Cloudflare Tests Cache Transcoding to Reduce Storage Requirements
InfoQ, Sunday, September 13th, 2026
Cloudflare's Cache Transcoding prototype uses Zstandard compression to reduce cache storage needs by 2.8x.
Cloudflare developed a prototype called Cache Transcoding that compresses uncompressed text content like HTML, JSON, CSS, and JavaScript using Zstandard before storing it on disk.
The approach achieved approximately 2.8x compression on eligible content while requiring minimal processing overhead, as content is compressed once upon cache entry and decompressed when served.
The solution could provide petabytes of additional effective cache capacity and reduce inter-datacenter data transfers, though further testing across different scenarios remains necessary.