Origin Cache Control

Set Cache-Control headers to tell Cloudflare how to handle content from the origin.

When a user sends an HTTP request, the user’s request URL is matched against a list of cacheable file extensions. If the request matches an extension on this list, Cloudflare serves the resource from cache if it is present. If the content is stale in Cloudflare’s cache, Cloudflare attempts to revalidate the content with the origin before serving the response to the client.

In the response, Cloudflare first examines its caches in multiple network locations for content. If the resource is not present in the cache, Cloudflare requests the resource from your origin web server to fill the cache. The response is then sent to the client who initiated the request.

At this point, Cloudflare’s cache logic examines the HTTP response received from your origin server. Based on how Cloudflare interprets request headers, the response is either deemed cacheable and written to disk for use with the next request for the same resource, or the request is deemed un-cacheable which means the next request misses the cache and repeats this flow.

​​ Cache-control directives

A Cache-Control header can include a number of directives, and the directive dictates who can cache a resource along with how long those resources can be cached before they must be updated.

If multiple directives are passed together, each directive is separated by a comma. If the directive takes an argument, it follows the directive separated by an equal sign. For example: max-age=86400.

Directives can be broken down into four groups: cacheability, expiration, revalidation, and other.

​​ Cacheability

Cacheability refers to whether or not a resource should enter a cache, and the directives below indicate a resource’s cacheability.

• public — Indicates any cache may store the response, even if the response is normally non-cacheable or cacheable only within a private cache.
• private — Indicates the response message is intended for a single user (for example, a browser cache) and must not be stored by a shared cache like Cloudflare or a corporate proxy.
• no-store — Indicates any cache (i.e., a client or proxy cache) must not store any part of either the immediate request or response.

​​ Expiration

Expiration refers to how long a resource should remain in the cache, and the directives below affect how long a resource stays in the cache.

• max-age=seconds — Indicates the response is stale after its age is greater than the specified number of seconds. Age is defined as the time in seconds since the asset was served from the origin server. The seconds argument is an unquoted integer.
• s-maxage=seconds — Indicates that in shared caches, the maximum age specified by this directive overrides the maximum age specified by either the max-age directive or the Expires header field. The s-maxage directive also implies the semantics of the proxy-revalidate response directive. Browsers ignore s-maxage.
• no-cache — Indicates the response cannot be used to satisfy a subsequent request without successful validation on the origin server. This allows an origin server to prevent a cache from using the origin to satisfy a request without contacting it, even by caches that have been configured to send stale responses.

Ensure the HTTP Expires header is set in your origin server to use Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) as stipulated in RFC 2616 Open external link .

​​ Revalidation

Revalidation determines how the cache should behave when a resource expires, and the directives below affect the revalidation behavior.

• must-revalidate — Indicates that once the resource is stale, a cache (client or proxy) must not use the response to satisfy subsequent requests without successful validation on the origin server.
• proxy-revalidate — Has the same meaning as the must-revalidate response directive except that it does not apply to private client caches.
• stale-while-revalidate=seconds — When present in an HTTP response, indicates caches may serve the response in which it appears after it becomes stale, up to the indicated number of seconds since the resource expired. If Always Online is enabled, then the stale-while-revalidate and stale-if-error directives are ignored. This directive is not supported when using the Cache API methods cache.match or cache.put. For more information, refer to the Worker’s documentation for Cache API.
• stale-if-error=seconds — Indicates that when an error is encountered, a cached stale response may be used to satisfy the request, regardless of other freshness information. This directive is not supported when using the Cache API methods cache.match or cache.put. For more information, refer to the Worker’s documentation for Cache API.

The stale-if-error directive is ignored if Always Online is enabled or if an explicit in-protocol directive is passed. Examples of explicit in-protocol directives include a no-store or no-cache cache directive, a must-revalidate cache-response-directive, or an applicable s-maxage or proxy-revalidate cache-response-directive.

​​ Other

Additional directives that influence cache behavior are listed below.

• no-transform — Indicates that an intermediary — regardless of whether it implements a cache — must not transform the payload.
• vary — Cloudflare does not consider vary values in caching decisions. Nevertheless, vary values are respected when Vary for images is configured and when the vary header is vary: accept-encoding.
• immutable — Indicates to clients the response body does not change over time. The resource, if unexpired, is unchanged on the server. The user should not send a conditional revalidation for it (for example, If-None-Match or If-Modified-Since) to check for updates, even when the user explicitly refreshes the page. This directive has no effect on public caches like Cloudflare, but does change browser behavior.

​​ Origin Cache-Control behavior

The table below lists directives and their behaviors when Origin Cache-Control is disabled and when it’s enabled.

Certain scenarios also affect Origin Cache-Control behavior when it is enabled or disabled.

​​ Examples

Review the examples below to learn which directives to use with the Cache-Control header to control specific caching behavior.

​​ Interaction with other Cloudflare features

​​ Edge Cache TTL

Edge Cache TTL Page Rules override s-maxage and disable revalidation directives if present. When Origin Cache-Control is enabled at Cloudflare, the original Cache-Control header passes downstream from our edge even if Edge Cache TTL overrides are present. Otherwise, when Origin Cache-Control is disabled at Cloudflare (the default), Cloudflare overrides the origin cache control.

​​ Browser Cache TTL

Browser Cache TTL Page Rules override max-age settings passed downstream from our edge, typically to your visitor’s browsers.

​​ Polish

Polish is disabled when the no-transform directive is present.

​​ Gzip and Other Compression

Compression is disabled when the no-transform directive is present. If the original asset fetched from the origin is compressed, it is served compressed to the visitor. If the original asset is uncompressed, compression is not applied.