Edge / Cloudflare Stack

Cloudflare's developer platform matured into a real alternative to the classic Node-on-Vercel deployment. An "all-CF" stack typically looks like:

Components

• Compute: Cloudflare Workers (V8 isolates) — globally distributed by default, no cold starts in the Node sense.
• Framework: Hono for APIs, or TanStack Start / React Router 7 / Next.js (via @cloudflare/next-on-pages) for full-stack.
• DB: D1 (SQLite at the edge) for small/medium apps, or external Postgres (Neon, Supabase, Hyperdrive in front of any Postgres).
• KV / Cache: Workers KV for hot reads, Cache API for HTTP cache.
• Object storage: R2 (S3-compatible, no egress fees).
• Coordination / WebSockets / state: Durable Objects — single-instance stateful actors, ideal for collaborative docs, chat rooms, rate limiters.
• Realtime: Durable Objects + WebSockets, or PartyKit (built on DOs).
• Queues: Cloudflare Queues for fire-and-forget; Workflows (durable, multi-step) for orchestration.
• Pages: static frontends or full-stack via the new "Workers + assets" model.
• Vector / AI: Vectorize, Workers AI, AI Gateway for LLM proxying / caching.
• Auth: Better Auth with D1 adapter, Auth.js, Clerk, WorkOS — most providers work fine on Workers.

What you give up vs. Node

• Some npm packages don't work — anything that uses fs, native bindings, or large Node-only deps. The list shrinks every release; check nodejs_compat.
• CPU time limits per request (fine for almost anything but heavy synchronous compute).
• No long-lived processes in the Node sense — but Durable Objects fill most of those use cases.

What you gain

• No cold starts in the conventional sense.
• Globally distributed by default — your code runs near the user without you opting in.
• Generous free tier — 100k requests/day on Workers, 10GB on R2, etc.
• Less infra — no VPC, no autoscaling group, no separate cache server.

Worth dabbling with

If you're on the user's stack and want to learn this:

1. Build a small Hono API on Workers in front of an existing Postgres via Hyperdrive.
2. Try Durable Objects for a tiny realtime app (live cursor, chat room).
3. Try R2 as a drop-in replacement for S3 — connect with the AWS SDK.
4. Deploy a static Next.js export to Cloudflare Pages (this docs site does that).