Reachability

How to check a site that blocks Cloudflare

The check fails, but the site works in your browser. The outside check is Is This Website Down.

Ben Fidge · · 4 min read

A visitor browser and a Cloudflare edge check can reach the origin by different paths.
A failure at Cloudflare is the edge path, and this browser can reach the origin by a different path.

What to run

Use Is This Website Down. The result is from Cloudflare.

How to read the result

A block, challenge, or empty failure against Cloudflare is inconclusive, not proof of an outage.

Say "not reachable from Cloudflare", not "down".

What to open next

Open HTTP Headers. That result is from Cloudflare.

A 403 with a security-vendor header supports "blocked", not "outage".

Analytics and ad cookies stay off until you accept

Accept lets Google Analytics and AdSense set cookies. Reject keeps them off. The tools work either way. Read the privacy page.