Cloudflare Error 1015: What It Means and How to Fix or Bypass It

Cloudflare is the biggest content delivery network on the internet, protecting millions of websites and services against all sorts of user attacks. This is why many website owners and visitors see the Cloudflare Error 1015.

While this rate limiting error is designed to protect internet properties, it can be quite frustrating for others, especially web scrapers. It means no access to the target website until Error 1015 times out, leading to disrupted data collection.

For regular website visitors, seeing the error by mistake could mean losing access to important information or inability to make a purchase or complete a transaction. This, in turn, can result in a loss of trust and revenue for the website owner.

So, in this article, we’ll discuss how to avoid Cloudflare Error 1015, revealing the best tools and strategies that will help you get around it. But before we start, let’s explain what this common rate limiting error is and what triggers it in the first place.

What Is Cloudflare Error 1015?

It’s a rate limiting error thrown by Cloudflare that informs website users that they have exceeded the allowed number of requests within a certain period. It’s how Cloudflare protects website properties from poor performance and attacks after detecting excessive requests from a single device.

This usually happens when you try to scrape data from a website, in which case your web scraping bot sends too many requests to the given website.

What Is the Purpose of This Error 1015?

The purpose behind Cloudflare Error 1015 is to block bots, apps, and users who are trying to overuse or abuse a website or service. This way, it protects against DDoS , DoS, brute force attacks, and other types of bot attacks.

What Is the Duration of a Rate Limit Ban by Cloudflare?

A website owner using Cloudflare as a service can make the ban last anywhere between 10 seconds and 24 hours. If they are free or pro plan users, they can block for only 1 hour.

The global rate limit of the Cloudflare API is 1,200 requests per user every 5 minutes. When this limit is surpassed, all API calls are blocked for the next 5 minutes.

Common Causes of Cloudflare Error 1015

While the underlying root cause for the error is the same for all internet users, there may be different reasons for triggering the restriction:

• Web scraping bots

Scrapers and crawlers send a lot of requests as part of the process. You might need to modify the number of requests sent per minute depending on the website. Since the rule differs for every website, custom settings may be required.

• Misconfigured proxies or headers

Some sets of proxies, even residential ones, may be flagged by Cloudflare, so you’ll need to switch to a different pool – setting a different country usually works. Also, make sure your headers don’t include mentions of automation, flags like X-Forwarded-For, or send weird User Agents.

• Browser extensions

Some browser extensions send requests to websites to provide you with the features. So if you have a lot of them, getting a 1015 is quite common.

• Shared IPs

Whether it’s just your local network or a shared proxy pool, many people using the same IP and visiting the same website will almost always trigger 1015. You’ll need to switch your proxies or your network to resolve the issue long-term.

• VPN usage or mobile IPs

VPNs can trigger the error by themselves but they’re also generally shared, so the likelihood of getting 1015 is higher. The same goes for mobile IPs, except they’re not as suspicious as VPN usage.

How to Resolve Cloudflare Error 1015?

Resolution will depend on which side of the equation you’re on as the steps differ for users, scrapers, or website owners.

For regular internet users:

• Wait 15-30 minutes. One of the most surefire ways as the 1015 error is due to too many requests.
• Switch networks. Hopping from Wi-Fi to mobile data will change your IP address, so you might bypass the 1015 error.
• Try a different browser or Incognito mode. If you weren’t doing anything suspicious, your extensions or addons might be causing the 1015 error.

For scrapers or bot developers:

• Stop any automation. Sending more requests isn’t going to help.
• Switch IP addresses. Changing your IP will likely reset your rate limit.
• Reduce request frequency. Whether you change your IP or not, the current setup caused the 1015, so you need to minimize the likelihood of it occurring in the future.
• Switch user agents and browser fingerprints. Depending on the detection method, switching IPs might not be enough as you could be being tracked through other methods.

For website owners (if you notice too many users getting 1015):

• Review rate limit rules. You can find them in the Cloudflare dashboard, under ‘Security’, ‘WAF’, and ‘Rate Limiting Rules’. Most of the time, you’ll want to give more requests before it triggers 1015.
• Implement CAPTCHA instead of direct bans. You can set up CAPTCHAs to trigger first before you issue a ban through Cloudflare. That’ll weed out at least some of the bots.
• Whitelist some bots. You don’t want to ban Googlebot or similarly important crawlers, so whitelisting them will surely make your website work better.

