Zyre or Cloudflare: two reverse proxies, two different jobs

Both sit in front of your site, but Cloudflare is first a global delivery network, Zyre a web application firewall tuned to your technology. What separates them, and when Cloudflare is the better choice.

6 minUpdated Oct 27, 2026

It is a fair question: Cloudflare and Zyre work on the same principle. Your domain points to them, every visitor goes through their servers, and the request reaches your site only after inspection. The difference is not in the principle but in what each one is built for.

Two different jobs

Cloudflare is first a global content delivery network (CDN): it caches your pages close to visitors, speeds the site up and absorbs flooding attacks at the scale of its network. The web application firewall is one of its many services. Zyre does one job: inspect every request with rules written for your site's technology, tell you what was blocked and why, and watch your known vulnerabilities and your uptime.

Point by point

Criterion	Cloudflare	Zyre
Setup	On the Free and Pro plans, your name servers (DNS) move to Cloudflare. Keeping your own DNS provider (the "CNAME" setup) is limited to the Business and Enterprise plans.	A single record to change at your current DNS provider, which stays yours.
Firewall rules	The Free plan includes a managed ruleset against the most severe, high-profile flaws. The full rulesets (including the OWASP one) require Pro or above, and you tune them yourself.	A rule set chosen for your site's declared technology (WordPress, PrestaShop, Laravel…), active from switch-over, with no tuning.
Flooding attacks (DDoS)	Cloudflare's strong point: its global network absorbs volumetric attacks no small provider can.	Application-layer protection: per-address rate limiting and "Under attack" mode. Saturation of the network link is handled by the host's network protection.
Caching and speed	Yes, it is its core business.	No. Zyre caches nothing: your pages are served by your server, as before.
Beyond the firewall	A very broad catalogue (DNS, Workers, Zero Trust, email…), configured product by product.	In the same dashboard: known-vulnerability watch for your technologies, uptime monitoring, reports, multi-site management for agencies.
Language	Interface and documentation mostly in English.	Interface, alerts and documentation in French and English.

When Cloudflare is the better choice

Your audience is global and load speed far from your server matters: a CDN does what Zyre does not.
You are a plausible target for volumetric attacks (online games, high-profile media, political sites): only a very large network absorbs them.
Your team can write and maintain its own rules, and prefers a highly configurable generic tool to a rule set already chosen for it.
Your budget is zero: Cloudflare's Free plan already protects against the most severe flaws, which is better than nothing.

When Zyre is the better choice

You want protection tuned to your CMS or framework without having to pick or adjust rules.
You want to keep your DNS provider without moving to a top-tier plan.
You want to read why a request was blocked, and be warned in plain language when a flaw hits your tools.
You manage several client sites and want one dashboard for all of them.

And both together?

It is possible if your site is already served by Cloudflare: Zyre sits in front, and your origin stays the one Cloudflare serves. You then add a hop to every request's path; it only makes sense if you keep Cloudflare for its caching and want Zyre's rules and monitoring on top. See the origin server.