Introducing Cloudflare Traces: follow requests through our entire platform

Summary

Cloudflare Traces, in open beta, extends tracing beyond Workers to the full request path, capturing spans for security, transformations, cache, routing, Workers, and origin handling in one timeline. Users set a baseline sampling rate and use Trace Rules to override it for specific traffic, enabling targeted debugging without increasing volume across the domain. The feature accepts and forwards W3C traceparent headers for distributed tracing and exports spans via OTLP to any compatible backend, with no instrumentation required. It reveals why a request was blocked, which rule acted, whether the URL was rewritten, and where time was spent between cache, origin, and the application. Pricing, effective December 1, 2026, is based on ingestion and retention: free tier 0.5 GB daily with 7-day retention, paid plans 50 GB ingestion and up to 365-day retention.

Takeaways

1. 1

   Cloudflare Traces automatically captures spans for security rules, transformations, cache decisions, routing, Worker execution, and origin handling without additional instrumentation.

2. 2

   Trace Rules allow overriding the baseline sampling rate for specific traffic using the Cloudflare Rules language, enabling targeted debugging without increasing volume across the domain.

3. 3

   Pricing is based on data ingestion and retention: free tier includes 0.5 GB daily ingestion with 7-day retention, paid plans offer 50 GB ingestion and up to 365-day retention.

FAQ