Cloudflare: present on 557 sites, and what that says
Cloudflare is a content delivery network and security provider. A browser meets it because the site being visited routes its assets, its DNS or its bot filtering through Cloudflare, not because anyone chose to be measured by it; this index classifies it as infrastructure rather than tracking. It was seen on 557 of the 5,294 sites measured, 10.5 percent, which ranks third by site count among the 88 companies profiled here.
Very common, and a weak signal
Third by reach out of 88 companies is a lot of coverage, and it means Cloudflare's presence carries almost no information about what kind of site you are on. The site profiles bear that out. The median site where Cloudflare appears reached seven separate companies in total, which ranks 61st of 88 on that measure, made 31 requests, ranking 69th, and had one host classified as tracking, ranking 68th. In other words, the pages Cloudflare turns up on are lighter than those of most companies in this index.
Who else is on the same pages
Google was present on 407 of Cloudflare's 557 sites, 73.1 percent. After that the field thins out quickly: jsDelivr on 21.5 percent, OneTrust on 12 percent, Amazon CloudFront on 8.4 percent, Google Fonts and APIs and the jQuery CDN on 7.9 percent each, unpkg on 7.4 percent, Meta on 7.2 percent, Adobe Fonts on 7 percent and the Meta Pixel on 6.8 percent. That shape, one near-universal name and a long tail of asset hosts, is what a general-purpose slice of the web looks like rather than a particular industry.
Early contact on 522 of the 557
On 522 of Cloudflare's sites, 93.7 percent, at least one company was contacted before a consent choice could be made; 35 sites had none. That share ranks 44th of 88, the middle of the field. The crawl records how many companies were reached inside that window per site, not which ones, so this is a fact about the pages Cloudflare appears on rather than about Cloudflare's own requests. The median site had reached six companies by then, and its first third-party contact came at 572 milliseconds, with the quickest at 55 milliseconds.
A third of the sites carry a detected banner
A recognisable consent tool was detected on 197 of the 557 sites, 35.4 percent. An IAB TCF consent tool was seen alongside 81 of them and OneTrust alongside 78, then CookieYes on 14, Cookiebot on 9, Osano on 8 and Usercentrics on 5. Those numbers overlap rather than partition, since a site can present more than one banner. The median count of companies first seen after the consent window closes, across all 557 sites, is zero.
The spread behind the median
datadoghq.com reached 24 separate companies, 22 of them inside the early window, with first contact at 535 milliseconds. skyhigh.cloud reached fourteen, ten early. At the other end, cookielaw.org reached two companies, both early, on a page carrying a OneTrust banner, and pubmatic.com reached six with first contact at 191 milliseconds. who.int reached eight, all early, at 340 milliseconds; flickr.com eight, all early, behind an Osano banner; tinyurl.com five; appsflyer.com five; onelink.me five; wiley.com five; ea.com eight, seven early; criteo.com twelve, eight early.
| Site | Companies | Before consent | First contact |
|---|---|---|---|
| criteo.com | 12 | 8 | 495 ms |
| flickr.com | 8 | 8 | 457 ms |
| pubmatic.com | 6 | 6 | 191 ms |
| who.int | 8 | 8 | 340 ms |
| tinyurl.com | 5 | 5 | 290 ms |
| appsflyer.com | 5 | 5 | 625 ms |
| wiley.com | 5 | 5 | 1092 ms |
| datadoghq.com | 24 | 22 | 535 ms |
| ea.com | 8 | 7 | 368 ms |
| cookielaw.org | 2 | 2 | 597 ms |
| onelink.me | 5 | 5 | 687 ms |
| skyhigh.cloud | 14 | 10 | 1005 ms |
| Tool | Sites |
|---|---|
| IAB TCF consent tool | 81 |
| OneTrust | 78 |
| CookieYes | 14 |
| Cookiebot | 9 |
| Osano | 8 |
| Usercentrics | 5 |
The six most common are listed. The remaining 2 of 197 sites with a banner carry something outside that six. One tool is recorded per site, so these counts never overlap.
Seen on the same pages
Companies most often contacted by the same sites. Co-presence only — the crawl records what arrived, not who called whom.
- GoogleTogether on 407 of these sites
- jsDelivrTogether on 120 of these sites
- OneTrustTogether on 67 of these sites
- Amazon CloudFrontTogether on 47 of these sites
- Google Fonts / APIsTogether on 44 of these sites
- jQuery CDNTogether on 44 of these sites
- unpkgTogether on 41 of these sites
- MetaTogether on 40 of these sites
Questions
Is Cloudflare a tracker?
This index classifies it as a content delivery network and security provider, not as tracking. It is counted as a separate company a page contacts, because that is what it is, but the classification is infrastructure.
How often does Cloudflare appear?
On 557 of the 5,294 sites measured, or 10.5 percent, which ranks third by site count among the 88 companies in this index.
Do Cloudflare sites load more third parties than others?
The opposite, mostly. The median site where Cloudflare appears reached seven companies and made 31 requests, ranking 61st and 69th of 88 companies on those two measures.
What does the 93.7 percent figure mean?
It is the share of Cloudflare's 557 sites, 522 of them, where at least one company was contacted before the point a consent banner could have been answered. It does not say which company that was.
Can I see this for a specific site?
MurmStack performs the same measurement on a page you have open, listing each company contacted and the moment it was first reached.