Turning Off Cloudflare Proxy

If I turn off proxy so that my clients connect directly to my origin, does it cause disruption if their DNS isn't updated fast enough? I understand Cloudflare's TTL is 300 seconds, so does it mean I should expect up to 5 minutes of disruption for my clients?

SuperHelpflare•10/10/25, 7:21 AM

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According to the documentation, when you turn off proxy, your clients will connect directly to your origin, and the disruption time depends on the Time-to-Live (TTL) set on the previous DNS record.

As stated in the documentation (https://developers.cloudflare.com/dns/troubleshooting/faq/), "Depending on the Time-to-Live (TTL) set on the previous DNS record, old data may still remain cached until the TTL expires."

However, it's also mentioned that "Proxied records expire after 5 minutes ("Automatic")" which implies that the TTL for proxied records is 300 seconds (5 minutes).

But, as noted in the documentation (https://developers.cloudflare.com/dns/manage-dns-records/reference/ttl/), "It may take longer than 5 minutes for you to actually experience record changes, as your local DNS cache may take longer to update."

So, while the TTL for proxied records is 300 seconds, the actual disruption time may be longer due to local DNS cache updates.

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Lloweehahn If I turn off proxy so that my clients connect directly to my origin, does it ca...

Hello, I’m Allie!•10/10/25, 1:03 PM

Not necessarily. Non-proxied DNS updates can take 24-48 hours to update, as downstream DNS caches often disgregard the TTLs you set

loweehahnOP•10/10/25, 1:16 PM

That's worrying.

Lloweehahn That's worrying.

Hello, I’m Allie!•10/10/25, 1:46 PM

That’s generally how TTLs for DNS work. You can get lucky, and your users use a fast DNS resolver which updates at the TTLs you set, but they might also not.

The reason proxied is so fast to switch is because it isn’t actually switching the external DNS records, it just tells Cloudflare’s edge, “when you get a request for this domain, route it to b instead of a”

Turning Off Cloudflare Proxy

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