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Zipper vs Cloudflare
Zipper is a Cloudflare alternative priced per workspace. Cloudflare Pro is $20 per domain; Business is $200 per domain. Starter is US$5/mo for 8 hostnames versus Cloudflare Pro US$20 per domain. Business is US$19/mo for 40 hostnames versus Cloudflare Business US$200 per domain. All twenty named services ship on every plan.
| Capability | Zipper | Cloudflare |
|---|---|---|
| Billing unit | Per workspace | Pro/Business billed per domain |
| Entry paid plan | US$5/mo · 8 hostnames | US$20/mo per domain |
| Business plan | US$19/mo · 40 hostnames | US$200/mo per domain |
| CDN + WAF + DDoS | Crown + Keep + Moat on every plan | Included; advanced WAF on paid |
| Bot check | Portcullis (first-party) | Turnstile (separate product) |
| Edge compute | Edge Functions included | Workers (paid plan + usage) |
| Git hosting | Site Hosting included | Pages |
| Object storage | The Archives included | R2 (usage) |
| Zero Trust / Tunnel | Throne Room + Origin Connect | Access + Tunnel SKUs |
| Email routing | Emails (inboxes + routes) | Email Routing |
| Waiting room | Visitor Queue included | Waiting Room (paid) |
| Video | Video Delivery included | Stream (usage) |
Service map
The Crown
A global CDN that caches your site and serves it from the nearest edge.
The Keep
A WAF that inspects requests before they reach your origin.
Portcullis
A first-party bot challenge with a visible check — not a silent token.
The Moat
Stops volumetric floods before they reach your origin.
The Herald
Fast, signed DNS for every hostname in the workspace.
The Vault
Automatic certificates, key rotation, and cipher policy for every hostname.
The Scepter
Rate limits, tokens, and schema checks for public APIs.
The Watchtower
Request, threat, cache, and Portcullis metrics for your workspace only.
The Drawbridge
Health-checked origin pools with automatic failover.
The Gallery
Resize, convert, and compress images at the edge.
The Archives
Cached and stored objects with instant purge and signed URLs.
The Throne Room
Identity-aware access to private origins — no public exposure required.
Edge Functions
Run JavaScript on every request, or on a schedule, next to your visitors.
Site Hosting
Build static and full-stack sites from git, with preview URLs per branch.
Job Queues
Durable queues so webhooks, mail, and retries never block a visitor.
Edge AI
Run language, embeddings, and classification models next to your traffic.
Video Delivery
Ingest, encode, and play video with signed URLs and captions.
Origin Connect
Publish an origin that never opens an inbound port — the connector dials out.
Emails
Inbound and outbound email for your zone — routes, inboxes, and stored messages.
Visitor Queue
Hold extra visitors in line when origin is at capacity.
FAQ
- Is Zipper a Cloudflare alternative?
- Yes. Zipper is a workspace-priced alternative to Cloudflare CDN, WAF, Workers, Pages, Turnstile, Tunnel, Stream, Email Routing, and Waiting Room — twenty services from one control plane.
- How is pricing cheaper than Cloudflare?
- Starter is US$5/mo for 8 hostnames versus Cloudflare Pro US$20 per domain. Business is US$19/mo for 40 hostnames versus Cloudflare Business US$200 per domain. Workers, Load Balancing, and Stream are not separate Zipper SKUs.
- Do I pay per domain?
- No. Hostnames (zones) are included in the plan quota. You are not billed per domain the way Cloudflare Pro (US$20) and Business (US$200) are.
- Is there a free plan?
- Yes. Free includes all 20 services, 2 zones, 2 TB of Crown egress, 50,000 Portcullis challenges, and no credit card.
- What is the cheapest paid Zipper plan?
- Starter is US$5 per month (US$50 billed yearly) with 8 hostnames. That is below Cloudflare Pro and products such as Vercel Pro or Netlify Pro, and you are not billed per domain.
- Can I replace Cloudflare Workers, Pages, and Turnstile?
- Yes. Edge Functions maps to Workers, Site Hosting maps to Pages, and Portcullis maps to Turnstile. Origin Connect maps to Tunnel. Guides live in /docs.
- How do I migrate from Cloudflare to Zipper?
- Copy DNS into The Herald, proxy through The Crown, swap Turnstile for Portcullis, and point Workers at Edge Functions. Step-by-step: https://tinyzipper.com/docs/migrate-from-cloudflare.
Cloudflare prices are public list prices billed per domain. Zipper quotas: Starter 8 zones.