How Cloudflare Implements Rate Limiting?

Rate limiting is implemented by internet property owners and runs within an application instead of on the web server itself.

It works by tracking the IPs associated with excessive requests and the interval between them. So, besides measuring the number of requests within a certain timeframe, it also measures the amount of time between requests coming from a single IP address.

When it detects a suspicious IP address, the rate limiting feature blocks its access to the internet property or website for a specific amount of time. By doing this, it informs the IP owner to slow down their requests.

Components of Cloudflare Rate Limiting Rule

All Cloudflare users can configure a basic rate limiting rule, which consists of three components:

1. Request matching criteria – according to the request scheme, request path, request methods, and/or origin response code.

2. Rate matching criteria – according to the number and time period of incoming requests from the same device.

3. Rule mitigation – involving mitigation action and ban duration.

How to Avoid Cloudflare Error 1015 for General Users

If you’re a regular user seeing Error 1015, some of the following strategies may help you get around it. Try them out and see which of them works for you.

Wait It Out

Let’s start with the simplest solution – to wait as long as the error message says before trying to access the desired web resource again. When the specified time in Cloudflare Error 1015 passes, you’ll regain access to the website.

This simple solution applies to everyday online users who are not making too many requests to a specific website or scraping data.

Check Your Network

Sometimes, you could get the rate limiting error just because you’re using a shared network. That’s because you’re sharing the same IP address with multiple users on that network, leading to traffic surges to Cloudflare-protected websites. Try switching networks or disconnecting other devices.

Check for Malware

If you have malware on your device, it may automatically generate requests to websites. This can trigger the rate limiting error, without you being aware. Therefore, run a malware scan to check your device and remove any malicious software causing the error message.

Turn Off Browser Extensions

Did you know that some browser extensions can trigger this Cloudflare error message? Those are usually extensions that automatically change request headers or refresh pages. They can make too many requests in a short time or change headers in a suspicious way that triggers Cloudflare’s security measures.

If you have such browser extensions and are dealing with the rate limiting error, disable them and try accessing the website again.

Clear Browser Cookies and Cache

Sometimes, clearing your browser’s cookies and cache can help you solve Cloudflare’s Error 1015. That’s because your browser stores copies of some elements from sites to speed up page loading during future visits.

If that data becomes corrupted or outdated, it may trigger an error after trying to access the specific website.

Use a VPN

Using a VPN (virtual private network) will provide you with a new IP address and route your entire traffic through a server in different locations. This way, the target website will no longer associate your requests with your original IP address.

How to Avoid Cloudflare Error 1015 for Web Scrapers

Cloudflare has anti-bot measures that can quickly detect and ban web scrapers. That’s because these tools are bots that send numerous requests to a particular website at a rate faster than any human.

Also, most anti-bot techniques don’t make a difference between benign and malicious bots, so they simply ban any IP address associated with a bot.

This is why scraping data at scale, especially with Puppeteer and other headless browsers, is usually disrupted by rate limiting issues from Cloudflare and similar services.

To get around rate limiting and Cloudflare Error 1015, you can try different techniques, such as using premium proxies, throttling requests, respecting website rate limits, and using web scraping APIs.

Let’s discuss each technique.

Use Rotating Proxies

A proxy server communicates with your desired website on your behalf via its own IP address. So when you route your web requests through multiple proxies, you’re actually distributing traffic load across different IP addresses. This way, you can avoid the rate limiting error.

Since you need multiple IP addresses to ensure your multiple requests are not associated with a single IP address, you need rotating proxies. Rotating automatically switches IP addresses from a large pool of IPs, either after each request or at a pre-set timeframe.

Therefore, it’s the best type of proxy for web scraping without encountering Cloudflare Error 1015.

Can You Use Any Rotating Proxies for Bypassing Cloudflare Error 1015?

It’s best to use premium proxies because websites’ anti-bot techniques often detect and block free proxies, especially shared datacenter proxies.

