Cloudflare Spectrum expands beyond Enterprise: SSH, RDP, and Minecraft now covered on paid plans

Two years after launching Cloudflare Spectrum for Enterprise customers, the company is widening the availability of its non-HTTP proxy service. Spectrum for SSH, RDP, and Minecraft is now accessible to Pro and Business plan subscribers, extending DDoS protection and traffic acceleration beyond web traffic to remote server management and gaming workloads.

Spectrum operates as a proxy layer in front of non-HTTP services. For administrators, that means SSH and RDP endpoints can sit behind Cloudflare's network, shielding them from attacks while potentially lowering latency. For gamers, it means Minecraft servers—a common DDoS target—can use the same infrastructure to stay online under fire.

Latency matters for remote administration

Server management via SSH and RDP is interactive in ways that ordinary web traffic is not. Each keystroke in an SSH session, or click in a remote desktop client, must travel to the origin server and back. Higher bandwidth cannot fix perceived lag; reducing round-trip time is what makes a remote session feel local. Spectrum's anycast routing aims to shorten those paths, while also absorbing volumetric attacks directed at management ports.

Minecraft on lockdown traffic surge

Minecraft traffic through Cloudflare's network has more than tripled since lockdowns began in many countries. Hosting providers have long used Spectrum to protect their infrastructure—Hypixel and Nodecraft are cited as existing customers—but individual server operators on VPS instances have not had the same option at this price tier. That changes with the Pro and Business rollout.

Setup and pricing

Configuration is dashboard-driven. After logging in, users head to the Spectrum tab, pick a protocol, and specify the origin server IP. The assigned subdomain then serves as the connection endpoint, replacing the need to expose a raw IP address.

All paid plans now include Spectrum at no added base cost, with a monthly data allowance. The allowance varies by plan:

  • Pro: SSH and Minecraft support with 5 GB free data per month
  • Business: Adds RDP support, with 10 GB free per month

Traffic beyond the included quota is billed per gigabyte. Spectrum is a drop-in product requiring no origin-side configuration, and it can be paired with Cloudflare for Teams when finer-grained access control is needed. The company says additional protocols may be added based on customer feedback.