# Cloudflare: how AI models rank it, September 2026

IT AI Recommendation Index, September 2026 Edition. Named in 170 judge labels across 8 categories by 12 of 12 models. Page: https://it-ai-index.com/vendors/cloudflare/

## Standing by category

| Category | Share | Rank | Negative rate | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DDoS protection | 93% | 1 | 2% | 66 |
| Content delivery networks | 80% | 1 | 9% | 64 |
| Web application firewalls | 55% | 1 | 0% | 33 |
| Cloud hosting | 0% | 42 | 50% | 2 |
| LLM gateways and observability | 0% | 25 | 0% | 2 |
| API gateways | 0% | 31 | 0% | 1 |
| Email security | 0% | 22 | 0% | 1 |
| Zero trust network access | 0% | 25 | 0% | 1 |

## What the models said for it

- "For most 500‑person organizations, a cloud‑based, always‑on, unmetered provider (Cloudflare, EdgeOne, or a hybrid cloud‑on‑prem solution) will give you the best blend" (GLM 4.7 FlashX, DDoS)
- "Cloudflare remains the most popular CDN choice in 2026, offering an exceptional combination of performance, security, and accessibility with its generous free tier." (Claude Haiku 4.5, CDN)
- "### 1. The All-Rounder: Cloudflare ... Choose Cloudflare if you need to consolidate vendors (DNS + Security + CDN) and your IT team is relatively small." (Qwen 3.7 Flash, CDN)
- "Cloudflare (Application Security): Excellent for mid-market. It bundles DNS, CDN, WAF, Bot Management, and DDoS mitigation into a single control panel" (Gemini 3.5 Flash, WAF)

## And against it

- "Cloudflare's CDN, as it may slow down your website, and pointing your DNS to Cloudflare can make timely recovery unlikely in case of an outage." (Llama 4 Maverick, CDN)
- "Providers to be cautious about: Cloudflare, Akamai, Fastly, Amazon CloudFront ... frequently criticized by developers for its aggressive approach to bot detection" (Qwen 3.7 Flash, CDN)
- "All major CDNs studied (including Cloudflare, Microsoft Azure, Amazon, and Fastly) have been found to have back-end TLS connections vulnerable to security issues" (Claude Haiku 4.5, CDN)
- "Cloudflare | Frequent outages ... US-based (CLOUD Act data access risks for EU/GDPR). Potential slowdowns vs. direct hosting." (Grok 4.1 Fast, CDN)

## Record

- Method: https://it-ai-index.com/methodology/
- Raw judge labels and full responses: https://it-ai-index.com/data/
- License: CC BY 4.0. Cite as IT AI Recommendation Index, September 2026 Edition, it-ai-index.com.