Commenters debated why Cloudflare offers a free tier and what that means in practice. Supporters said the free plan makes onboarding and prototyping trivial, praising features like Workers, durable objects, easy domain management and 1.1.1.1; some noted they run high-traffic sites cheaply or pay only small amounts. Fans also credited Cloudflare with transparency and open-source contributions, and valued the low-friction, almost anonymous signup that lets hobbyists and startups avoid hyperscaler bureaucracy. A few users noted Enterprise pricing can be as high as legacy CDNs.
Others warned the free tier creates a gatekeeper and choke point. Several commenters described frequent overblocking, captchas (especially with iCloud Private Relay, VPNs or adblockers), and a WAF that can add “phantom latency,” harming UX and blocking legitimate traffic. Critics argued centralization raises privacy, censorship and single‑point‑of‑failure risks and enables data aggregation for AI, while others feared eventual “enshittification.” There was also a split on costs: some insisted bandwidth is now very cheap and Cloudflare’s model leverages peering, while others countered that managed cloud networks absorb expensive infrastructure and DDoS resilience, so pricing reflects more than raw egress costs.
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