Overview

Cloudflare's stale-while-revalidate Cache-Control directive is now fully asynchronous. Previously, revalidation would only trigger on the next visitor request after an asset expired. Now, revalidation begins automatically at expiry, allowing Cloudflare to serve stale content immediately while refreshing assets in the background.

Key Benefits

Lower latency: The first visitor after cache expiry is no longer blocked waiting for an origin round-trip. Stale (but safe) content is served instantly while the fresh copy is fetched asynchronously.

Fresher content: Since revalidation happens automatically at expiry rather than waiting for a request, cached assets are refreshed sooner and visitors are more likely to receive up-to-date content.

Important Considerations

Origin traffic increase: Your origin may experience elevated traffic as Cloudflare proactively revalidates assets at expiry.

Cache status changes: All revalidation cache statuses are now reported as UPDATING or HIT instead of MISS or REVALIDATED. Update any monitoring or analytics systems that depend on these statuses.

Availability & Rollout

This change is live for all Free, Pro, and Business zones. Approximately 75% of Enterprise zones have been migrated, with the remaining zones rolling out throughout the quarter.

Getting Started

Ensure your origin includes the stale-while-revalidate directive in the Cache-Control header. See the Cache-Control documentation for implementation details.