Cloudflare D1 Has a Free API You Should Know About

Cloudflare D1 is a serverless SQLite database that runs at the edge. Your data lives close to your users — globally distributed with automatic replication.

Why D1 Changes Edge Computing

A developer had a Cloudflare Worker that needed a database. Options were external DB calls adding 100ms+ latency. D1 runs alongside Workers at the edge — database queries in under 1ms.

Key Features:

• SQLite at the Edge — Familiar SQL, global distribution
• Zero Cold Starts — Always warm, always fast
• Automatic Replication — Read replicas near users automatically
• Time Travel — Restore to any point in time (30 days)
• Free Tier — 5GB storage, 5M reads/day, 100K writes/day

Quick Start

npx wrangler d1 create my-db

// Cloudflare Worker
export default {
  async fetch(request, env) {
    const { results } = await env.DB.prepare(
      "SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = ?"
    ).bind(1).all()

    return Response.json(results)
  }
}

Migrations

npx wrangler d1 migrations create my-db init

-- migrations/0001_init.sql
CREATE TABLE users (
  id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,
  name TEXT NOT NULL,
  email TEXT UNIQUE
);

npx wrangler d1 migrations apply my-db

Why Choose D1

1. Edge-native — database at every Cloudflare location
2. SQLite — no new query language to learn
3. Generous free tier — 5M reads/day for free

Check out D1 docs to get started.

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Need edge solutions? Check out my Apify actors or email [e-mail] for custom solutions.