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Cloudflare’s OHTTP Gateway rejects requests sent from Cloudflare Workers or from hosts proxied through Cloudflare. The rule is a privacy safeguard: if Cloudflare operated both the relay and gateway for the same request, it could potentially see the client’s network identity at one hop and the decrypted request at the other.
That does not mean OHTTP cannot be used for an app hosted on Cloudflare. The intended arrangement is Cloudflare’s Gateway paired with a third-party relay. Cloudflare announced the Gateway on October 2, 2026 as a paid add-on in closed beta; its announcement does not give a general-availability date or public price. Cloudflare’s announcement
How OHTTP separates identity from request contents
Oblivious HTTP (OHTTP) is a protocol for sending HTTP messages through two separately operated roles. The client encrypts a request for the gateway, then sends it to a relay. The relay forwards the encrypted message but does not decrypt the inner request. The gateway decrypts it and passes it to the application. On the response path, the gateway encrypts the response for the client.
The relay can observe network information about the connecting client, while the gateway and application can read the request contents. Ordinarily, the gateway receives the relay’s network identity rather than the client’s IP address. The separation is meant to keep one party from seeing both who sent a request and what it contains. Cloudflare’s technical explainer describes OHTTP as a message proxy for transactional interactions such as app API calls—not a general-purpose connection proxy like a VPN.
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Why Cloudflare refuses to decrypt these requests
Cloudflare says its Gateway will refuse to decrypt requests that originate from Cloudflare Workers or from hosts proxied on Cloudflare. If Cloudflare handled both roles for a request, its relay could see client-side network identifiers while its gateway could see the decrypted inner request. Joining those views would undermine the trust separation OHTTP is designed to provide.
Cloudflare stated in its October 2, 2026 announcement: “So, to preserve OHTTP’s separation of trust and ensure that Cloudflare never sees both client identities and decrypted inner requests, our Gateway will refuse to decrypt requests sent from Cloudflare Workers or from proxied hosts on Cloudflare.”
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This is an intentional restriction, not a general inability to decrypt OHTTP. Cloudflare has not stated in the announcement exactly how the Gateway identifies requests arriving through Cloudflare, so the rule should not be attributed to a particular IP check, header, or routing signal.
Choose the relay and gateway based on where your app runs
Cloudflare’s Relay and Gateway are distinct roles, not interchangeable products. Choose an arrangement that keeps those roles separated:
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| Architecture | When it fits | Who operates the roles |
|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare OHTTP Gateway with a third-party relay | Your application is hosted behind Cloudflare or runs on Workers; you accept OHTTP requests from a third-party client such as Apple LiveCallerID; or you want a managed gateway. | Cloudflare operates the gateway; a third party operates the relay. |
| Cloudflare OHTTP Relay with a separately operated gateway | Your application is hosted off Cloudflare and your team can operate its own gateway. | Cloudflare operates the relay; you or another operator runs the gateway separately. |
Cloudflare announced the Gateway as a paid add-on for a Cloudflare zone and opened a closed beta on October 2, 2026. The announcement invites interested users to join a waitlist but does not state a public price or general-availability date. Cloudflare’s Relay documentation identifies Relay as closed beta and enterprise-only as of October 2026; those availability details describe Relay, not the new Gateway.
What the Gateway handles—and what it does not
Cloudflare says its Gateway handles OHTTP cryptography: it decrypts the inner request, forwards it to the application, then encrypts the response. The announcement says it supports standard and chunked OHTTP and recommends chunked OHTTP for incremental processing. Gateway keys are managed for customers and exposed at the zone’s /.well-known/ohttp-gateway endpoint. These implementation details are from the launch announcement; it does not provide a public general-availability date.
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OHTTP hides network-level identity from the application in the intended arrangement; it does not remove identifying information that the client deliberately puts inside the request. Avoid including an email address, username, or other direct identifier in the inner request unless the application genuinely needs it. Cloudflare’s Relay setup guidance also recommends scrubbing names, email addresses, and phone numbers and reviewing crash reporting for sensitive data.
Relay-specific logging and compatibility limits
Cloudflare’s statements about Relay should not automatically be applied to Gateway. For Relay, Cloudflare says it can see the connecting device’s IP address and request metadata, including browser, operating system, hardware configuration, and timestamp, but not the encrypted application request content. Relay customers can see the application request content and the Relay server’s IP address and associated metadata. Cloudflare says Relay logs are retained for approximately 124 days, described as the most recent quarter plus one month. Cloudflare Relay documentation
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Cloudflare also documents Relay limitations: content-based WAF rules, application-content caching, and API Shield schema validation or discovery are incompatible with Relay because Cloudflare cannot see the necessary request content or URLs. These are documented Relay behaviors; they should not be assumed to apply to Gateway without separate documentation.
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