Cloudflare’s new Containers feature is now in public beta. This new service allows you to deploy complex workloads around the globe with just a few lines of code, making it easier than ever for developers to run containerized applications at the edge.
Seamlessly integrated with Cloudflare Workers, this release introduces powerful capabilities for modern app development.
Key Advantages for Developers
- Simplicity: Define and launch containers using the familiar Wrangler CLI, keeping your workflow unified and efficient.
- Global Reach: Deploy to every region with a single command thanks to Cloudflare’s “Region:Earth” model, your code is always close to your users.
- Flexibility: Route traffic between lightweight Workers and performance-focused containers, letting you pick the right tool for any task.
- Programmability: Manage containers directly from Workers code, automating logic and scaling without managing infrastructure.
How Containers Transform Workloads
Cloudflare Containers cater to diverse needs, from running user-submitted code in isolated sandboxes to powering robust backends. Set up is straightforward: specify ports, timeouts, and images in your Worker code or wrangler.jsonc file.
The platform automatically provisions, routes, and scales containers, so you can focus on building, not deployment logistics.
Launching new code is as simple as pressing “R” during development, and global production deployment takes just one command. Containers spin up in seconds at optimal locations, ensuring low latency and rapid iteration for your team.
Integrated Observability for Confidence at Scale
Operational transparency is built-in. Monitor status, resource usage, and logs for every instance directly from the Cloudflare dashboard. With seven-day log retention and export options, you have the insights you need to maintain high performance and reliability as you grow.
New Use Cases Unlocked
- Leverage libraries like FFmpeg for real-time video processing at the edge.
- Schedule cron jobs, serve static frontends with dynamic APIs, or deploy AI agents in isolated containers.
- Combine Containers with Durable Objects, Workflows, Queues, and R2 storage to architect advanced modular applications.
Transparent, Predictable Pricing
Cloudflare’s usage-based pricing means you pay only for what you use. Container types range from lightweight “dev” to robust “standard” options, scaling from 256 MiB to 4 GiB memory.
Billing is per 10ms of runtime, and Workers Standard plans include generous monthly usage. Egress costs are region-based, ensuring cost control for global projects.
What’s on the Horizon?
- Higher Limits: Support for more concurrent containers and larger resource allocations is coming soon.
- Global Autoscaling: Automated scaling and smart, latency-aware routing will further simplify performance optimization.
- Enhanced Communication: Richer interactions between containers and Workers, including shell commands and HTTP callbacks, are in development.
- Deeper Integrations: Future updates will make mounting storage, accessing databases, and leveraging the broader Cloudflare platform even easier.
Start Building Today
Cloudflare Containers are available to all paid plans, offering developers a streamlined, highly scalable pathway to deploying apps at the edge. Whether modernizing legacy services or exploring new programming models, Containers on Cloudflare deliver the tools and global reach you need. The next era of serverless is here, deploy with confidence using wrangler deploy.
Cloudflare Containers Beta: Redefining Global Serverless Deployments