Cloudflare Free Tier — CDN, DDoS Protection & DNS

Cloudflare's free tier includes CDN (content delivery network), DDoS mitigation, managed DNS, SSL certificates (Universal SSL), and basic firewall rules for unlimited domains.

For streaming services: Cloudflare proxies HTTP/HTTPS traffic but not RTMP (TCP 1935). Configure RTMP to bypass Cloudflare (DNS-only/grey cloud) while proxying your web endpoints.

Free tier limits: 5 page rules, basic firewall, no image optimization. The Pro tier ($20/mo) adds polish-fire rules, mobile redirects, and image optimization. For most self-hosters, free is sufficient.

Setup: add your domain to Cloudflare, update nameservers at your registrar, enable Full (strict) SSL in the SSL/TLS settings. Add an A record pointing to your VPS IP.