515,"minRead":463,"tags":522},"\u002Fblog\u002Fopencode-productive-stack","Stable, Fast, Productive, Cheap: My AI Coding Stack, Documented","OpenCode + OpenChamber + two DeepSeek V4 Flash subscriptions: 15 projects running code simultaneously and the quota barely moved. The full configuration laid out — context pruning, layered memory, desktop automation, and the \"stick with the original pairing\" lesson.",[523,524,525],"OpenCode","AI Coding","Configuration",{"path":527,"title":528,"description":529,"date":530,"minRead":531,"tags":532},"\u002Fblog\u002Fproduct-faxin-principle","The founding-intention principle: why indie developers must learn to let go","Why do you set out? Who do you set out for? Which problem are you actually trying to solve? A product's sharpness comes from what you dare to cut.","2026-06-20",10,[533,491],"Product thinking",{"path":535,"title":536,"description":537,"date":530,"minRead":463,"tags":538},"\u002Fblog\u002Fproduct-pain-vs-itch","Don't get carried away when users say \"that's awesome\": pain points vs. itch points","Verbal approval is worth nothing. There's only one hard standard for judging demand: what the user is willing to pay.",[533,539],"Demand judgment",{"path":541,"title":542,"description":543,"date":481,"minRead":544,"tags":545},"\u002Fblog\u002Fqwen-vision-for-deepseek","Giving DeepSeek multimodality: the Qwen-3.7-Flash vision approach","DeepSeek V4 Flash has no multimodality — what do you do for image understanding? After surveying the market, the most cost-effective option right now is Qwen-3.7-Flash: recognizing an image costs almost nothing, and pairing it with V4 Flash patches the gap.",5,[499,546,508],"Multimodality",{"path":548,"title":549,"description":550,"date":551,"minRead":552,"tags":553},"\u002Fblog\u002Fsub-store-cloudflare","I moved my proxy subscription aggregation to Cloudflare","Merge multiple proxy services plus your own nodes into one single subscription, with routing rules configured server-side — clients just subscribe.","2026-06-28",4,[471,554,555],"Circumvention","Open-source project",{"path":557,"title":558,"description":559,"date":515,"minRead":506,"tags":560},"\u002Fblog\u002Ftui-cognitive-bandwidth","TUI Is Killing Your Cognitive Bandwidth: Time to Shatter the \"Geek Filter\" in AI Coding","A pile of AI coding agents are rushing to ship TUIs, stuffing interaction back into the 1980s terminal paradigm and calling it \"immersive\" and \"respectful of programmers.\" This piece breaks down the three mechanisms by which TUI systematically lowers your cognitive bandwidth — and why Web UI is the right answer.",[524,561,562],"Interaction design","Essay",{"path":564,"title":565,"description":566,"date":567,"minRead":482,"tags":568},"\u002Fblog\u002Fvalue-not-external","Debating whether something has value is itself worthless","Our value is not defined by anyone. In the age of AI, how should we understand ourselves?","2026-06-18",[569,570],"AI thinking","Humanistic essay",{"path":572,"title":573,"description":574,"date":575,"minRead":576,"tags":577},"\u002Fblog\u002Fx-growth-1000-followers","Gained 1000+ followers in a little over a day — here's what I did","In June I ran my X account seriously and gained 1000+ followers in a little over a day. This post records what I did and the feedback I got.","2026-06-16",12,[578,579],"X operations","Content growth",1789752312990]