Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Quad9 VS CloudFlare

Compare Quad9 VS CloudFlare and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

Quad9 logo Quad9

Quad9 is a free, recursive, anycast DNS platform that provides end users robust security protections, high-performance, and privacy.

CloudFlare logo CloudFlare

Cloudflare is a global network designed to make everything you connect to the Internet secure, private, fast, and reliable.
  • Quad9 Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-09-24
  • CloudFlare Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-10

Quad9 features and specs

  • Privacy-Focused
    Quad9 does not store any personal data about users and maintains a stringent privacy policy, ensuring that your DNS queries are not tracked or sold to third parties.
  • Security
    Quad9 provides robust security features by blocking access to known malicious domains, which helps protect users from phishing, malware, and other online threats.
  • Performance
    With a global network of servers, Quad9 offers fast DNS resolution, which can contribute to quicker website load times and improved overall internet browsing experience.
  • Easy to Set Up
    Changing your DNS to Quad9 is straightforward and can be easily configured on most devices without requiring technical expertise.
  • Free Service
    Quad9 offers its DNS services free of charge, making it an accessible option for anyone looking to improve their online privacy and security without additional costs.

Possible disadvantages of Quad9

  • Limited Customization
    Quad9 does not offer as many customization options as some competing services, which may be a drawback for advanced users looking for more control over their DNS settings.
  • Possible Geolocation Issues
    Using a global DNS resolver like Quad9 can sometimes lead to geolocation issues, where content or services are delivered based on server location rather than user location.
  • Not as Established
    Quad9 is a relatively new entrant in the DNS space compared to longstanding providers like Google Public DNS and OpenDNS, which might make some users hesitant.
  • Dependency on Upstream Filters
    Quad9's security filtering relies on upstream threat intelligence providers. Therefore, the comprehensiveness of the protection is dependent on the accuracy and timeliness of these third-party sources.

CloudFlare features and specs

  • Security
    Cloudflare provides robust security features including DDoS protection, SSL/TLS encryption, and a Web Application Firewall (WAF) to protect your website from various online threats.
  • Performance
    Cloudflare improves website performance through caching, optimized routing, and content delivery network (CDN) services, which can reduce page load times and increase site speed.
  • Reliability
    With Cloudflare's global network of data centers, your website benefits from high availability and redundancy, ensuring it remains online even during traffic spikes or outages.
  • Scalability
    Cloudflare allows businesses to easily scale their operations by handling large volumes of traffic without significant additional costs or infrastructure changes.
  • Ease of Use
    Cloudflare is easy to set up and manage, featuring a user-friendly dashboard that provides powerful tools and analytics for monitoring and optimizing your website.
  • Domain Management
    Cloudflare offers domain registration and management services, allowing you to streamline your DNS management and other domain-related tasks.
  • Cost-Effective
    Cloudflare offers a range of pricing plans, including a free tier, which provides ample features for small to medium-sized websites at no cost.
  • Domain Registration
    $9.15
  • Domain Renewal
    $9.15
  • 5 Years Cost
    $45.75

Possible disadvantages of CloudFlare

  • Complexity
    While Cloudflare offers many advanced features, these can be complex for beginners to understand and configure correctly, potentially leading to misconfigurations.
  • Support
    Some users report that the support response time, especially on lower-tier plans, can be slower than expected, resulting in delays in issue resolution.
  • Dependency
    Reliance on a third-party service like Cloudflare can create a dependency, meaning if Cloudflare experiences issues, your website could also be affected.
  • Pricing for Advanced Features
    While the free tier is robust, advanced security and performance features can become costly, which might not be suitable for all businesses.
  • Privacy Concerns
    As a proxy service, Cloudflare handles a lot of your website's traffic, raising potential privacy concerns about data handling and storage.
  • Occasional Downtime
    Although rare, Cloudflare has experienced outages in the past, which can affect all websites using its services simultaneously.
  • Legal Jurisdiction
    As a U.S.-based company, Cloudflare is subject to U.S. laws and regulations, which might be a concern for organizations focused on data sovereignty.

Analysis of Quad9

Overall verdict

  • Yes, Quad9 is generally considered a good DNS service.

Why this product is good

  • Quad9 offers a DNS service that prioritizes security, privacy, and performance. It blocks known malicious domains using threat intelligence from multiple sources, enhancing cybersecurity for its users. Additionally, Quad9 respects user privacy by not logging or selling personal data.

Recommended for

  • Individuals and organizations seeking enhanced security against phishing and malware.
  • Users concerned about privacy and looking for a DNS provider that respects these values.
  • Anyone needing a reliable and fast DNS resolver for their internet activities.
  • IT administrators interested in a robust, secure DNS solution for networks.

