Cloudflare Trace Pricing: Plans, Tiers, and Cost Examples (2026)

Pricing overview

Cloudflare Trace provides distributed tracing, log analysis, and metrics specifically for applications deployed on Cloudflare Workers. Its pricing model is integrated into the broader Cloudflare Workers platform, which means developers do not purchase Cloudflare Trace as a standalone product but rather as a feature of their Workers plan Cloudflare Workers and Pages plans. This integration aims to streamline observability for serverless functions and edge applications within the Cloudflare ecosystem.

The core cost components for Cloudflare Trace are associated with the consumption of resources by Cloudflare Workers, including:

• Requests: The number of invocations of a Worker.
• CPU Time: The processing time consumed by a Worker during execution.
• Trace Spans: Individual operations within a distributed trace that Cloudflare Trace records.
• Log Lines: The volume of log data generated by Workers and stored for analysis.

While the Workers Free plan offers a foundational tier, higher usage or additional features necessitate upgrading to a paid plan, such as Workers Bundled. The pricing structure is designed to scale with application usage, moving from fixed allowances in the free tier to metered billing for resources like CPU time and network egress beyond certain thresholds Cloudflare Workers Trace documentation. Developers should consult the official Cloudflare Workers pricing page for the most current and detailed information on specific rates for requests, CPU time, and data storage Cloudflare Workers pricing details.

Plans and tiers

Cloudflare Trace's capabilities are available across Cloudflare Workers plans, which are structured to accommodate various usage levels, from individual developers to large enterprises. The primary plans influencing Cloudflare Trace's effective cost are the Free plan and the Workers Bundled plan, with custom Enterprise options also available.

Cloudflare Workers Free

• Pricing: $0 per month.
• Key Limits: Includes a substantial free allowance for Workers requests (e.g., 100,000 requests per day), CPU time (e.g., 50ms per request average), and limited egress. Trace data collection is generally included within these operational limits, though specific storage durations or advanced analysis features may be restricted.
• Best For: Individual developers, small projects, testing, and proof-of-concept applications that require basic observability without significant traffic volumes.

Cloudflare Workers Bundled

• Pricing: Starts at $5 per month.
• Key Limits: Extends the free allowances significantly and introduces metered billing for usage beyond these increased thresholds. This plan typically offers more generous allowances for requests, CPU time, and egress, with per-unit costs for overages. It also unlocks more advanced features for observability and control, which directly impact the utility of Cloudflare Trace.
• Best For: Production applications, growing projects, and developers requiring higher performance, greater reliability, and more comprehensive observability features for their Cloudflare Workers deployments.

Enterprise plans

• Pricing: Custom pricing, negotiated directly with Cloudflare sales.
• Key Limits: Tailored to specific enterprise requirements, offering significantly higher or unlimited allowances, dedicated support, and advanced security and compliance features.
• Best For: Large organizations, high-traffic applications, and businesses with complex regulatory or operational demands that leverage Cloudflare Workers at scale.

The table below summarizes the key aspects of the main Cloudflare Workers plans relevant to Cloudflare Trace users:

Free tier and limits

Cloudflare Trace is accessible through the Cloudflare Workers Free plan, providing a no-cost entry point for developers to utilize distributed tracing and observability for their serverless functions. This free tier is designed to support initial development, testing, and small-scale applications without incurring direct costs Cloudflare Free plan details.

Key limits associated with the free tier that impact Cloudflare Trace usage include:

• Daily Request Allowance: Typically 100,000 requests per day for Cloudflare Workers. Each request processed by a Worker can generate trace spans and log lines, which are then subject to the overall Workers plan limits.
• CPU Time: A certain amount of CPU time (e.g., 50ms average per request) is included. Excessive CPU usage by Workers can lead to billing on paid plans or throttling on the free tier, indirectly affecting the volume of trace data generated efficiently.
• Monthly Invocations: A total of 1,000,000 Workers invocations per month are included.
• Egress Bandwidth: Limited free egress bandwidth. While Cloudflare Trace itself doesn't generate significant egress, the applications it monitors do, and exceeding these limits can necessitate a paid plan.
• Data Retention: The free tier typically includes standard data retention for logs and traces, which may be shorter than what is offered on paid plans. Specific retention periods can be found in the Cloudflare documentation Cloudflare Trace documentation on data retention.

Developers using the free tier for Cloudflare Trace should monitor their usage metrics within the Cloudflare dashboard to ensure they remain within the allocated limits. Going beyond these thresholds will either result in an upgrade prompt to a paid plan or potential service limitations, depending on the specific resource.

