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HTTP request headers

Cloudflare passes all HTTP request headers to your origin web server and adds additional headers as specified below.

CF-Connecting-IP

CF-Connecting-IP provides the client IP address connecting to Cloudflare to the origin web server. This header will only be sent on the traffic from Cloudflare’s edge to your origin webserver.

For guidance on using CF-Connecting-IP, refer to Restoring original visitor IPs.

True-Client-IP (Enterprise plan only)

True-Client-IP provides the original client IP address to the origin web server. True-Client-IP is only available on our Enterprise plan. In the example below, 203.0.113.1 is the original visitor IP address. For example: True-Client-IP: 203.0.113.1

There is no difference between the True-Client-IP and CF-Connecting-IP headers besides the name of the header. Some Enterprise customers with legacy devices need True-Client-IP to avoid updating firewalls or load-balancers to read a custom header name.

For guidance on using True-Client-IP, refer to Restoring original visitor IPs.

X-Forwarded-For

X-Forwarded-For maintains proxy server and original visitor IP addresses. If there was no existing X-Forwarded-For header in the request sent to Cloudflare, X-Forwarded-For has an identical value to the CF-Connecting-IP header. For example: X-Forwarded-For: 203.0.113.1.

If an X-Forwarded-For header was already present in the request to Cloudflare, Cloudflare appends the IP address of the HTTP proxy to the header: X-Forwarded-For: 203.0.113.1,198.51.100.101,198.51.100.102

In the examples above, 203.0.113.1 is the original visitor IP address and 198.51.100.101 and 198.51.100.102 are proxy server IP addresses provided to Cloudflare via the X-Forwarded-For header.

CF-RAY

The CF-ray header (otherwise known as a Ray ID ) is a hashed value that encodes information about the data center and the visitor’s request. For example: CF-RAY: 230b030023ae2822-SJC.

Add the CF-Ray header to your origin web server logs to match requests proxied to Cloudflare to requests in your server logs.

Enterprise customers can also see all requests via Cloudflare Logs .

CF-IPCountry

CF-IPCountry contains a two character country code of the originating visitor’s country. XX is used for unknown country information. This header is added to requests by enabling Cloudflare IP Geolocation in the dashboard. For example: CF-IPCountry: US.

CF-Visitor

Currently, this header is a JSON object, containing only one key called “scheme”. The header will be either HTTP or HTTPS, and it is only relevant if you need to enable Flexible SSL in your Cloudflare settings. For example: CF-Visitor: { \"scheme\":\"https\"}.

CDN-Loop

CDN-Loop allows Cloudflare to specify how many times a request can enter Cloudflare’s network before it is blocked as a looping request. For example: CDN-Loop: cloudflare

CF-Worker

The CF-Worker request header is added to an edge Worker subrequest that identifies the host that spawned the subrequest. This is useful when you want to protect yourself against cross-zone worker subrequests. For example: CF-Worker: example.com.

You can add CF-Worker header on server logs similar to the way you add the CF-RAY header. To do that, add $http_cf_worker in the log format file: log_format cf_custom "CF-Worker:$http_cf_worker"'