Overview
Product Information on Cloudflare API Gateway
What is Cloudflare API Gateway?
Cloudflare API Gateway Pricing
Overall experience with Cloudflare API Gateway
“Centralized API Discovery Improves Visibility and Security Across Multiple Endpoints”
“Great global performance and security, limited on transformations and orchestration”
About Company
Company Description
Cloudflare, is a provider of WAAP, SASE, SSE, SD-WAN, CDN, and Edge Developer services. Cloudflare empowers organizations to make their employees, applications and networks faster and more secure everywhere, while reducing complexity and cost. Cloudflare delivers all services from a single intelligent global network platform, providing customers with a unified platform of cloud-native products and developer tools, so any organization can gain the control they need to work, develop, and accelerate their business.
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Key Insights
A Snapshot of What Matters - Based on Validated User Reviews
User Sentiment About Cloudflare API Gateway
Reviewer Insights for: Cloudflare API Gateway
Performance of Cloudflare API Gateway Across Market Features
Cloudflare API Gateway Likes & Dislikes
Strong security focus out of the box: features like schema validation, anamoly detection Automatic API discovery and visibility: Being able to surface unmanaged endpoints and see traffic, latency, error rates Tight integration with Workers and the edge: Running logic directly at the edge, routing and transforming requests there and offloading auth checks
Shadow API, unmetered DDos protection and mTLS at the edge. Shadow API was one of the top reasons for delving into Cloudflare API Gateway, automatically finding endpoints that shouldn't be there (enabled by mistake or forgotten by the dev team) is a great feature. The mTLS at the edge is great to have Cloudflare handle the client certs transparently especially if your project is related to IoT world.
What I like the most is how it combines strong API security with simplicity and performance. The ability to discover APIS automatically, apply schema validations, rate limiting and abuse protection directly, provides high visibility and protection without requiring major changes in the backend. I also value its seamless integration with the Cloudflare platform, which makes it easy to manage API security alongside other services such as WAF and DDoS protection. This integration reduces operational overhead while delivering scalable and low-latency protection for APIs.
Learning curve for smaller teams: if your team is new to Cloudflare's way of doing things( workers, rules, policies) the initial setup and mental model can feel heavier than a basic reverse proxy or simple gateway Complex setups can be hard to reason about: Once you stack discovery, schema validation, multiple rate limits and routing rules, it takes discipline and documentaiton to avoid confusing interactions or rules that override each other in unexpected ways Enterprise level features feel locked away: Some of the most attractive capabilities really make sense only at higher plans
Enterprise tier level paywall for features. Things like timeout customisation aren't available on all plans. Reporting latency is not real-time, making things harder to debug in real-time. Sequence analitics like detecting a skipped step isn't available on all plans.
What I dislike the most about Cloudfare API gateway is that advanced configurations can be less intuitve and requires a deeper undesrtanding of the cloudfare platform, While the basic features are easy to enable, more complex cases of usage sometimesinvolve multiple components and settings, shich can increase the learning curve. The documentation for advanced scenarios could be more detailed, particularly when troubleshooting or designing more customized API security workflows. Finally, cost visibility at scale can be challenging, as usage-based pricing may require careful monitoring to predict expenses.
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Cloudflare API Gateway Reviews and Ratings
- Senior Software Engineer50M-1B USDIT ServicesReview Source
Centralized API Discovery Improves Visibility and Security Across Multiple Endpoints
Cloudflare API Gateway has been a strong backbone for tightening out API security while simplifying how traffic flows through our edge, especially as our number of services and endpoints exploded. In day-to-day use, Cloudflare API Gateway feels like an extension of the broader Cloudflare stack rather than a standalone product, which is exactly what we needed for consistent policies across web and API traffic. Once we turned on discovery and schema validation, we finally had real visibility in to which APIs were actually exposed and how they were being used, instead of guessing from backend logs and developer notes. Our core problem was "shadow APIs" and inconsistent protections: teams would spin up new endpoints behind the CDN, but security rules and rate limiting didn't always follow, which left gaps we only noticed when something went wrong. With API discovery and central management those endpoints now show up automatically, so they can be brought under the same authentication, schema checks and abuse protections as the rest. The single-pane view changed our incident pattern: instead of chasing odd strikes in backend logs, we can see abusive or broken traffic at the edge, block or throttle it there, and keep downstream systems stable. It also saved a lot of developer time that previously wen t into custom nginx rules or ad-hoc gateways for each service. - CHIEF INFORMATION SECURITY OFFICER<50M USDIT ServicesReview Source
Cloudflare API Gateway Offers Strong Security and Performance With Minor Drawbacks
Overall experience with Cloudfare API Gateway has been very positive. The solution provides strong security and visibility with minimal impact on performance. Deployment is straightforward, especially if you have previous Cloudflare integrations. The platform scales reliably and integrates well with other cloud-based services, which simplifies management and reduces the need for additional tools and costs. While some advanced configurations require a deeper undestaing of the platform, and the documentation cloud be more detailed in complex scenarios, the overall impressions, performance and security capabilities meet our expectations. In general, cloud-based API gateways have proven to be a solid and effective solution for protecting APIs and improving the visibility into API traffic. - Lead Devop Manager50M-1B USDBankingReview Source
Cloudflare API Gateway Enables Fast Onboarding But Lacks Deep Analytics Tools
Cloudflare API Gateway has been positive and aligns well with enterprise-scale, security first API operations. The platform excels at protecting API's at the edge with minimal latency impact, strong integration with Cloudflare's broader security stack and straightforward deployment. - Software Developer<50M USDServices (non-Government)Review Source
Centralized API Security Provides Robust Protections but Advanced Features Are Restricted
It offers strong API security built-in with centralized management and monitoring, along with improved API performance, reducing backend load with a customizable ecosystem. - Product Manager<50M USDIT ServicesReview Source
Great global performance and security, limited on transformations and orchestration
Cloudflare API Gateway / API Shield is a good product but it really depends on your applications and infrastructure. It's not an all encompassing service but in certain cases it's the best alternative. If you have your services on Cloudflare then it's a no brainer to use it but it's available only on Enterprise plans. It's not a full life-cycle management tool, it's more of a security&routing service. It offers great protection and delivery network but there are some hard to customise parts especially in timeouts and transformation of requests.