A Cleaner Terms of Service for Cloudflare's Expanding Platform
Cloudflare has updated its legal agreements in response to confusion highlighted by an earlier incident where a customer was mistakenly throttled due to uncertainty about the Terms of Service. The core issue was that the umbrella Self-Serve Subscription Agreement contained content-based restrictions that had not evolved alongside Cloudflare's broader product lineup. The new terms are intended to clarify what is allowed, particularly concerning video and large file delivery via the CDN.
Retiring Section 2.8
The main change involves removing the content-based restriction found in Section 2.8 of the Self-Serve Subscription Agreement. That section was originally crafted when the CDN was Cloudflare's primary service, designed for serving HTML web pages. At the time, serving video or other large files from external hosts was disruptive to the network.
As Cloudflare added dedicated products like Stream, Images, and R2—specifically designed to serve non-HTML content on its own infrastructure—the blanket restriction in the umbrella agreement became inconsistent. To fix this, the restriction has been moved into a CDN-specific section of the Service-Specific Terms. The outdated "HTML vs. non-HTML" distinction has been eliminated entirely.
Under the revised terms, customers can now use the CDN to deliver video and other large files, provided that content is hosted on a Cloudflare service such as Stream, Images, or R2. This aligns the rules with the capabilities of the Developer Platform while still prohibiting the use of the CDN to serve large files hosted externally. Cloudflare points to features like zero egress fees on R2 as part of a compelling offering for developers.
The updated structure for various use cases is as follows:
Customer A is on a free, pro, or business plan and wants to use the CDN service:
Customer B is on a free, pro, or business plan and wants to use the Developer Platform and Zero Trust services:
Customer C is on a free, pro, or business plan and wants to use Stream with the CDN service and Web Application Firewall with the CDN service:
Additional User-Facing Refinements
Beyond the main content restriction, Cloudflare has streamlined the Self-Serve Subscription Agreement for better readability. The company has also removed an older prohibition on benchmarking, citing confidence in its network performance. Finally, the Supplemental Terms have been renamed to the Service-Specific Terms and restructured to improve their clarity.
These revisions are meant to ensure the terms serve as clear guidance rather than a barrier to using Cloudflare's evolving suite of services, letting customers build with confidence on the platform.
