Updated 23 September 2026 · Rates re-checked against Cloudflare's Workers pricing docs and plans page
Cloudflare API Gateway Pricing 2026: Cheapest at Scale, Free Forever at Low Volume
Cloudflare is the cost-leader for API gateway services at almost every traffic level. The free plan carries 100,000 Workers requests a day, permanently, which is roughly three million a month at an even rate. Workers Paid is $5/month with 10 million requests included, then $0.30 per additional million. Zero data transfer fees across the board. Here is what it actually costs, when it wins, and when it does not.
Cloudflare API Gateway pricing summary (2026)
Free
$0/mo
100,000 requests/day, permanent
Workers Paid
$5/mo
10M included, then $0.30/M
Business
$200/mo
Billed annually ($250 monthly); WAF and priority support
Enterprise (Contract)
Custom
No published rate; API Shield sold here
Data transfer (egress) is $0 on every tier. Re-checked 23 September 2026 against developers.cloudflare.com/workers/platform/pricing and cloudflare.com/plans.
Quick Verdict
Cloudflare is the cheapest API gateway at almost every scale. 100,000 free requests a day, $5/month for 10 million on Workers Paid and $0.30/million beyond that, zero data transfer fees. The catch: it is an edge-first model that does not feel native if your backend lives entirely in AWS or Azure, and gRPC support is still beta. For cost-sensitive teams with public-facing REST APIs, Cloudflare is difficult to beat.
Cloudflare Pricing Tiers (2026)
Free
$0/mo
- 100,000 requests/day permanently
- Zero data transfer fees
- Basic DDoS protection
- No credit card required
- Workers runtime (10 ms CPU time per invocation)
Workers Paid
$5/mo
- 10M requests/month included
- $0.30/million beyond 10M
- Zero data transfer fees
- 30M CPU-milliseconds included, then $0.02/million
- Cron triggers, Durable Objects
- Basic rate limiting
Business / Enterprise
$200+/mo
- Custom request volume
- Enterprise rates negotiated, none published
- API Shield sold as an Enterprise add-on
- Advanced WAF + mTLS
- Priority support + SLA
- 100% uptime SLA on Business and Contract
Re-checked 23 September 2026. Workers Paid is a $5/month minimum for the account (10M requests and 30M CPU-milliseconds included, then $0.30/million requests and $0.02/million CPU-ms), per Cloudflare's Workers pricing docs. Business is $200/month billed annually ($250 monthly) per cloudflare.com/plans. Enterprise (Contract) pricing is negotiated and Cloudflare publishes no rate card for it.
Monthly Cost by Volume: Cloudflare vs AWS vs Kong
The table below shows total monthly cost including data transfer, using a 10 KB average payload. Cloudflare has zero egress fees; AWS charges $0.09/GB outbound. At 100M requests with 10 KB payloads that is 954 GB of outbound transfer, adding $85.86 to the AWS bill that Cloudflare users pay nothing for.
| Monthly Volume | Cloudflare | AWS HTTP API | Kong Konnect (requests only) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1M/month | $0.00 (free plan) | $1.95 | $25-$200 (plan fee, 1M included) |
| 3M/month | $0.00 (free plan) | $5.85 | $425-$600 (plan + $400 overage) |
| 10M/month | $5 (Workers Paid, 10M included) | $19.54 | $1,825-$2,000 (Plus hard cap) |
| 50M/month | $5 + $12 = ~$17 | $97.68 | Enterprise quote (Plus caps at 10M) |
| 100M/month | $5 + $27 = ~$32 | $195.37 | Enterprise quote (Plus caps at 10M) |
| 500M/month | $5 + $147 = ~$152 | $946.84 | Enterprise quote |
| 1B/month | $5 + $297 = ~$302 | $1,843.67 | Enterprise quote |
Cloudflare figures are the Workers Paid request line only ($5/month plus $0.30 per million above the 10M included); CPU time is billed separately at $0.02 per million CPU-milliseconds above the 30M included, which adds a few dollars at these volumes. Kong Konnect figures show the Plus plan: control-plane fee ($25 Serverless to $200 Hybrid per month) with 1M requests included, then $200 per additional million, hard-capped at 10M/month. See Kong pricing page for full breakdown.
Why Cloudflare Is Cheap: The Economics
Cloudflare's pricing model is fundamentally different from hyperscaler pricing. AWS and Azure build regional data centers and charge for every byte that leaves their network. Cloudflare operates a global anycast network with 300+ points of presence and spreads its infrastructure cost across millions of customers. The result: zero egress fees, flat request pricing, and bundled security that would cost hundreds of dollars per month as AWS add-ons.
