Cloudflare Radar
By the end of this lesson you will understand what Cloudflare Radar provides and how to use it for internet monitoring and research.
What Is Cloudflare Radar?
Cloudflare Radar is a free, public tool that provides insights into global internet patterns. Because Cloudflare handles ~20% of all web traffic, it has unique visibility into internet trends, outages, attacks, and technology adoption.
Visit: radar.cloudflare.com
What You Can See
| Category | Examples |
|---|---|
| Traffic trends | Global and per-country internet traffic over time |
| Outages | Real-time internet outage detection (ISP, country, on-level) |
| Attacks | DDoS attack activity, top attacked countries and industries |
| Adoption | IPv6, HTTP/2, HTTP/3, TLS 1.3, post-quantum adoption rates |
| Domain rankings | Top 100 most popular domains globally and per-country |
| Routing | BGP route leak and hijack detection |
| Email security | DMARC, SPF, DKIM adoption rates |
| Speed | Internet quality measurements by country and ISP |
Key Features
Internet Traffic Map
A real-time global map showing traffic volume by country. You can compare countries, view trends over time, and detect anomalies.
Outage Detection
Radar automatically detects internet outages — from ISP-level disruptions to country-wide shutdowns. This is invaluable for:
- Network operations — knowing when an ISP is down
- Journalism — tracking internet shutdowns
- Business continuity — understanding why traffic dropped
Domain Rankings
The Radar Domains page shows the most popular domains globally and by country:
- Updated daily
- Based on DNS query volume (anonymized)
- Available via API for programmatic access
Radar API
curl "https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/radar/ranking/top?limit=10" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer {api_token}"
The Radar API provides programmatic access to all Radar data — traffic trends, domain rankings, attack data, and more.
Key Takeaways
- Cloudflare Radar is a free, public internet intelligence tool.
- Monitor traffic trends, outages, attacks, and technology adoption globally.
- Useful for network operations, research, journalism, and competitive analysis.
- Data is available via a free API for programmatic access.
What's Next
- Continue to Traffic Control and Site Management to learn about Cloudflare Rules and Notifications.