Cache Response Rules

You can now control how Cloudflare handles origin responses without changing your origin. Cache Response Rules let you modify Cache-Control directives, manage cache tags, and strip headers like Set-Cookie from origin responses before they reach Cloudflare's cache. Whether traffic is cached or passed through dynamically, these rules give you control over origin response behavior that was previously out of reach.

What changed

Cache Rules previously only operated on request attributes. Cache Response Rules introduce a new response phase that evaluates origin responses and lets you act on them before caching. You can now:

• Modify Cache-Control directives: Set or remove individual directives like no-store, no-cache, max-age, s-maxage, stale-while-revalidate, immutable, and more. For example, remove a no-cache directive your origin sends so Cloudflare can cache the asset, or set an s-maxage to control how long Cloudflare stores it.
• Set a different browser Cache-Control: Send a different Cache-Control header downstream to browsers and other clients than what Cloudflare uses internally, giving you independent control over edge and browser caching strategies.
• Manage cache tags: Add, set, or remove cache tags on responses, including converting tags from another CDN's header format into Cloudflare's Cache-Tag header. This is especially useful if you are migrating from a CDN that uses a different tag header or delimiter.
• Strip headers that block caching: Remove Set-Cookie, ETag, or Last-Modified headers from origin responses before caching, so responses that would otherwise be treated as uncacheable can be stored and served from cache.

Benefits

• No origin changes required: Fix caching behavior entirely from Cloudflare, even when your origin configuration is locked down or managed by a different team.
• Simpler CDN migration: Match caching behavior from other CDN providers without rewriting your origin. Translate cache tag formats and override directives that do not align with Cloudflare's defaults.
• Native support, fewer workarounds: Functionality that previously required workarounds is now built into Cache Rules with full Tiered Cache compatibility.
• Fine-grained control: Use expressions to match on request and response attributes, then apply precise cache settings per rule. Rules are stackable and composable with existing Cache Rules.

Get started

Configure Cache Response Rules in the Cloudflare dashboard under Caching > Cache Rules, or via the Rulesets API. For more details, refer to the Cache Rules documentation.