Set Browser Cache TTL

Specify a time for a visitor’s Browser Cache TTL to accelerate the page load for repeat visitors to your website. To configure cache duration within Cloudflare’s data centers, refer to Edge Cache TTL.

By default, Cloudflare honors the cache expiration set in your Expires and Cache-Control headers. Cloudflare overrides any Cache-Control or Expires headers with values set via the Browser Cache TTL option under Caching on your dashboard if:

• The value of the Cache-Control header from the origin web server is less than the Browser Cache TTL setting. This means that Browser cache TTL value needs to be higher than origin max-age.
• The origin web server does not send a Cache-Control or an Expires header.

Unless specifically set in a Cache Rule, Cloudflare does not override or insert Cache-Control headers if you set Browser Cache TTL to Respect Existing Headers.

Nevertheless, the value you set via Cache Rule will be ignored if Cache-Control: max-age is higher. In other words, you can override to make browsers cache longer than Cloudflare’s edge but not less.

Set Browser Cache TTL

The Cloudflare UI and API both prohibit setting Browser Cache TTL to 0 for non-Enterprise domains.

Note

If you modify cached assets, the new asset is not displayed to repeat visitors before the Browser Cache TTL duration. Purging Cloudflare’s cache does not affect assets cached in a visitor’s browser.

1. Log in to your Cloudflare dashboard.
2. Select Caching.
3. Under Browser Cache TTL, select the drop-down menu to select the desired cache expiration time.

The Respect Existing Headers option tells Cloudflare to honor the settings in the Cache-Control headers from your origin web server.

Respect Existing Headers Availability

For all plan types, you can set Browser Cache TTL to Respect Existing Headers at a zone level (zone setting) or you can use a Cache Rule.