Why does CloudFlare provide CloudFare Warp (1.1.1.1) for free?

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1

Cloudflare warp provides actual stable vpn (albeit limited to local locations) for free worldwide, with actual decent speeds (>300mbps), sometimes even improving my original internet speeds. How and why does CloudFlare provide this for free?

They’ve got a good reputation for internet security as a company, so they have no reason to sell users’ data for profit and ruin their image for short term profit. Also, acquiring actual premium routes (better than that of default providers) is not cheap, so selling user data wouldn’t be that profitable anyways.

Cloudflare warp goated tho

2

Their initial announcement set out the reasons pretty well why it’s free: https://blog.cloudflare.com/1111-warp-better-vpn/

Essentially:

  • The freemium model with WARP+
  • It’s a core part of the wider Zero Trust business offering.

Plus something not mentioned but is my hypothesis: Being traditionally a CDN they probably have a load of transit contracts in place for fixed size pipes (i.e. bidirectional) but CDN usage is very heavy in one direction (the uplink to external transit to deliver content to end users). WARP users probably help to even out this imbalance by also utilising the downlinks to fetch resources through those peers when visiting sites outside of the cloudflare network).

3

I’m assuming there’s also a side benefit for their business. Many people who leverage their free products are also people who end up making recommendations or decisions for these types of products in their workplace. If they have some familiarity and a good experience with it, the more likely they are to recommend it.

4

If it’s free then you are the product. DNS traffic has value

5

It’s generous the services they provide free for websites too. For about a decade, they have been serving 99% of my website traffic (1TB/month), and I pay only for domain name registery.

6

Would bet dollars to donuts it’s also a weighting mechanism / factor in at least some of their security products, even if they’re not logging per se.

7

They sell so many premium products this way. There are extra features to the paid plans that can manage complex sites with the domain

8

Well their main business is b2b, and they have big datacenters for that. Hence, they can afford side dish for peasants.

Also your traffic inflate their statistics in which corporate thinks “wow so good” then they use their service.

9

Damn you Cloudflare. Why the hell do you want to provide me with free services?

10

They track you. That’s the rule, if is free, you are the product.

11

How does an VPN improve speed?

12

If its too cheap or free, you’re the product.

13

There’s a free version. Then there’s a business version which is reasonably priced. The enterprise pricing is absolutely out of this world (it’s not listed). They turned their first profit in 2022. I love Cloudflare, but if it came out they were an NSA front, I wouldn’t be surprised either. :rofl:

14

Cloudflare’s WARP service, while offered for free, has several strategies for generating revenue:

  1. WARP+ Premium Service: Cloudflare plans to introduce a premium version called WARP+, which will provide enhanced speed by utilizing Cloudflare’s private backbone and Argo technology. This premium service will be available for a low monthly fee, appealing to users who want even better performance.
  2. Freemium Model: Cloudflare has successfully used a freemium model in its B2B services, and it aims to replicate this success in the consumer space with WARP. The free version attracts a large user base, which can then be converted to paying customers for the premium service.
  3. Enterprise VPN Opportunities: Cloudflare sees potential in the enterprise VPN market. By first establishing a strong consumer VPN, they can leverage that experience to create a superior enterprise VPN solution, which companies would pay for.
  4. Enhanced Services for Cloudflare Customers: As more users adopt WARP, Cloudflare can optimize the performance of its existing services for those users. This integration can lead to increased value for Cloudflare’s core business, making their offerings more attractive to businesses that rely on Cloudflare for web performance and security
15

I am skeptical about any tech company that says it is not gathering, selling or sharing user data. they can hide it in the teeny tiny fine print and can change their policies overnight too. for instance Little Snitch 6 detected on that blog link an attempted extrusion to scout-cdn.salesloft.com on UDP port 443 (quic). so what is that about?

16

The sad news is that they took on a lot of big giveaways but are not doing well financially.

I truly do not want to see them go down despite their current fiscal situation.

If they do decide to charge and end free plans I would not be upset with their decision and root for them to survive.

17

Yep, the transit contracts are hinted in https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-relative-cost-of-bandwidth-around-the-world/, essentially they already pay for the bandwidth to handle the premium CDN users regardless of the actual traffic, so there’s always enough spare capacity for the free users.

Also, being a major CDN means a significant amount of traffic would’ve been served from their nodes anyway, this is also why Cloudflare, alongside Akamai and Fastly, join Apple’s Private Relay, they don’t spend extra for the bulk of the traffic.

18

True, the upload speeds are drastically slower than the download speeds when I do an internet speed test. Might have something to do with unequal bidirectional traffic you mentioned

19

If it wasn’t for their free plan, I wouldn’t have switched my previous employer to them. They had 35+ sites on Pro plan, plus domain registration. I think we were paying around $950 a month.

I personally have the Pro plan for my own business and plan to upgrade to Pro for my personal zone as well next year.

20

Does warp reroute you to their DNS servers? If so, that’s kinda confusing. What is the value of having more people use your DNS server for free lol, it’s not like people know what DNS servers they’re using, and you don’t get product clout from ppl using ur DNS servers.