Comment by jorams
> Cloudflare free plan's outside of Pages have never offered "unlimited free bandwidth" but "generous free bandwidth with conditions".
To be clear, Cloudflare's pricing pages have definitely included statements like "we never charge for bandwidth" for the free plan of the CDN. Here's a snapshot from exactly 10 years ago[1].
They removed it after a while, probably because it's just not true, and I don't think they make any such statements on their increasingly complicated pricing pages any more.
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20150116071824/https://www.cloud...
The statement is true in so much as you can not be billed for traffic that has occurred without a paid contract in place. Also no mention of "unlimited", and though free is used throughout never "free bandwidth". It also doesn't contradict that Cloudflare can and does restrict or limit services for perceived TOS violations.
In the many years I've used Cloudflare I was never under the impression I received "free unlimited bandwidth", but "generous free bandwidth with conditions".
So if you're on a free plan you never pay for bandwidth, until you're not on a free plan (or any plan). It sucks to be one of the free plan users that doesn't have the ability to make a paid plan work, but I don't understand why Cloudflare needs to keep subsidizing something that wouldn't be tenable without their handout.