Analysis of CloudFlare

Overall verdict

  • CloudFlare is generally considered a good choice for improving website security and performance. It is particularly reputable for its reliability and extensive feature set that caters to both small websites and large enterprises. However, the effectiveness of CloudFlare may vary based on specific needs and configurations, so it's advisable to evaluate its features against your requirements.

Why this product is good

  • CloudFlare is widely recognized for its robust network security and performance-enhancing features. It offers distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) protection, a content delivery network (CDN), internet traffic optimization, and DNS services. The platform is known for improving website loading times and securing sites against cyber threats. Its global network spans numerous countries, which helps decrease latency and enhance reliability.

Recommended for

    CloudFlare is recommended for businesses and individuals seeking enhanced website security, faster load times, and improved traffic management. It is particularly beneficial for e-commerce sites, content-heavy websites, and organizations experiencing high traffic volumes or at risk of cyber-attacks.

Quad9 videos

Quad9 9.9.9.9 VS Google 8.8.8.8 Benchmark Testing & Keeping Your Computer safer with Quad9 DNS

More videos:

  • Review - Quad9 on PS4!! DNS Settings 9.9.9.9 (My Review)
  • Review - Keep your data and computer safe with Quad9
  • Review - Here's Why DNS Matters w/ John Todd from Quad9

CloudFlare videos

How To Transfer Your Domains To Cloudflare Registrar And Have Free WhoIs

More videos:

  • Review - CloudFlare Review - Beginners to Expert Guide PREVIEW by Bizversity.com
  • Review - Cloudflare Zaraz Superior to Google Tag Manager For Third-Party Scripts?
  • Review - STOP Overpaying For Domains! | Cloudflare Registrar
  • Review - [BEGINNER GUIDE] How (and why) to Install Cloudflare on your Website (Speed & Security guide)
  • Review - 3 Reasons NOT to Install Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 App

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Quad9 and CloudFlare)
DNS
100 100%
0% 0
CDN
0 0%
100% 100
Security & Privacy
100 100%
0% 0
Cloud Computing
0 0%
100% 100

Questions & Answers

As answered by people managing Quad9 and CloudFlare.

Why should a person choose your product over its competitors?

CloudFlare's answer:

  • Reliable
  • At-cost pricing
  • Easier maintenance when you use Cloudflare

User comments

Share your experience with using Quad9 and CloudFlare. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Quad9 and CloudFlare

Quad9 Reviews

Best DNS servers of 2022: Boost your internet speed with these free, public services
The company sells itself on its ability to block malicious domains by collecting intelligence from 'a variety of public and private sources.' It's not clear what these sources are, but the website says Quad9 used 18+ 'threat intelligence providers' as of December 2018.
Best DNS Servers to Use for Free in 2022
As the name Quad9 suggests, their primary DNS is 9.9.9.9. Quad9โ€™s DNS is fairly easy to remember as the name indicates. Quad9 focuses on security, performance, privacy, and speed. Though it may not be the fastest DNS, it surely is one of the best DNS servers. Quad9 was built on the factor of security, focusing mainly on protecting its users
Best free DNS servers: 14 options to check out
Quad9 emphasizes security, privacy and performance โ€” the company was founded on the goal to make the internet safer for everyone. It blocks malicious domains, phishing and malware while maintaining your anonymity. Quad9 is constantly expanding to new regions. Right now, it comes in at No. 8 on the DNS Performance Analytics and Comparison ratings.

CloudFlare Reviews

  1. Lucas James
    They keep websites safe!

    Great service! I always use CloudFlare for my website. All in one and you can keep your website safe with CloudFlare.


