Cloudflare's terms prohibit automated scraping of their services and the use of bots to send excessive requests to their servers, among a range of other prohibited activities defined in their Acceptable Use Policy.
This analysis describes what Cloudflare's agreement states, permits, or reserves. It does not constitute a legal determination about enforceability. Regulatory applicability and practical outcomes may vary by jurisdiction, enforcement context, and individual circumstances. Read our methodology
The clause functions to protect Cloudflare's infrastructure and service availability by restricting activities that could compromise server performance or enable unauthorized content extraction. The provision operates through dual restrictions: one addressing content distribution and copying, and one addressing request volume generation through automated tooling.
Interpretive note: The threshold for what constitutes excessive automated access is not precisely defined in the agreement, creating ambiguity for legitimate high-volume API and developer use cases.
If your use of Cloudflare's services involves automated processes, API integrations, or developer tooling that could be characterized as excessive automated access, you may be at risk of account suspension without warning under this provision.
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Your use of the Service is subject to Comcast's Acceptable Use Policy (AUP), which is incorporated herein by reference and which may be updated from time to time. Violation of the AUP may result in immediate termination of your Service.
Customer shall not, and shall ensure that Authorized Users do not, use the Service in any manner that: (a) violates applicable laws or regulations; (b) infringes the intellectual property rights of any third party; (c) transmits harmful, offensive, or illegal content; or (d) attempts to reverse engi...
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"You agree not to engage in any of the following prohibited activities: (i) copying, distributing, or disclosing any part of the Service in any medium, including without limitation by any automated or non-automated 'scraping'; (ii) using any automated system, including without limitation 'robots,' 'spiders,' 'offline readers,' etc., to access the Service in a manner that sends more request messages to the Cloudflare servers than a human can reasonably produce in the same period by using a conventional on-line web browser.— Excerpt from Cloudflare's Cloudflare Terms of Use
REGULATORY LANDSCAPE: Acceptable use policies in cloud services agreements are enforced primarily through contractual mechanisms rather than specific regulatory frameworks. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) in the US is sometimes implicated in disputes over unauthorized automated access, though its applicability to terms-of-service violations has been subject to significant judicial debate following the Supreme Court's decision in Van Buren v. United States (2021). No specific regulatory body oversees acceptable use policy enforcement by cloud infrastructure providers. GOVERNANCE EXPOSURE: Medium. The breadth of the prohibited activities list, particularly the prohibition on automated access that sends more requests than a human could produce, may inadvertently capture legitimate high-volume API use cases common in developer and business contexts. The risk is that legitimate use is characterized as a violation, triggering the no-notice termination right. JURISDICTION FLAGS: CFAA applicability to AUP violations varies significantly by circuit and remains unsettled after Van Buren. EU users should note that the AUP is incorporated by reference into the agreement and its terms may be subject to unfair contract term review in consumer contexts. CONTRACT AND VENDOR IMPLICATIONS: Enterprise procurement teams should review the full AUP text to confirm that planned use cases, including automated monitoring, scraping of the customer's own content, and high-volume API calls, are not inadvertently prohibited. Clarification should be sought in writing where use cases are ambiguous. COMPLIANCE CONSIDERATIONS: Developers and engineering teams deploying automated workflows through Cloudflare should confirm their usage patterns are consistent with the AUP. Organizations using Cloudflare's API at high volumes should document their use case and consider seeking explicit written confirmation from Cloudflare that the use is permitted.
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The clause functions to protect Cloudflare's infrastructure and service availability by restricting activities that could compromise server performance or enable unauthorized content extraction. The provision operates through dual restrictions: one addressing content distribution and copying, and one addressing request volume generation through automated tooling.
If your use of Cloudflare's services involves automated processes, API integrations, or developer tooling that could be characterized as excessive automated access, you may be at risk of account suspension without warning under this provision.
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