Rate limiting is often imagined as a simple counter.X requests per minute, cross the line, get blocked. That mental model works for basic systems.It does not describe how Cloudflare actually…

You pass the challenge.The cf_clearance cookie is set.Requests start flowing normally. Then, without warning, access degrades again.Pages redirect back to verification.The cookie is replaced.Sometimes this happens in minutes, sometimes in…

A JavaScript challenge page loads, the script runs, and the expected token is generated. From the outside, everything looks correct. Yet minutes later, access degrades, clearance expires, or follow-up requests…

You mask the IP.The request no longer comes from your real address.Geolocation looks different.ASN is no longer yours. Yet Cloudflare still reacts as if it “knows” something about where the…

You look at your graphs and feel confident: request volume is low, concurrency is modest, and nothing resembles a flood. Then access starts wobbling anyway—extra checks appear, some routes slow…

Traffic is flowing. Status codes look fine. Pages load.Then suddenly a CAPTCHA appears — not for every request, not immediately, and not consistently.Nothing is fully blocked, but progress slows, automation…

Everything looks normal on the surface.Status codes are still 200.No explicit block pages.No new rules deployed.No alerts fired. Yet behavior changes. Pages load slower.Some resources arrive incomplete.Certain actions begin to…

Two requests look identical from the outside.Same URL, same headers, same IP range, same browser fingerprint.One goes through cleanly.The other gets delayed, challenged, or silently degraded. From the client side,…

You access a Cloudflare-protected site. At first, everything works: pages load, APIs respond, your workflow runs. Then, without any deploy, rule edit, or obvious alert, the behavior starts to change.…

The response code is 200.No challenge page.No obvious block.Yet the page is missing sections, scripts fail to load, or critical data simply isn’t there. This situation is especially confusing because…