Real-world cost examples

Understanding Cloudflare Trace costs requires considering common usage patterns for Cloudflare Workers. Since Trace is bundled, its cost is proportional to the Workers' resource consumption. Here are a few scenarios:

Scenario 1: Small personal project (Free tier)

• Application: A personal website powered by Cloudflare Workers, handling a few thousand requests per day.
• Usage: Average 5,000 requests/day (150,000/month), minimal CPU time (under 10ms per request), and basic logging.
• Trace Impact: Cloudflare Trace automatically captures distributed traces and logs for these Workers. Given the low volume, all activity remains well within the Cloudflare Workers Free plan's limits (100,000 requests/day, 1,000,000 invocations/month).
• Estimated Cost: $0 per month.

Scenario 2: Medium-sized API backend (Workers Bundled)

• Application: A backend API for a mobile application, handling moderate traffic spikes.
• Usage: Average 100,000 requests/day, peaking at 200,000 requests/day (3,000,000-6,000,000/month). Each request uses about 20ms of CPU time. Generates moderate log volumes.
• Trace Impact: The request volume exceeds the free tier's daily limit but is well within the Workers Bundled plan's included requests (10,000,000/month) or its low-cost overages. The CPU usage is also comfortably within the Bundled plan's allowances. Cloudflare Trace provides full observability for these operations.
• Estimated Cost: Starts at $5 per month (base Bundled plan). Additional costs for overages on requests or CPU time would be minimal, likely less than $10-$20 in total for this usage pattern, depending on exact overage rates Cloudflare Workers Bundled pricing.

Scenario 3: High-traffic data processing (Workers Bundled with significant overages)

• Application: A real-time data processing pipeline or an e-commerce API experiencing high volumes.
• Usage: Average 500,000 requests/day (15,000,000/month), with some Workers consuming up to 100ms of CPU per request. High volume of log lines generated for compliance and debugging.
• Trace Impact: The number of requests significantly exceeds the Workers Bundled plan's included 10 million requests. CPU time also pushes towards the higher end of the Bundled tier's efficient usage. Cloudflare Trace will collect extensive data, aiding in performance optimization and debugging under load.
• Estimated Cost: $5 per month (base Bundled plan) + significant overage charges. Assuming 5 million requests overage at $0.30 per million, this adds $1.50. CPU time overages, if applicable, would add more. The primary driver here is the total request count. Total estimated cost could range from $20 to $50 per month, depending on the exact CPU and egress usage beyond included amounts Cloudflare Workers pricing calculations.

How the pricing compares

Cloudflare Trace's pricing model, being deeply integrated within the Cloudflare Workers ecosystem, contrasts with standalone observability platforms like Datadog or New Relic, or open-source solutions like OpenTelemetry.

Integrated vs. Standalone Observability Platforms

• Cloudflare Trace: Its cost is tied directly to Cloudflare Workers usage. This can simplify billing for users already committed to the Cloudflare platform, as observability is an inherent feature rather than a separate subscription. The primary cost drivers are Workers requests, CPU time, and data egress, with trace and log data collection largely included within these operational parameters. This model can be cost-effective for applications built entirely on Cloudflare Workers, as there's no separate vendor lock-in or additional subscription for tracing specific to that environment.
• Datadog & New Relic: These platforms offer comprehensive observability across diverse environments (cloud, on-premise, serverless from various providers). Their pricing models are typically based on a combination of host monitoring, ingested log volume, ingested trace span volume, and custom metrics. For example, Datadog charges per host, per GB of logs ingested, and per million APM spans Datadog pricing overview. New Relic follows a similar model, often based on data ingestion (GBs) and user licenses New Relic pricing details. While powerful and versatile, using these with Cloudflare Workers would incur separate costs in addition to the Workers' execution fees. Developers would need to configure Workers to emit data to these external platforms, potentially incurring egress costs from Cloudflare.

Cloudflare Trace vs. Open-Source Tracing (OpenTelemetry)

• Cloudflare Trace: Offers a managed, out-of-the-box solution for Cloudflare Workers. There's no operational overhead for managing tracing infrastructure. The cost is indirectly part of Workers usage, eliminating separate infrastructure bills for the tracing system itself.
• OpenTelemetry: Provides vendor-neutral APIs, SDKs, and tools for instrumenting applications to generate telemetry data OpenTelemetry project homepage. While OpenTelemetry itself is free, deploying and managing an OpenTelemetry collector, a backend for trace storage (like Jaeger or Zipkin), and a visualization tool (like Grafana) incurs infrastructure costs (servers, storage, network) and significant operational overhead. For applications purely on Cloudflare Workers, this means setting up an external system to receive and process traces, which can be complex and expensive to maintain compared to Cloudflare's integrated solution. However, OpenTelemetry offers flexibility and avoids vendor lock-in for broader observability strategies.

In summary, Cloudflare Trace is positioned as a cost-efficient and convenient observability solution for applications fully within the Cloudflare Workers ecosystem, leveraging the existing Workers billing structure. For hybrid environments or those requiring multi-cloud observability, dedicated platforms or self-managed open-source solutions might offer more comprehensive capabilities, albeit with potentially higher or more complex cost structures.