Cloudflare has announced a closed beta for its OHTTP Gateway, a managed service intended to help application backends receive requests without seeing a user’s IP address. The company’s October 2 announcement describes the gateway as a forthcoming paid add-on and directs interested developers to a waitlist.
Oblivious HTTP separates a request’s journey into two independently operated stages. A relay forwards encrypted traffic, while a gateway decrypts the request for the application. The design relies on separating those roles so one operator does not observe both the user’s network identity and the request contents.
Cloudflare says customers whose applications already sit behind its network can use the new gateway with a third-party relay. It is also renaming its existing Privacy Gateway service to OHTTP Relay to distinguish the two roles.
For developers, the announcement broadens the available deployment options rather than making an application automatically anonymous. Cloudflare explicitly notes that OHTTP does not remove identifying information inside a request body. Sending an email address or username can still reveal identity, even when the network path hides an IP address.
Related: Cloudflare Workers adds opt-in post-quantum cryptography APIs.
