Pausing Cloudflare sends ordinary proxied website traffic directly to the origin and removes the reverse proxy’s normal protection and rules. Use it only for a controlled diagnosis with a prepared direct-access path.
IN THIS ARTICLE
What you need before you begin
Confirm the origin has a publicly trusted certificate for the hostname, accepts direct traffic and can handle the load. An Origin CA-only certificate or Cloudflare-only firewall can make a paused site inaccessible.
01 Pause Cloudflare for the planned diagnostic test
- First decide whether Development Mode or a targeted origin test can answer the question with less disruption.
- If a global pause is required, record the current state and open the domain’s Overview page.
- Under Advanced Actions, choose Pause Cloudflare on Site and allow the change to take effect.
- Run the specific diagnostic and record its result. Avoid leaving the site paused during an extended investigation or active attack.
- Resume Cloudflare promptly and verify proxying, TLS, redirects, cache and security behaviour have returned to the intended configuration.
Confirm the expected result
The short test should show whether the observed problem depends on the proxied path. Confirm the final resumed state explicitly rather than assuming the diagnostic automatically reversed itself.
Troubleshoot unexpected results
If pausing causes a certificate error or refusal, restore proxying and review the origin prerequisites. Do not disable DNSSEC or change registrar nameservers merely to test a cache issue. Cloudflare products outside ordinary reverse-proxy traffic can have different pause behaviour.
Does pausing delete my DNS records?
No. It is a proxy-state diagnostic, not a DNS zone deletion. The domain’s records and account settings remain, but ordinary traffic bypasses the reverse-proxy features while paused.