What Cloudflare includes for free
- Zero outbound data transfer charges (see EgressCost.com)
- DDoS protection (all plans, including free)
- Edge caching (served from 300+ PoPs)
- HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 support
- SSL/TLS certificate management
- IPv6 support
What costs extra on Cloudflare
- Logpush (log streaming): $0.05/million events
- Workers KV storage: $0.50/GB stored
- Durable Objects: $0.15/million requests
- R2 object storage: $0.015/GB stored
- Advanced API Shield (schema validation, mTLS enforcement)
- Priority support (requires Business or Enterprise)
Worked Example: SaaS Startup Migration
Scenario: Moving 50M monthly requests from AWS REST API to Cloudflare Workers Paid
Before: AWS REST API
After: Cloudflare Workers Paid
Monthly saving: $233 (93% reduction). Annual saving: $2,796.
Assumes REST API to Workers Paid migration. The AWS WAF line is request fees only; AWS adds $5/month per web ACL and $1/month per rule on top. The Cloudflare line is the request charge only; CPU time above the 30M CPU-milliseconds included bills at $0.02 per million. Migration engineering cost: 40-80 hours one-time. Payback period: under 1 month.
Cloudflare Workers vs Cloudflare API Shield: The Difference
There is frequent confusion between these two Cloudflare products. They serve different roles:
Cloudflare Workers
A serverless JavaScript/TypeScript execution environment that runs at Cloudflare's edge. You write code that handles incoming requests: routing, authentication logic, request transformation, response modification. This is what most teams use when they say "Cloudflare as API gateway" - they are building their gateway logic in Workers. Priced at $5/month for 10M requests included.
Cloudflare API Shield
A dedicated API security product that protects APIs without requiring custom code. Features include: OpenAPI schema validation (reject malformed requests automatically), JWT validation, mutual TLS enforcement, rate limiting per consumer, bot management, and API discovery (Cloudflare automatically maps your API endpoints). Cloudflare's documentation states these API security products are available to Enterprise customers only, as a paid add-on with no published price; mutual TLS with a Cloudflare-managed certificate authority is the one piece any plan can set up.
Many teams use both: Workers for the routing and transformation layer, API Shield for security enforcement. A startup might start with Workers alone ($5/month), then move to an Enterprise contract when it needs schema validation and API discovery, since that is the only plan on which Cloudflare sells API Shield.
Feature Parity vs AWS API Gateway
| Feature | Cloudflare | AWS API Gateway |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | 100,000 requests/day, permanent | 1M/month (12 months only) |
| Request pricing | $0.30/M (Workers Paid, after 10M) | $1.00/M (HTTP API) |
| Data transfer (outbound) | $0 (zero egress) | $0.09/GB |
| WAF | Managed ruleset free; full WAF Pro+ | Add-on ($0.60/M req + $5/web ACL/mo + $1/rule/mo) |
| DDoS protection | Included all plans | AWS Shield Standard (free) / Advanced ($3,000/mo) |
| Rate limiting | Included | Included (usage plans) |
| JWT / OAuth auth | Workers (any plan); API Shield is Enterprise | Yes (HTTP API native) |
| mTLS | Yes (Cloudflare-managed CA, any plan) | Yes (REST API only) |
| Caching | Free edge cache | $0.02 to $3.80/hour by cache size (REST API only) |
| Observability (logs) | Logpush $0.05/M events | CloudWatch $0.50/GB ingested |
| gRPC support | Beta | No native support |
When Cloudflare is the Wrong Choice
Cloudflare wins on cost at almost every scale, but it is not the right answer for every workload. Here are the cases where you should choose something else:
Your backend is entirely in AWS and IAM integration is critical
AWS API Gateway has native IAM authentication, Lambda authorizers tied to AWS IAM policies, and Cognito user pool integration. Replicating all of this in Cloudflare Workers requires custom code. If your entire stack is AWS and you rely heavily on IAM for API authorization, AWS API Gateway's tight integration is worth the premium.
You need gRPC-native support today
Cloudflare's gRPC proxying is beta as of June 2026, and Workers still cannot make outbound gRPC calls. Kong, AWS (via REST API proxy), and Apigee all have more mature gRPC support. If gRPC is a production requirement, do not depend on Cloudflare's beta implementation.
You need API monetization features built-in
Cloudflare does not have built-in API monetization, revenue sharing, or a developer portal. Apigee and Kong Enterprise both have these features. If you are selling API access as a product and need built-in billing and developer onboarding, Apigee is worth its significant premium. See the Apigee pricing page for details.
You are running Kubernetes-native workloads with complex multi-cluster routing
Kong Konnect and Traefik Hub are purpose-built for Kubernetes with service mesh integration, cluster-level rate limiting, and CRD-based configuration. Cloudflare Workers can proxy to Kubernetes services but does not have the same native Kubernetes integration. See the Kong pricing breakdown for Kubernetes-specific cost guidance.