Wildcard DNS records
Normal DNS records map a domain name to one or multiple IP addresses or other associated resources to a specific domain name (a one-to-many mapping).
Wildcard DNS records allow you to have a many-to-many mapping, for example if you had hundreds or thousands of subdomains you wanted to point to the same resources. Wildcard records are used as the response for all subdomains that are not specifically covered by another DNS record.
Within Cloudflare, wildcard DNS records can be either proxied or DNS-only.
Create a Wildcard record
To create a wildcard DNS record, create a DNS record with an * in the Name field.
| Type | Name | IPv4 address | Proxy status |
|---|---|---|---|
A |
* |
192.0.2.1 |
Proxied |
You can also create a wildcard DNS record specifically for a deeper subdomain. For example, if you wanted to create a wildcard record on *.www.example.com, you would create a record with *.www in the name field.
| Type | Name | IPv4 address | Proxy status |
|---|---|---|---|
A |
*.www |
192.0.2.2 |
Proxied |
Availability
Customers on all plans can create and proxy wildcard DNS records.
Limitations
If you are using a partial zone setup for your DNS, Cloudflare does not automatically provision SSL/TLS certificates for your wildcard record.
For wildcard hostname certificates, certificate issuance and renewal varies based on the type of certificate you are using:
- Universal: Perform DCV using one of the available methods.
- Advanced: In most cases, you can opt for Delegated DCV, which greatly simplifies certificate management.
If you cannot use Delegated DCV, you need to use TXT based DCV for certificate issuance and renewal. This means you will need to place one TXT DCV token for every hostname on the certificate. If one or more of the hostnames on the certificate fails to validate, the certificate will not be issued or renewed.
This means that a wildcard certificate covering example.com and *.example.com will require two DCV tokens to be placed at the authoritative DNS provider. Similarly, a certificate with five hostnames in the SAN (including a wildcard) will require five DCV tokens to be placed at the authoritative DNS provider.
Additional information
For more information on wildcard records — as well as more details about their limitations — refer to the introductory blog post.