# What is Cloudflare?

**Concept**

**TL;DR:** Cloudflare sits between your visitors and your website, making it faster (caching) and safer (blocking attacks). It also runs small programs called Workers at its edge — and that's what lets MetaPilot serve your structured data without touching your site's code.

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## What it is

Think of Cloudflare as a smart receptionist for your website. Every request passes through Cloudflare first, which can speed it up, filter out bad traffic, and even modify the response.

Its main jobs:

- **CDN** — serves cached copies from a location near each visitor
- **Security** — DDoS protection, a web application firewall
- **DNS** — domain name resolution
- **Workers** — code that runs at the edge

The free plan covers everything MetaPilot needs.

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## Why it matters (and why MetaPilot uses it)

MetaPilot installs a managed **Worker** on your Cloudflare account. Because it runs in the request path, it can inject your structured data and serve your `robots.txt` / `llms.txt` live — with no template changes or redeploys. That edge position is exactly what build-time tools and CMS plugins can't match.

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## FAQ

**Is Cloudflare free?**
The free plan is enough for MetaPilot. Workers have a generous daily request limit (currently 100,000/day); only very high-traffic sites need a paid plan.

**Do I have to move my hosting?**
No. Cloudflare sits *in front of* your existing host — you point your domain's DNS at it, nothing else moves.

**Is it hard to set up?**
It's a few steps (add your site, change nameservers). See the guide: Connect Cloudflare to MetaPilot.

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## Related

- What is DNS?
- How is metadata served "at the edge"?
- What is MetaPilot?