Cloudflare vs DNSimple
DNS — side-by-side specs, real prices, and how each scores on our methodology.
DNSimple 7.0 /10 editorial Reliable DNS hosting and domain management
from $0 /mo ✓ renews at the same price
Cloudflare scores higher on our methodology (10.0 vs 7.0).
Spec by spec
| Cloudflare | DNSimple | |
|---|---|---|
| Anycast PoPs | 348 | 16 |
| GeoDNS | Yes | Yes |
| Payment methods | Card, PayPal, Crypto (stablecoins) | Card |
| Latency routing | Yes | No |
| Support channels | Docs only, Ticket, Chat 24/7 | Ticket |
| DNSSEC | Yes | Yes |
| Money-back period | 0 days | 0 days |
| ALIAS / CNAME flattening | Yes | Yes |
| Uptime SLA | 100 % | 99 % |
| API / Terraform | Yes | Yes |
| KYC required | Email only | Email only |
| Free tier limits | Unlimited zones (add rate limited) and unmetered queries on Free; 200 records per zone for zones created since 2024-09-01 | No free tier. Solo has a $0 base fee but bills $0.50 per zone per month, and every plan requires a card for the 30-day trial. |
| Anonymity | Full | Partial |
| DDoS posture | Every plan includes 'Unmetered DDoS Protection'. Authoritative DNS is served over anycast from Cloudflare's whole network. Enterprise can add DNS Firewall, a paid add-on that shields customers' own nameservers. | 'Multi-layered DDoS defense' on all plans, running on DNSimple-owned edge infrastructure. Signature detection runs at the cache layer. No mitigation capacity figures are published. Cloudflare DNS Firewall was removed in 2026. |
Scores come from our published methodology; renewal prices always shown beside intro prices. Full profiles: Cloudflare · DNSimple