Internal zones
Internal DNS zones are groupings of internal DNS records. While public DNS records contain information about resources that you want to make available to the public Internet, internal DNS records allow you to manage resources that should only be available within your private network.
Refer to Manage internal zones for a full list of configuration conditions and step-by-step instructions.
Internal DNS zones do not get assigned Cloudflare nameservers and can only be queried via Cloudflare Gateway when linked to a DNS view. The Gateway configuration must exist within the same Cloudflare account where the internal zone exists.
During an internal DNS query resolution, if no internal record is found within a matching internal zone, Cloudflare will check if the matching internal zone is referencing another internal zone. Successive references can be followed with a maximum of five references in a chain.
Each internal zone can only reference one other zone, but the same zone can be referenced by multiple internal zones. Public zones cannot be used as reference zones.
Refer to Set up reference zones for step-by-step instructions.
Internal zones can contain the same DNS record types that Cloudflare supports for public zones.
You can manage internal DNS records in the same way as you would manage public DNS records, with the difference that proxy status does not apply to internal DNS records.
Refer to Manage DNS records or to the API documentation for further guidance.