Can I replicate display.dev's pricing with Cloudflare Access?

Not exactly. Cloudflare's free tier (50 users) is the closest, but it requires significant setup and ongoing maintenance. Above 50 users, Cloudflare Access is $7/user/month regardless of how many artifacts you're hosting. display.dev is €49/month flat regardless of how many users or artifacts.

What about Cloudflare's free tier for Access?

Free for 50 users. Your company may have fewer than 50 people who need to view internal content. You may have an engineer with time to set it up. Then Cloudflare's free tier is a viable DIY option. Most teams who've tried this find the maintenance burden and lack of single-file publishing makes display.dev worth €49/month even within the 50-user limit.

Does display.dev use Cloudflare under the hood?

display.dev uses infrastructure for hosting and delivery, but the details of the stack are internal. The value is that you don't need to know or manage any of it.

Cloudflare Access Alternatives: Internal Static Hosting Without Per-Seat Pricing

The Cloudflare Access pricing problem

Cloudflare Access is free for up to 50 users. After that:

$7/user/month (pay-as-you-go) for each user above the free 50
51 users: $7/month
100 users: $350/month
200 users: $1,050/month

For sharing internal content company-wide, per-seat pricing creates the wrong incentive structure. Every new viewer is a cost increase. The 51st person who needs to see the Q1 report triggers a pricing jump. Teams end up managing a list of "approved viewers" rather than sharing freely, which defeats the purpose.

Per-seat pricing made sense when access control was a security infrastructure problem. It doesn't make sense when the job is "share content with your company."

The Cloudflare Access setup problem

Cloudflare Access is an identity-aware proxy. It adds authentication to any web application. But to host static files (HTML, Markdown, assets) you still need a hosting service behind the proxy. The usual path is Cloudflare Pages + Access together.

Setting up Cloudflare Pages + Access from scratch:

1. Create a Cloudflare Pages project Either connect a GitHub/GitLab repository via the dashboard, or use the Wrangler CLI to create a project. This requires an existing git repo with the files committed.

2. Configure an Access application In the Cloudflare Zero Trust dashboard, create an application, define the application domain, and set authentication policies.

3. Set up identity provider connections Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 require separate identity provider configurations. Each IdP requires OAuth credentials from the respective admin console. This is a meaningful setup step, not a checkbox.

4. Handle subdomain protection Cloudflare Access protects a subdomain. If you want path-level protection (different rules for /reports vs /public), that requires additional policy configuration.

Setup effort: Setup takes longer and needs more steps, even for an engineer who knows Cloudflare.

Ongoing maintenance: Certificate renewals, IdP configuration updates when OAuth credentials rotate, Wrangler CLI updates, Cloudflare API changes. This is infrastructure you own.

Wrangler deploys a folder, but it does not publish one document for a colleague. Non-technical users have no path at all.

What display.dev does differently

Flat pricing. €49/month for unlimited viewers. Neither the 51st viewer nor the 500th costs anything extra. Share freely.

Multi-IdP included. Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 SSO on the same plan, configured by default. No separate identity provider setup, no OAuth credentials to manage.

CLI and MCP. Ask your agent to publish a file, or say "publish this to my team" in Claude Desktop. Non-technical users can publish without touching a terminal.

No setup. Create an account, configure your company domain, and ask your agent to publish. No infrastructure to maintain afterward.

Direct comparison

	Cloudflare Pages + Access	display.dev
Monthly cost (100 viewers)	~$350	€49
Monthly cost (250 viewers)	~$1,400	€49
Setup	Takes longer, more steps	Fewer steps
Single-file publishing	❌ (Wrangler deploys a folder)	✅
MCP integration	❌	✅
Google SSO	✅	✅
Microsoft SSO	✅ (separate setup)	✅ (included)
Per-seat pricing	✅ ($7/user)	❌ (flat)
Maintenance required	Yes	No
Non-technical user publishing	❌	✅ (MCP)
Free tier	✅ (50 users)	✅ (one-time password auth)

The numbers at different company sizes

Team size	Cloudflare Access/month	display.dev/month	Savings
50 viewers	$0 (free tier)	€49	-$49
75 viewers	$175	€49	$126
100 viewers	$350	€49	$301
200 viewers	$1,050	€49	$1,001
500 viewers	$3,150	€49	$3,101

At 50 users, Cloudflare's free tier wins on price. The crossover happens around 58 users: $56/month for Cloudflare vs. €49/month for display.dev. Above that threshold (most companies with a real sharing problem) display.dev is dramatically cheaper.

When Cloudflare Access is still the right choice

You're within the free 50-user tier and have already set up the infrastructure. At zero marginal cost, the build vs. buy calculation changes.

You need Zero Trust network access features beyond static file hosting: device posture checks, application-level policies, network-level access control, WARP client integration. These are enterprise security features that go far beyond sharing an HTML file.

You're protecting a real web application (a dynamic backend, an internal tool, a staging environment) rather than sharing internal documents.

You're already paying for Cloudflare Teams/Enterprise and the cost is included in an existing contract.

When display.dev is the right choice

You want to publish HTML or Markdown files without building infrastructure. Your agent publishes a file and returns one link.

You're sharing with more than 50 people. Per-seat pricing breaks the "share freely" model at exactly the point where broad internal sharing becomes valuable.

You want flat pricing. Know what you pay, with no surprises when the team grows.

You want agent publishing through the CLI or MCP. Ask your agent, or say "publish this to my team" in Claude Desktop. Cloudflare has no equivalent for single documents.

You want Google and Microsoft SSO without separate configuration. Both IdPs work out of the box.

Try display.dev free – €49/month flat, no per-seat pricing →