Setup

Note

If the CNAME target is on the same zone as the CNAME record, Cloudflare proceeds with CNAME flattening and ignores the CNAME Flattening setting.

For your zone apex

CNAME flattening occurs by default for all plans when your domain uses a CNAME record for its zone apex (example.com, meaning the record Name is set to @).

For all CNAME records

For zones on paid plans, you can choose to flatten all CNAME records. This option is useful for DNS-only (unproxied) CNAME records. Proxied records are flattened by default as they return Cloudflare anycast IPs.

Dashboard

1. Log in to the Cloudflare dashboard ↗ and select your account and domain.
2. Go to DNS > Settings.
3. Turn on the option CNAME flattening for all CNAME records.

API

Make a PATCH request to the Update DNS Settings endpoint and set flatten_all_cnames to true in the request body.

Warning

If a CNAME target is being used to verify a domain for a third-party service, turning on CNAME flattening for all CNAME records may cause the verification to fail since the CNAME record itself will not be returned directly.

Per record

Paid zones also have the option of flattening specific CNAME records.

Dashboard

1. Log in to the Cloudflare dashboard ↗ and select your account and domain.
2. In DNS > Settings, make sure that CNAME flattening for all CNAME records is turned off.
3. Go to DNS > Records and find the CNAME record you would like to flatten.
4. Select Edit and turn on the Flatten option.
5. Select Save to confirm.

Unavailable flatten option

For the following cases, Flatten will not be available:

• The record is at the zone apex.
• The record is already proxied, which means it will be flattened by default.
• CNAME flattening for all CNAME records is turned on, which means you cannot override it per record.

API

With the available API endpoints, specify the following for each CNAME record in the request body:

"settings": {
  "flatten_cname": true
}