# Cloudflare DNS vs Google Cloud DNS

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/cloudflare-dns-vs-google-cloud-dns/

Every value below is read from Cloudflare DNS's and Google Cloud DNS's own documentation. See https://inetgeek.com/methodology/ for how.

## At a glance

| Criterion | Cloudflare DNS | Google Cloud DNS |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Free tier | Yes | No |
| Entry paid plan | None for DNS itself. The product page prices it at nothing and names no paid DNS tier; what a Cloudflare account costs is decided by the other products on it. | No minimum and no plan. A managed zone costs $0.000273973 an hour — about $0.20 a month — and queries are $0.40 per million up to a billion, $0.20 above that. No magnitude is recorded because an hourly zone rate is not a monthly plan fee. |
| Pricing model | Free, with no separate meter for zones or queries. DNS comes with any Cloudflare plan rather than being priced on its own. | Two meters, one of them hourly. Managed zones are billed per hour — $0.000273973 for the first 25, falling twice above that — and queries by the million, with routing-policy queries priced higher than regular ones. |
| DNSSEC | Supported — Cloudflare signs the zone and generates the DS record for you | Supported — Cloud DNS creates and rotates the keys and signs the zone itself |

## Where they differ

### Free tier

- Cloudflare DNS: Yes ([source](https://www.cloudflare.com/products/dns/))
- Google Cloud DNS: No ([source](https://cloud.google.com/dns/pricing))

### Entry paid plan

- Cloudflare DNS: None for DNS itself. The product page prices it at nothing and names no paid DNS tier; what a Cloudflare account costs is decided by the other products on it. ([source](https://www.cloudflare.com/products/dns/))
- Google Cloud DNS: No minimum and no plan. A managed zone costs $0.000273973 an hour — about $0.20 a month — and queries are $0.40 per million up to a billion, $0.20 above that. No magnitude is recorded because an hourly zone rate is not a monthly plan fee. ([source](https://cloud.google.com/dns/pricing))

### Pricing model

- Cloudflare DNS: Free, with no separate meter for zones or queries. DNS comes with any Cloudflare plan rather than being priced on its own. ([source](https://www.cloudflare.com/products/dns/))
- Google Cloud DNS: Two meters, one of them hourly. Managed zones are billed per hour — $0.000273973 for the first 25, falling twice above that — and queries by the million, with routing-policy queries priced higher than regular ones. ([source](https://cloud.google.com/dns/pricing))

## Which should you choose?

Pick Cloudflare DNS if Any domain you are already putting behind Cloudflare. Authoritative DNS on its anycast network costs nothing, meters nothing, and has no volume at which that changes — the query bill other providers charge simply does not exist here.

Pick Google Cloud DNS if An estate already on Google Cloud, where DNS should be another line on the same bill and another resource in the same IAM. Zones are billed by the hour and queries by the million, with no plan to pick and no minimum to clear.

Consider something else: Cloudflare DNS — You want DNS bought separately from a CDN and a proxy. Cloudflare prices DNS at zero because it is a way into the rest of the platform, and the product page names no paid DNS tier at all — what the account costs is decided by everything else on it.

Consider something else: Google Cloud DNS — You want to know what a month costs without doing arithmetic. A zone priced at $0.000273973 an hour is roughly twenty cents a month, and routing-policy queries cost nearly twice a regular one — both true, neither obvious, and both free elsewhere.

## Documented by only one

- Edge network: Cloudflare DNS: Supported
- Uptime SLA: Google Cloud DNS: 100% for the Google-managed authoritative name servers, stated as a Service Level Objective rather than a percentage below it.
- Query price: Google Cloud DNS: $0.40 per million regular queries up to one billion a month, $0.20 per million above it. Routing-policy queries — geolocation, weighted round robin, failover — are $0.70 per million, halving to $0.35 past a billion.

## Questions this comparison answers

**Entry paid plan: Cloudflare DNS or Google Cloud DNS?**

Cloudflare DNS: None for DNS itself. The product page prices it at nothing and names no paid DNS tier; what a Cloudflare account costs is decided by the other products on it.
Google Cloud DNS: No minimum and no plan. A managed zone costs $0.000273973 an hour — about $0.20 a month — and queries are $0.40 per million up to a billion, $0.20 above that. No magnitude is recorded because an hourly zone rate is not a monthly plan fee.

**Free tier: Cloudflare DNS or Google Cloud DNS?**

Cloudflare DNS: Yes
Google Cloud DNS: No

**Should I choose Cloudflare DNS or Google Cloud DNS?**

Pick Cloudflare DNS if Any domain you are already putting behind Cloudflare. Authoritative DNS on its anycast network costs nothing, meters nothing, and has no volume at which that changes — the query bill other providers charge simply does not exist here.
Pick Google Cloud DNS if An estate already on Google Cloud, where DNS should be another line on the same bill and another resource in the same IAM. Zones are billed by the hour and queries by the million, with no plan to pick and no minimum to clear.