Cloudflare

Cloudflare covers roughly 20% of DNS and has an excellent API. DNS.GLOBAL offers full automation against Cloudflare.

Status

Full automation. Live in Phase 1.

Authentication method

Guided API Token. Cloudflare does not offer public third-party OAuth client registration — their OAuth endpoints are scoped to first-party tooling. Instead, DNS.GLOBAL directs the user to a prefilled token-creation URL with the minimum required permissions. The user creates the token, pastes it back, and we validate it immediately.

Why not OAuth?

Cloudflare OAuth is partner-only (Cloudflare Technology Partners) and is not available for Phase 1. The Guided API Token flow is the supported path.

The token template requests exactly three permissions:

FieldTypeRequiredDescription
Zone.Zone:ReadpermissionyesZone discovery — find the zone for the domain.
Zone.DNS:ReadpermissionyesChange planning and conflict detection.
Zone.DNS:EditpermissionyesRecord deployment.

Supported record types

A, AAAA, CNAME, TXT, and MX are supported for automatic deployment.

Special behaviors

  • Apex CNAME flattening. Cloudflare flattens CNAME records at the zone apex automatically. DNS.GLOBAL accounts for this when building the change plan.
  • Proxied records. Cloudflare's proxy (orange-cloud) flag is handled explicitly — records are created unproxied unless your template opts in.
  • Batch support. Yes — the adapter uses Cloudflare's batch DNS API.

Known limitations

  • API token rate limits apply per Cloudflare account.
  • If the pasted token is missing a required permission, validation fails fast and the user is re-prompted with the corrected template URL.

Testing

Cloudflare offers a real sandbox suitable for end-to-end testing. Create a test zone, generate a token from the guided template, and run the connect flow against your test domain.

Tip

Cloudflare is the smoothest provider for a first integration — fast propagation and a reliable batch API.

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