Cloudflare Tunnel for Local Development

Quick Setup

1. Install cloudflared
   Download and install the Cloudflare Tunnel client (cloudflared) for your operating system

2. Run a quick tunnel (no setup required)
   Execute cloudflared tunnel --url http://localhost:8787 to instantly expose your local Worker (typically running on port 8787)

3. Access via free domain
   Cloudflare automatically generates a random subdomain like https://wise-juvenile-pink-recovered.trycloudflare.com

Using Your Own Domain (Optional)

If you want a custom domain instead of the random subdomain:

1. Authenticate - Run cloudflared tunnel login to authorize with your Cloudflare account

2. Create named tunnel - Execute cloudflared tunnel create mytunnel to generate a persistent tunnel with UUID

3. Configure routing - Create ~/.cloudflared/config.yml specifying your tunnel ID, credentials file, and hostname mapping to localhost:port

   ~/.cloudflared/config.yml

   tunnel: <TUNNEL_UUID>
   credentials-file: /path/to/credentials-file.json
   ingress:
   - hostname: dev.yourdomain.com
       service: http://localhost:8787
   - service: http_status:404

   Note

   On Windows, this file is located at C:\Users\<USERNAME>\.cloudflared\config.yml.

4. Set DNS record - Run cloudflared tunnel route dns mytunnel dev.yourdomain.com to create the DNS entry

5. Run tunnel - Execute cloudflared tunnel run mytunnel to start the tunnel

Does Cloudflare Provide a Domain?

Yes - When you run the quick tunnel command without authentication, Cloudflare automatically generates a free trycloudflare.com subdomain for you. However, this is a random subdomain that changes each time.

If you want a permanent custom domain (like dev.yourdomain.com), you need to own a domain and use Cloudflare’s nameservers.