← Rules / rules
Trace a request
Cloudflare Trace (Beta) simulates an HTTP/S request through Cloudflare's network to your origin server. Use this tool to understand how your Cloudflare configurations (such as rules, caching, and security settings) would affect a specific request. If the hostname you are testing is not proxied by Cloudflare, Cloudflare Trace will still return all the configurations that Cloudflare would have applied to the request.
You can define specific request properties to simulate different conditions for an HTTP/S request. Rules that are turned off in Cloudflare products will not be evaluated.
Cloudflare Trace is available to users with an Administrator or Super Administrator role.
When to use Trace
Use Trace when you need to test what would happen with a simulated request:
- Understanding why a rule did not trigger as expected
- Testing how your rules handle different request scenarios
- Seeing the evaluation order of your rules
- Simulating requests from different geolocations or conditions
Use Log Explorer when you need to investigate what actually happened with real production traffic:
- Analyzing historical data and trends
- Investigating security incidents after they occur
- Searching for patterns across thousands of requests
- Monitoring application performance over time
- Providing forensic evidence to support teams
The key difference is that Trace simulates "what-if" scenarios, while Log Explorer shows actual historical traffic.