Web scraping professionals should only consider premium proxies , preferably rotating residential proxy servers, to gather data at scale without dealing with this error message.

Rotate Headers and User Agents

All HTTP requests contain headers revealing specific information about the sender to the destination server. The most important header when scraping data is the UA or User Agent string, as it reveals the sender’s OS, web browser, and other important information to the target web server.

If this website is protected by Cloudflare, it’ll quickly identify multiple requests coming from the same user agent. Therefore, rotating UAs can help by making it seem like your requests are coming from different users, bypassing the Cloudflare rate limit error.

Make sure you use a pool of popular and recent UAs and that the UA strings are correctly formatted and match the remaining headers for ultimate results.

Use a Web Scraping API

If you’re having trouble finding the best proxy service and HTTP header rotator that would help you avoid Cloudflare Error 1015, you may want to consider using a web scraping API.

Web scraping APIs are anti-bot toolkits for developers trying to get around obstacles like Cloudflare while scraping data at scale. Try finding a web scraping API offering features such as built-in IP rotation and automatically rotating headers.

How to Fix Cloudflare Error 1015 on Mobile Networks

Cloudflare Error 1015 happens frequently to mobile users because carriers use a technique called Carrier-Grade NAT (CGNAT) to conserve IP addresses. Throughout the day, you may get many different IPv4 addresses, but they will have been used by other people as well.

Additionally, there’s a few techniques used in mobile phones to load webpages faster. Prefetching is a common one – they preload links to speed up browsing. Social media and news apps also constantly send requests in the background to keep content up-to-date. So, it’s almost inevitable that you’ll eventually run into 1015.

Toggle Airplane Mode

Using airplane mode will reset your network and clear the cache. Make sure to keep it on for at least 10 seconds to ensure you get a different IP address after getting back online.

If done properly, you’ll get a new IP address, which may resolve the error, assuming the new one hasn’t received one from the same website.

Use Wi-Fi

If Wi-Fi is available, quickly hopping onto the network will give you a new IP address. Assuming it’s not a public and unprotected network, you’re almost sure to get an IP that will allow you to connect to the website.

If it’s public Wi-Fi, make sure to connect to a VPN first. In fact, just doing so may help resolve the issue on its own.

Use a VPN

While VPNs do have shared IPs that are susceptible to the same issues as mobile IPs, it can still work. So, if you have a VPN app at the ready, keep switching servers until you get one that lets you access the website you want.

Use Desktop Mode

Some websites put harsher restrictions on mobile versions of their website. Luckily, you can request a desktop version of the website on most phones. Depending on the browser, you’ll need to click the ‘aA’ icon, the three-dot icon, or some other to click on ‘desktop mode’.

Other Strategies to Bypass Cloudflare Error 1015 for Web Scrapers

Here are a few more things to consider when looking to avoid Cloudflare’s rate limiting error while scraping:

• Instead of sending requests to Cloudflare’s CDN or content delivery network, send them directly to the IP address of the target web server
• Scrape data from Google Cache rather than the original Cloudflare’s protected website, but only if the site content you want to scrape doesn’t change frequently
• Use Cloudflare solvers, but make sure they are not outdated
• Scrape with fortified headless browsers
• Scrape data responsibly and respect website rate limits by complying with the site’s terms of service, respecting user privacy, and avoiding harming the target website

How to Avoid Cloudflare Error 1015 for Website Owners

Last but not least, here are a few things that a website owner can do to avoid Cloudflare Error 1015:

• Tell your website visitors to slow down their activities on the site to reduce clicks and prevent the site from crashing
• Delete your old rate limiting configuration
• Increase your rate limiting request threshold
• Check the time restrictions on your rate limits
• Disable the rate limit rules
• Increase your bandwidth
• Optimize your website
• Contact the Cloudflare support team

To Sum Up

Whether you’re an everyday online user, a web scraping expert, or a website owner, you’ll probably have to deal with Cloudflare Error 1015 sooner or later. This common rate limit error happens when the website is getting too many requests from the same client or IP address.

Luckily, there are some techniques that can help you bypass Cloudflare rate limit error and access the website again. Using premium proxies is one of the best ways to get around this challenge when scraping data, while disabling browser extensions and using a VPN is more useful for regular users.

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