Table of Contents

Cloudflare Tunnel (Optional)

Cloudflare Tunnel lets you expose services without opening inbound ports on your server or router. Traffic flows from your server outward to Cloudflare's edge, which then routes public requests back through the tunnel.

What this page covers

  • When to use Cloudflare Tunnel vs. a traditional reverse proxy
  • Installing and authenticating cloudflared
  • Creating a tunnel and routing hostnames to local services
  • Running cloudflared as a systemd service or Docker container

When to use Cloudflare Tunnel

Use Cloudflare Tunnel when:

  • Your server is behind NAT and you cannot or do not want to open ports.
  • You want Cloudflare's DDoS protection and access policies in front of your services.
  • You prefer not to expose your server's IP address publicly.

Note: Cloudflare Tunnel requires your domain to be on Cloudflare's nameservers.