MCP Servers for Test Data: What Exists and What Each One Does
The reason the shelf looks so full is that nearly every major data platform now ships an MCP, and they are overwhelmingly access servers. Oracle exposes its database to agents through SQLcl (oracle.com/mcp). Microsoft's SQL MCP Server lets an agent work with tables, views, and stored procedures (Microsoft Learn). From Cloudflare, the Bindings MCP reaches D1 databases along...
Source: dev.to
8 Best Cloudflare Alternatives (Free + Premium)
Cloudflare is a web infrastructure and security company that offers content delivery network (CDN), DNS, DDoS protection, and web application firewall (WAF) services. Cloudflareโ€™s solutions help improve website performance, security, and reliability by distributing web content across a global network of data centers and protecting against malicious traffic.
Source: hostscore.net
The 7 Best Content-Delivery-Network Providers
โ Cloudflare offers the tariffs Free, Pro and Business. If the standard equipment of a CDN is sufficient for you, you are well supplied with the free version. If you need business-suitable solutions, you pay 20 Euros per month for the Pro tariff or 200 Euros per month for the Business tariff. All three plans can be individually adapted to your needs by a variety of payable...
Source: omr.com
5 Best Vercel Alternatives for Next.js & App Router
True to Cloudflare's core offering, Pages delivers stellar performance through the Cloudflare network. Every application receives a global CDN, free SSL, and middleware like WAF out of the box. Integrations with services like GitHub and GitLab enable continuous deployment workflows.
Source: il.ly
Top 15 Cloudflare Alternatives: A Complete Guide
Cloudflare is a versatile Content Delivery Network (CDN) service that offers fast, secure, and reliable delivery of web content and applications. It also provides features such as DNS, firewall, DDoS protection, and edge computing. However, Cloudflare may not be the best option for everyone, depending on your needs, budget, and preferences. Understanding the different...

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, CloudFlare should be more popular than Quad9. It has been mentiond 108 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Quad9 mentions (49)

  • The Great DNS Trail
    So assuming the answer to a query of what something like dev.to is mainly starts at the locally designated DNS servers. This will most likely be your ISP but it's not uncommon to utilize public DNS servers such as Quad9, Google, and Cloud Flare. Public DNS servers were popularized after "certain ISPs" decided that showing ad littered pages for unknown domains was a good idea. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • AT&T Paid a Hacker $370k to Delete Stolen Phone Records
    Maybe consider using https://quad9.net for DNS? It's nice having archive.today work. Otherwise you can always copy/paste the link to TFA into https://archive.org. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 years ago
  • Information Security Best Practices
    Automate everything. Use a password manager, enable automatic updates, use DNS malware filtering at router level (Free with https://quad9.net ). Source: almost 3 years ago
  • Firefox has surpassed Chrome on Speedometer
    Depends on your region and what sites you're using. I live in the middle of nowhere far from civilization, and 1.1.1.1 returns terrible IPs for many sites including google.com (which pings at 350-400 ms if you resolve it through 1.1.1.1, but at 90-100 ms if you're using any other resolver). They do it because they block EDNS0 in order to protect your privacy or something like that. So I use 8.8.8.8 and 9.9.9.9 in... - Source: Hacker News / about 3 years ago
  • 96 ms to a DNS server OK?
    9.9.9.9 is run by Quad9. Theyโ€™re more privacy oriented, afaik. Source: about 3 years ago
View more

CloudFlare mentions (108)

  • Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2026)
    Cloudflare | Systems or ML Engineer, Workers AI | Austin, TX or London, UK or San Francisco, CA (Hybrid) | Full-Time | https://cloudflare.com Cloudflare is building across the entire AI stack. Here are some exciting things that we have launched recently: - [Release Cog v0.17](https://github.com/replicate/cog/releases/tag/v0.17.0). - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • I Built a Web Crawler That Scraped Cloudflare Past Their Own Protection
    โœ“ (layer1) https://cloudflare.com โœ“ (layer1) https://cloudflare.com/en-gb โœ“ (layer1) https://cloudflare.com/de-de โœ“ (layer1) https://cloudflare.com/products โœ“ (layer1) https://cloudflare.com/developer-platform ... Total crawled : 100+ Failed : 0. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Why did I build a transparent, account-free, open-source URL shortener?
    In the past, I've used simpler domain registrars for my personal projects, but for Trails, I wanted something that offered a more robust set of features. I chose Cloudflare for its powerful DNS management and security benefits, which made it a perfect candidate. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Why devs are quitting aws and what theyโ€™re choosing instead
    Platforms like Railway, Render, Fly.io, Vercel, Supabase, and Cloudflare are leading the charge with a shared philosophy:. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • How to Create Your Free Landing Page
    Sign up on cloudflare, add your domain, and change the nameservers. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Quad9 and CloudFlare, you can also consider the following products

NextDNS - Block ads, trackers and malicious websites on all your devices.

Amazon CloudFront - Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery web service.

1.1.1.1 - The free app that makes your Internet safer.

KeyCDN - KeyCDN is a high-performance Content Delivery Network (CDN). Lowest price globally at $0.04/GB with HTTP/2 Support and free Origin Shield.

OpenDNS - OpenDNS provides faster and safer Internet access for your home or Business.

Akamai - Akamai is the leading content delivery network (CDN) services provider for media and software delivery, and cloud security solutions.