What is Pixelflare?
Pixelflare is a self-hosted image CDN that can be deployed to Cloudflare's infrastructure. Think of it as your own personal Imgur, except you own the data, control the features, and don't have to put up with dodgy adverts or surprise policy changes.
Upload images, organise them into albums, generate embed links, and serve them globally at lightning speed. It's properly optimised for performance, comes with a decent UI, and won't cost you an arm and a leg to run.
Why bother?
Because relying on free image hosts is a gamble. They shut down, delete your files, compress your images to oblivion, or plaster them with ads. Commercial CDN services charge extortionate fees and make migration very hard. And self-hosting on basic object storage means you're stuck handling resizing, caching, and CDN configuration yourself.
Pixelflare gives you the best bits of all these approaches:
- Own your images - They live in your Cloudflare account, not someone else's
- Proper fast - Served from 300+ edge locations worldwide
- Actually affordable - Usually around £8-10/month for 100k images
- No vendor lock-in - Standard URLs, easy backups, simple migration
What can it do?
Two ways to use it
Managed hosting (available now)
Sign up at pixelflare.cc and start uploading immediately. Free tier to get started, then from $5/month for the full feature set. No deployment faff, no infrastructure headaches - just works.
Perfect if you want image hosting that doesn't require a computer science degree to set up.
Self-hosted (in alpha)
Deploy your own instance to your Cloudflare account. Takes about 30 minutes with the automated setup scripts, then it's yours to run however you like.
Perfect if you're technical, want complete control, or just enjoy deploying things because you can.
What makes it different?
Your images, your rules - Unlike free image hosts that can delete your files or shut down overnight, your images are under your control. Optional off-site backups mean you're never locked in. Standard URL formats and custom domain support make migration trivial.
Proper edge delivery - Images served from 300+ locations worldwide, not just a single S3 bucket somewhere in Cardiff. Built-in transformations mean you can request specific sizes on-the-fly, saving bandwidth and speeding up your site. See why Cloudflare's infrastructure is fastest →
Actually affordable - Commercial CDNs charge hundreds once you scale. Basic object storage is cheap but you're stuck handling resizing, caching, and delivery yourself. Pixelflare gives you both for usually £8-10/month. See detailed cost comparison →
Clean, fast UI - Upload by pasting images, dragging files, or importing URLs. Organise with albums and tags. Built-in editor for quick crops and filters. Real-time analytics to see what's being viewed. No clutter, no ads, just works.
Open and honest - 100% open source under MIT. Want to see how it works? Check the code on GitHub. Want to change something? Fork it. Want to deploy it commercially? Go ahead.
See detailed comparison with alternatives →
Worth knowing
Pixelflare is built specifically for Cloudflare's platform - you won't be deploying this to AWS or Azure. See why we chose Cloudflare →. The self-hosted route needs a bit of technical knowledge (comfortable with Git, Terraform, and reading docs).
For the managed version, you get enterprise-grade infrastructure without the enterprise headaches. For self-hosting, you get complete control and transparency, but you're responsible for keeping it running.
Video hosting isn't on the cards - this is for images. If you need a full digital asset management system with approval workflows and rights management, you'll want something else.
Ready to give it a go?
Try managed hosting
Sign up for early access to the hosted version. Free to start, cheap to scale.
Get early access →Deploy your own
Clone the repo and deploy to your Cloudflare account in about 30 minutes.
View deployment guide →