Is my website actually going through Cloudflare?

Short answer: open your domain's DNS records in Cloudflare and look at the A, AAAA and CNAME records for your site. An orange cloud (Proxied) means visitors go through Cloudflare. A grey cloud (DNS only) means Cloudflare only tells browsers where your server is, and every visitor then connects straight to your server.

Moving your nameservers to Cloudflare doesn't make your site go through Cloudflare. That only happens for records set to Proxied.

Signs your site is DNS only

Cloudflare's analytics show little or no traffic, even though people visit the site.
Cloudflare lists no edge certificate for the address: your server's own certificate is the one visitors get.
Cloudflare's SSL mode, firewall rules and caching don't apply to it.
A public DNS lookup for your site returns your server's own address, not one of Cloudflare's.
Responses from your site have no cf-ray header and don't name Cloudflare as the server.

A real example

On 31 October 2026, a Preventionlabs report on a site whose nameservers are Cloudflare's said, in its Cloudflare settings:

"doesn't go through Cloudflare: its DNS record in Cloudflare isn't proxied, so this zone's SSL/TLS, HTTPS and security settings don't apply to it, and Cloudflare's analytics don't see its visitors"

The same report showed no traffic data in Cloudflare's analytics, no Cloudflare edge certificate for the address, and a slow first byte: every visitor was travelling to a server in Europe.

What changes when you turn the proxy on

Cloudflare answers with "shared IP addresses used to route traffic through a nearby data center" (Cloudflare: proxy status), so visitors connect to a Cloudflare data centre near them instead of your server. Your Cloudflare settings start to apply, so check your SSL mode: Cloudflare says that "without using Full (strict), a malicious party could technically hijack the connection" (Cloudflare: Full mode). If your server has a valid certificate, choose Full (strict).

What Preventionlabs shows

When your Cloudflare account is connected, every report reads your site's DNS record from Cloudflare and says plainly when the site doesn't go through Cloudflare. It then stops presenting the zone's settings as facts about a site they don't apply to. If the first byte is slow on a site Cloudflare doesn't proxy, the report says where it was measured from and gives the proxy as the next step.

Price

First 2 reports free on each domain, no card needed. Then US$28 a month for everything, or US$1.40 a report.

Run your first report free