Cloudflare Named a Leader in Edge Development Platforms Report by Independent Research Firm
Cloudflare receives the highest possible scores in 12 criteria, including Vision, Innovation, Roadmap, and AI Application Development
Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE:NET), the leading connectivity cloud company, today announced it has been named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Edge Development Platforms, Q1 2026 report.
Legacy cloud providers often treat the edge as a secondary add-on. Cloudflare is different: its platform is built for the edge from the ground up. By removing the complexity of global networking and infrastructure management, Cloudflare gives engineering teams a friction-free way to ship faster and stay ahead of the competition.
According to the report, Cloudflare is a "strong fit" for organizations seeking edge-first applications, APIs, and performance-critical user experiences. Forrester specifically cited Cloudflare's roadmap, that demonstrates a "robust, accelerating investment in AI application development," noting its AI Gateway for routing and governance and an emerging agent-first development ecosystem.
"Cloudflare is dedicated to stripping away the daunting complexity of distributed systems so that developers can focus on what matters most: building the next generation of applications," said Dane Knecht, CTO at Cloudflare. "Being recognized as a Leader by Forrester, especially with the highest score in the strategy category, and highest score possible in the AI development criterion, validates, for us, our commitment to providing engineering teams what they need to launch more reliable applications, faster."
The Forrester Wave™: Edge Development Platforms, Q1 2026 evaluation noted several key differentiators for Cloudflare:
- AI Momentum: Forrester specifically cited Cloudflare's roadmap that demonstrates a "robust, accelerating investment in AI application development," including the AI Gateway for routing and governance and an emerging agent-first development ecosystem (Agent SDK + Sandboxes).
- Performance: The platform was recognized for its zero cold starts and automatic workload placement. Cloudflare was also cited for its 100% uptime SLA that further reinforces reliability latency-sensitive workloads.
- Strategy: Cloudflare received the top score in the Strategy category, and the highest score possible for the Vision, Innovation, and Roadmap criteria.
- Platform Maturity: The report noted that Cloudflare's roadmap concentrates on facilitating deeper AI model catalog integration through its Replicate acquisition, expanding GPU coverage.
Cloudflare's edge-native fabric allows it to outperform hyperscaler extensions that view the edge as a modest extension of the legacy cloud. By providing high-level primitives and durable execution, Cloudflare abstracts the complexity of global state consistency and CAP theorem tradeoffs, allowing modern engineering teams to ship faster.
To learn more about Cloudflare and the Forrester Wave™: Edge Development Platforms, Q1 2026 report, please check out the resources below:
Forrester does not endorse any company, product, brand, or service included in its research publications and does not advise any person to select the products or services of any company or brand based on the ratings included in such publications. Information is based on the best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. For more information, read about Forrester's objectivity here .
About Cloudflare
Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE:NET) is the leading connectivity cloud company. It empowers organizations to make their employees, applications and networks faster and more secure everywhere, while reducing complexity and cost. Cloudflare's connectivity cloud delivers the most full-featured, unified platform of cloud-native products and developer tools, so any organization can gain the control they need to work, develop, and accelerate their business.
Powered by one of the world's largest and most interconnected networks, Cloudflare blocks billions of threats online for its customers every day. It is trusted by millions of organizations – from the largest brands to entrepreneurs and small businesses to nonprofits, humanitarian groups, and governments across the globe.
Learn more about Cloudflare's connectivity cloud at cloudflare.com/connectivity-cloud. Learn more about the latest Internet trends and insights at radar.cloudflare.com.
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Cloudflare, Inc.
Daniella Vallurupalli
Vice President, Head of Global Communications
press@cloudflare.com