Cloudflare Tunnel Client

cloudflared is the free and open-source command-line client for Cloudflare Tunnel (formerly Argo Tunnel), a service that provides secure, outbound connections from servers to Cloudflare's edge network without opening inbound firewall ports. Developed by Cloudflare (founded by Matthew Prince, Lee Holloway, and Michelle Zatlyn in 2009, headquartered in San Francisco, NYSE-listed as NET), cloudflared creates a persistent, encrypted tunnel between a server and Cloudflare's network, making the server accessible through Cloudflare without exposing its public IP. Key features: zero-trust access: cloudflared establishes outbound-only connections to Cloudflare's edge, eliminating the need for inbound firewall rules. This improves security by not exposing services directly to the internet. Tunnel creation: running cloudflared tunnel creates a secure tunnel that connects the local server to Cloudflare's global network (300+ cities). Traffic is routed through Cloudflare's CDN and security stack (WAF, DDoS protection, rate limiting) before reaching the origin. Named tunnels: persistent tunnels identified by a UUID and name. Multiple ingress rules route traffic to different local services based on hostname, path, or protocol. Quick tunnels: temporary tunnels (trycloudflare.com) for testing without a Cloudflare account. Configuration: YAML configuration file (config.yml) defines tunnel UUID, credentials, ingress rules (service URLs, origins), and protocol settings. Origin services: supports HTTP, HTTPS, TCP, Unix socket, and hello (test) origins. WARP connector: integrates with Cloudflare WARP for device-to-cloud connectivity. Protocol: QUIC (default, for better performance) or HTTP/2 for tunnel transport. Logging: structured JSON logging for observability. Metrics: Prometheus-compatible metrics endpoint for monitoring tunnel health. Automatic reconnection. Cross-platform (Linux, macOS, Windows, Docker). Go. Apache-2.0.