How Cloudflare billing works
Cloudflare billing has a few moving parts. This page explains the full billing lifecycle, the different types of charges on your account, and how to read a typical invoice.
When you use paid Cloudflare products, billing follows this sequence:
- You subscribe: You pick a plan or turn on a paid add-on. Cloudflare records the date as the start of your billing cycle.
- Billing period runs: Your billing period is 30 days for monthly plans or 365 days for annual plans. During this period, Cloudflare tracks any usage-based consumption.
- Invoice generated: At the end of each billing period, Cloudflare generates an invoice that includes both flat-rate charges for the upcoming period and usage-based charges for the period that just ended.
- Payment attempted: Cloudflare automatically charges your primary payment method on file.
- Payment succeeds or fails: If payment succeeds, the invoice is marked as paid and your services continue. If payment fails, the retry process begins.
When an automatic payment fails, Cloudflare follows this process:
- Grace period begins: You have a 5-day grace period to resolve the payment issue.
- Retries: Cloudflare automatically retries the charge up to 5 times during the grace period.
- Manual payment: You can also pay the outstanding balance manually at any time during this period.
- Account restrictions: While the balance is unpaid, you cannot purchase new products, upgrade subscriptions, or modify your billing profile.
- Downgrade: If payment is not resolved within the grace period, your account is automatically downgraded to the Free plan. You lose access to paid features, but your websites remain active.
To restore paid services after a downgrade, you must pay the outstanding balance and then re-subscribe to each product individually.
A Cloudflare invoice can contain up to three types of charges. Understanding these is key to reading your invoice.
Domain plan charges (Free, Pro, Business, Enterprise) are flat-rate and billed at the start of each billing period for the upcoming month or year. Plans are billed per domain — if you have 20 domains on the Pro plan at $25/month, you will see a single line item for 20 x $25 = $500.
The line item lists the domain names the plan covers. For example:
| Description | Qty | Unit price | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare Pro Plan (example1.com, example2.com, example3.com) | 3 | $25.00 | $75.00 |
Add-on services with flat monthly fees — such as Load Balancing, Argo Smart Routing, Images Stream Bundle, or Cache Reserve — are billed at the start of each billing period. These appear as separate line items, each showing the product name and the period it covers.
For example:
| Description | Period | Qty | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic Load Balancing | Apr 14 - May 13 | 1 | $5.00 |
| Images Stream Bundle Basic | Apr 14 - May 13 | 1 | $5.00 |
| Smart Shield Argo Zone Level Plan - Basic | Apr 14 - May 13 | 1 | $5.00 |
Some add-ons have multiple sub-line items (for example, Load Balancing shows separate lines for pools, origins, health check intervals, and health check regions). Many of these sub-items may show $0.00 if they are within your included allocation.
Products like Workers, R2, Cache Reserve operations, Stream minutes viewed, and Argo data transfer are billed based on actual usage from the previous billing period. These line items show a date range for the prior period and a quantity representing your consumption.
For example:
| Description | Period | Qty | Unit price | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cache Reserve Reads | Mar 14 - Apr 13 | 166,865 | $0.36 per 1,000,000 | $0.36 |
| Smart Shield Argo Accelerated Gigabytes (First GB is included) | Mar 14 - Apr 13 | 34 | $0.10 | $3.40 |
| Stream Bundle Basic Minutes of Video Viewed (in thousands) | Mar 14 - Apr 13 | 198 | $1.00 per 1,000 | $1.00 |
Many usage-based products include a free tier (for example, "First 10GB-Month included" for R2 storage). If your usage stays within the free tier, the line item appears with a quantity of 0 and a $0.00 amount.
For more detail on which products use usage-based billing, refer to Usage-based billing.
A typical Cloudflare invoice may span several pages and contain 20-30+ line items. Here is how the invoice is organized:
The top of the invoice shows:
- Invoice number (for example, IN-62358374)
- Date of issue and date due (usually the same day for automatic payments)
- Company name — the name on your billing profile
- Cloudflare address and your billing address
- Total amount due
Line items are grouped by billing period. You will typically see two groups on every invoice:
| Section | Billing period | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Usage-based charges | Previous period (for example, Mar 14 - Apr 13) | Metered consumption from the period that just ended |
| Flat-rate charges | Upcoming period (for example, Apr 14 - May 13) | Plan fees, subscription fees, and add-on base fees prepaid for the next period |
Each line item shows:
- Description: Product name and any included free tier
- Date range: The billing period the charge covers
- Qty: Units consumed (for usage) or count (for plans/subscriptions)
- Unit price: Price per unit, sometimes shown as "per 1,000,000" or "per 50,000" for high-volume metrics
- Amount: Total charge for that line item
Many products have multiple billable dimensions (for example, R2 has separate lines for storage, data retrieval, Class A operations, and Class B operations). Even if you did not use a dimension during the billing period, it appears on the invoice at $0.00. This is expected — it confirms the product is active and shows that no charges were incurred for that specific dimension.
Example: R2 line items on a typical invoice
A single R2 subscription can generate six or more line items:
| Line item | What it measures |
|---|---|
| R2 Data Storage (First 10GB-Month included) | Stored data volume |
| R2 Storage Class A Operations (First 1M included) | Write/modify operations |
| R2 Storage Class B Operations (First 10M included) | Read/list operations |
| R2 Infrequent Access - Storage | IA tier storage |
| R2 Infrequent Access - Data Retrieval | IA tier reads |
| R2 Infrequent Access - Class A Operations | IA tier writes |
| R2 Infrequent Access - Class B Operations | IA tier reads |
If your usage falls within the included free tier, all of these show $0.00.
The bottom of the invoice shows:
- Subtotal: Sum of all line items
- Sales tax: If applicable based on your billing address (refer to Sales tax)
- Total and Amount due: The final amount charged
Your first paid purchase on a Cloudflare account sets the billing date for all future monthly subscriptions. Annual subscriptions follow their own cycle. You can have two different billing cycles on your account — one for monthly and one for annual subscriptions.
All billing dates use UTC (Coordinated Universal Time), not your local time zone. Make any plan changes or cancellations at least 24 hours before your billing date to avoid timing issues.
For example, if you upgrade to the Pro plan on the 10th of a month, all monthly charges bill on the 10th going forward.
- Upgrades take effect immediately. You are charged a prorated amount for the remainder of the current billing period, and your account is credited for the unused portion of the lower plan.
- Downgrades take effect at the end of the current billing period. You continue to have access to the higher-tier features until the new period begins.
- Cancellations follow the same timing as downgrades — service continues until the end of the billing period. Cloudflare does not issue refunds for the remaining time.
For details, refer to Billing policy.
- Invoices — Download and manage your invoices
- Usage-based billing — Products that bill based on consumption
- Billing policy — Refund policy, payment methods, and terms
- Pay an outstanding balance — Resolve unpaid invoices