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What Developers Need to Know About Cloudflare Workers

In a world where user expectations have never been faster, slowing down to accommodate bloated back-end systems with high latency is simply not enough. Developers are under constant pressure to innovate, building smarter, leaner, and more scalable solutions. Enter Cloudflare Workers, quietly transforming the way developers write, deploy, and scale code at the edge of the internet. But what exactly are Cloudflare Workers? What problems do they solve? How do you get started? This guide provides answers to these questions and more, with actionable coding examples, useful tricks and tips, and other nuggets of knowledge you’ll find valuable as a modern web developer.

developers and cloudflare workers

What Is Cloudflare Workers? A Quick Intro

Let’s get to the basics. What is Cloudflare Workers?

Workers is a serverless compute platform that leverages Cloudflare’s global edge network. This means that rather than running your code on a server somewhere (like in AWS), Workers will run code at over 300 locations around the world, closer to your users, so your applications can be faster and more efficient.

Cloudflare Workers are designed to run small, independent pieces of JavaScript (or WebAssembly) really quickly. They’re perfect for small tasks such as routing requests, modifying responses, caching, and authentication.

Why Developers and Cloudflare Workers Are a Perfect Match

During a traditional DevOps process flow, developers spend time outside of development coordinating with operations teams to deploy APIs, manage infrastructure, and scale backend services. But that’s changing. Developers and Cloudflare Workers are ideal partners because

Workers enable developers to accomplish work more independently:

No infrastructure configuration or server maintenance
Ultra-low latency for users across the globe
Instant prototyping and deploying

For small dev teams or startups, this brings less dependency on expensive DevOps. For larger teams, it opens up modular deployment strategies and global scalability.

What Does a Cloudflare Worker Do In Practice?

Now we want to consider the practical question – what does a Cloudflare worker do?

A worker is simply a small application that runs at the edge. Some common use cases are:

URL rewriting: automatically redirecting users based on geo-location or language
CORS headers: allowing injection of appropriate headers on the fly to circumvent browsers
Authentication: checking JWTs, or injecting authorization headers on behalf of downstream APIs
Rate limiting: Throttling traffic based on request path or IP address

As an example, let’s say you had a landing page that needed to route users from various countries to different versions of your site. Using workers, we could do it in a few lines of code without changing our origin server.

Real-World Examples: A List of Websites That Use Cloudflare Workers

You might ask: Who is really using this technology?

We compiled this list of websites that use Cloudflare Workers in production:

Shopify: Uses Workers to deliver storefront APIs around the world more quickly.
Discord: Routes authentication and message validation through Workers.
Udemy: Uses Workers for geolocation routing and caching.
DigitalOcean: Uses Workers for header rewriting as well as traffic management.

Even smaller SaaS products and indie developers are starting to use and understand what Cloudflare Workers is, so that they can create microservices and APIs that scale in the cloud without managing servers. It is a quiet revolution that is happening in the development world.

What’s the Cloudflare Workers Language?

Cloudflare Workers language is built on a JavaScript-based core language (built on the V8 engine – the same as Chrome), but Workers support:

1. TypeScript – commonly used with larger code bases for typing safety.

2. WebAssembly (WASM) – for running compiled Rust, C, or Go code.

3. WASI (WebAssembly System Interface) – for certain edge compute workflows.

This means it can leverage some of the best web development languages in the current stack, and it opens another door for frontend or full stack developers to jump into serverless functions.

This flexibility lowers the barriers for frontend developers without a backend background to deploy and scale-out features without the use of traditional servers. And for full-stack engineers, it is a new option for consolidating the deployment of their applications—all API logic or data streams could live in a single platform, from client rendering to fast deployment. Fast, modern, and surprisingly beginner-friendly.

A Mini Cloudflare Workers Guide to Get Started

Here’s a quick Cloudflare Workers guide to help you launch your first Worker:

Create a Cloudflare Account

Install Wrangler CLI

bash
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npm install -g wrangler

Generate a Worker

bash
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wrangler generate my-first-worker
cd my-first-worker
wrangler dev

Deploy to Production

bash
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wrangler publish

And that’s it—you now have a serverless function running at the edge, visible to the world. From this point onward, you can keep building, testing, and scaling your thinking in real time, without provisioning servers or managing infrastructure. It’s truly liberating and enjoyable.

When Should You Use Cloudflare Workers?

There is no one-size-fits-all in the web development world, but here are some indicators that Workers are a good fit for you:

You need API gateways, auth handlers, or header middleware
You are building JAMstack or microservices apps
You are a web development agency in Dubai (or anywhere else) and you have to deliver client projects globally and quickly
You want to deploy without having to manage servers or scale logic

They integrate nicely with some of the best web development platforms, like Hugo, Next.js, and Astro.

Limitations to Keep in Mind

To understand what a Cloudflare worker does, there are a few considerations to keep in Mind.

As promising as Workers are, they’re not perfect:

Execution time is limited (50ms on the free plan, more on the paid plan)
No native filesystem—utilize KV or R2 to store data
No built-in persistent memory—though Durable Objects and D1 are (slowly) two potentially working solutions

Nevertheless, for most use cases, these drawbacks will be trivial next to gains in performance.

That said, for most use cases, these limitations will be insignificant compared to the performance improvements. If your application is not reliant on disk I/O at scale or long-running background tasks, Workers will probably meet your needs. Many real cases—lightweight APIs, authentication layers, redirects, or edge caching—might not need persistent storage or long processing time. In those use cases, the simplicity and responsiveness of Workers far exceed the technical constraints.

Are Web Developers in Demand for Serverless Skills?

Yes—and they are definitely in demand. In fact, developers who possess knowledge of edge computing and serverless architecture are quickly becoming must-hire positions that modern tech teams can’t live without.

If you have wondered, are web developers in demand in 2025? The answer is an unequivocal yes, especially for developers who can ship lightweight APIs and apps with Cloudflare’s scalable infrastructure.

Final Thoughts: Why You Should Try Cloudflare Workers Today

To conclude:

What are Cloudflare workers? A serverless, globally distributed service that allows developers to deploy edge functions in seconds.
What can a Cloudflare worker do? Anything from proxying requests, rewriting headers, authentication, and caching.
Why should developers care? Because it’s fast, easy to use, cost-effective, and slots right into modern web workflows.

Whether you’re building solo or have a growing team, developers and Cloudflare Workers are rapidly becoming an inseparable part of the future of frontend and backend delivery. If you’re new to serverless, keep it simple for now. Write a simple worker, see it live, and experience how truly different—and empowering—this model can be.

Omkar Khatale Jangam