How to claim an SLA credit from Cloudflare
Cloudflare's Business plan commits to 100% uptime and pays a formula-based credit when it misses. Here's how the 25x outage-ratio credit works, who qualifies, and how to file within 30 days.
Cloudflare is unusual: its Business SLA commits to 100% uptime, not 99.9%. That means any measurable outage is technically a breach — but the credit is calculated by a formula rather than a tier table, so it pays to understand the math before you file.
The short answer
On Cloudflare's Business and Enterprise plans, the SLA commits to 100% uptime, and any downtime entitles you to a service credit calculated as 25× the outage ratio applied to your monthly fee — so a one-hour outage in a 30-day month is worth roughly 3.5% of that month's fee. You file it as a Cloudflare support ticket within 30 days, citing your zone/account ID and the incident reference. Free and Pro plans are not covered.
What Cloudflare commits to
Cloudflare's Business SLA target is 100% uptime per calendar month for covered services (CDN/cache, DNS, WAF, Workers, API and dashboard on Business and Enterprise plans). Because the target is 100%, there's no "allowed downtime" buffer — the credit scales with however much downtime occurred.
How the credit is calculated
Instead of tiers, Cloudflare uses a multiplier. The credit is:
25 × (unavailable minutes ÷ total minutes in the month) × your monthly fee
A worked example, for a 30-day month (43,200 minutes):
| Outage in the month | Outage ratio | Credit (× monthly fee) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 hour | 0.139% | ~3.5% |
| 3 hours | 0.417% | ~10.4% |
| 6 hours | 0.833% | ~20.8% |
Because it's a formula rather than a published tier table, the Cloudflare SLA guide shows the filing process rather than an auto-calculated tier — compute your ratio from the outage duration and confirm the exact formula and any cap in the Cloudflare Business SLA before filing.
The evidence Cloudflare expects
- Your account or zone ID
- The affected services (e.g. CDN, DNS, WAF, Workers)
- The incident start and end times
- The Cloudflare incident reference from the Cloudflare status page
How to claim a Cloudflare SLA credit
- Confirm the outage and incident reference on the Cloudflare status page, and record the exact unavailable minutes for your affected services.
- Calculate the credit: divide unavailable minutes by the total minutes in the month, multiply by 25, and apply that to your monthly fee.
- Confirm your plan qualifies — the SLA applies to Business and Enterprise, not Free or Pro.
- Open a Cloudflare support ticket requesting an SLA service credit, citing your zone/account ID, the affected services, the incident reference, and your credit calculation.
- File within 30 days of the incident and track the ticket to confirm the credit is applied.
Watch the exclusions
The SLA excludes scheduled maintenance and — importantly — Free and Pro plans. The 100% commitment and the credit formula apply only to Business and Enterprise customers. Confirm your plan tier before you spend time filing.
Frequently asked questions
What SLA credit are you owed when Cloudflare goes down?
On Business and Enterprise plans, a service credit equal to 25× the outage ratio times your monthly fee. A one-hour outage in a 30-day month works out to roughly 3.5% of that month's fee; longer outages scale up proportionally.
Does Cloudflare really guarantee 100% uptime?
Its Business SLA commits to 100% uptime for covered services, which means any measurable downtime can trigger a credit. In practice the credit is modest for short outages because it's proportional to the downtime.
How long do I have to claim a Cloudflare SLA credit?
30 days from the incident, filed as a support ticket. As with most vendors, the window runs from the outage date.
Do Cloudflare Free and Pro plans get SLA credits?
No. Cloudflare's uptime SLA and credit remedy apply to Business and Enterprise plans only. Free and Pro plans are excluded.
How is Cloudflare's credit different from AWS or Google Cloud?
AWS and Google Cloud use tiered percentages based on which uptime band you fell into. Cloudflare uses a continuous formula — 25× the outage ratio — so the credit scales smoothly with downtime rather than jumping between tiers.
Methodology & caveats
The 100% commitment, the 25× credit formula, the 30-day window and the plan exclusions are transcribed from Cloudflare's published Business SLA into Ontracko's profile; the worked examples are arithmetic from that formula and are illustrative. Verify the exact formula, cap, and covered services in the Cloudflare Business SLA before filing. Live Cloudflare incident history is on its status page.
*Ontracko monitors Cloudflare's public status feed, detects SLA breaches, and assembles the claim package. Free — 8% only on recovered credits. See Cloudflare live status or the Cloudflare SLA guide.*
Related reading
Which SaaS vendors actually pay SLA credits?
Not every vendor with an SLA pays out easily. Here's a side-by-side of the uptime commitments, credit percentages, and claim deadlines for the major cloud and SaaS vendors that owe credits when they go down.
What is an SLA credit, and how do you claim it?
A plain-English definition of SLA credits: what they are, when a vendor owes you one, how much you can claim, and the step-by-step process to get the money back.
SLA credit vs service credit: what's the difference?
SLA credit and service credit are often used interchangeably — but the wording in your contract matters. Here's what each term means and what you're actually owed after an outage.
How to claim an SLA credit from Google Cloud
Google Cloud gives you just 30 days to claim an SLA credit — the shortest window of the major clouds. Here's the credit schedule for Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, BigQuery and more, and how to file before it closes.
Or browse the SLA glossary and the reliability rankings.
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