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Alex Spinov
Alex Spinov

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Cloudflare Workers Has a Free Edge Runtime That Runs Code in 300+ Cities

#cloudflare #workers #edge #serverless

Your API server is in us-east-1. Your users are in Tokyo, Berlin, and Sao Paulo. Every request crosses the ocean.

Cloudflare Workers runs your code in 300+ cities worldwide — milliseconds from every user. And the free tier is generous.

Free Tier

  • 100,000 requests/day
  • 10ms CPU time per request
  • Workers KV: 100K reads/day, 1K writes/day
  • R2 Storage: 10GB stored, 10M Class A ops/month
  • D1 Database: 5M rows read/day, 100K writes/day

Hello World (30 Seconds) 

npm create cloudflare@latest my-worker
cd my-worker
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// src/index.ts
export default {
  async fetch(request: Request, env: Env): Promise<Response> {
    const url = new URL(request.url);

    if (url.pathname === "/api/hello") {
      return Response.json({ message: "Hello from the edge!", city: request.cf?.city });
    }

    return new Response("Not found", { status: 404 });
  },
};
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npx wrangler deploy
# Live in 300+ cities in ~5 seconds
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D1 — SQLite at the Edge 

export default {
  async fetch(request: Request, env: Env) {
    // Create table
    await env.DB.exec(`
      CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS users (
        id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,
        name TEXT NOT NULL,
        email TEXT UNIQUE
      )
    `);

    // Insert
    await env.DB.prepare("INSERT INTO users (name, email) VALUES (?, ?)")
      .bind("Alice", "alice@example.com")
      .run();

    // Query
    const { results } = await env.DB.prepare("SELECT * FROM users").all();
    return Response.json(results);
  },
};
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SQLite database replicated across Cloudflare's network.

KV — Global Key-Value Store 

// Write (eventually consistent globally)
await env.KV.put("user:123", JSON.stringify({ name: "Alice" }), {
  expirationTtl: 3600, // 1 hour
});

// Read (from nearest edge location)
const user = await env.KV.get("user:123", "json");
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R2 — S3-Compatible Storage (No Egress Fees) 

// Upload
await env.R2.put("images/photo.jpg", imageBuffer, {
  httpMetadata: { contentType: "image/jpeg" },
});

// Download
const object = await env.R2.get("images/photo.jpg");
return new Response(object.body, {
  headers: { "Content-Type": object.httpMetadata.contentType },
});
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R2 is S3-compatible but with zero egress fees.

Queues (Async Processing) 

// Producer
await env.MY_QUEUE.send({ userId: "123", action: "sendEmail" });

// Consumer
export default {
  async queue(batch: MessageBatch<any>, env: Env) {
    for (const message of batch.messages) {
      await processMessage(message.body);
      message.ack();
    }
  },
};
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Cron Triggers 

export default {
  async scheduled(event: ScheduledEvent, env: Env) {
    // Runs on schedule (e.g., every hour)
    await cleanupExpiredSessions(env);
  },
};
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# wrangler.toml
[triggers]
crons = ["0 * * * *"]  # Every hour
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Workers vs Lambda vs Vercel Edge

Feature Lambda Vercel Edge Workers
Cold start 100-500ms ~0ms ~0ms
Locations ~30 regions ~30 cities 300+ cities
Free tier 1M req/mo 100K req/mo 100K req/day
Storage S3 Blob R2 (no egress)
Database DynamoDB Postgres D1 (SQLite)
Max execution 15 min 30s 30s (paid: unlimited)

Need edge-deployed APIs or data processing? I build web tools and scraping solutions. Email spinov001@gmail.com or explore my Apify tools.

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