Cloudflare Sends EU Traffic via US POPs — How Do I Keep Requests in Europe?

Hi all,
I’m new to Cloudflare and could really use some help. My site targets European users and the origin server sits in Finland (Hetzner). As soon as I enabled Cloudflare, traceroutes from France, Germany, Armenia, etc. started resolving to two U.S. IPs (172.67.213.26 / 104.21.53.129, both apparently in California). Anything that isn’t cached now travels across the Atlantic before coming back to Europe, which feels pointless.

Is there a way to keep European traffic on European edge servers—maybe a setting I’ve overlooked? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Idle•6/12/25, 7:36 AM

?anycast

SuperHelpflare•6/12/25, 7:36 AM

Take a look here to see why the Cloudflare datacenter you are routed towards isn't always the closest geographically: https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/learning/cdn/glossary/anycast-network/

Idle•6/12/25, 7:37 AM

IIdle 😀

Sergey Kuznetsov | skuznetsOP•6/12/25, 7:40 AM

I don't quite understand. This thing is supposed to work by default in Cloudflare, right? But all my requests are going to two IPs in California.

IIdle 😀

Sergey Kuznetsov | skuznetsOP•6/12/25, 7:41 AM

And yet, when I test from the https://speed.cloudflare.com page, everything is routed correctly (to Germany).

Internet Speed Test - Measure Network Performance | Cloudflare

Test your Internet connection. Check your network performance with our Internet speed test. Powered by Cloudflare's global edge network.

SSergey Kuznetsov | skuznets I don't quite understand. This thing is supposed to work by default in Cloudflar...

Laudian•6/12/25, 9:04 AM

Cloudflare's IP addresses are anycast, the german data center has the same ip as the californian.

Your ISP picks where to send traffic. Sadly, some (mostly Telekom) send most Cloudflare traffic to US locations.

LLaudian Cloudflare's IP addresses are anycast, the german data center has the same ip as...

Sergey Kuznetsov | skuznetsOP•6/12/25, 4:55 PM

Oh, ok! Thank you. Seems strange, cause I see 2 different ip adresses, but both in California..

SSergey Kuznetsov | skuznets Oh, ok! Thank you. Seems strange, cause I see 2 different ip adresses, but both ...

Chaika•6/12/25, 5:00 PM

It sounds like you're looking at the GeoIP location

Chaika•6/12/25, 5:01 PM

Cloudflare uses Anycast. The same IPs are announced from hundreds of data centers globally.
The IPs have no one "location", some IP lookup tools deal with this properly and will tell you "This is Anycast so it can't be geolocated" and some will just fall back to California

Cloudflare Sends EU Traffic via US POPs — How Do I Keep Requests in Europe?

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