Cloudflare stopped billing Workers for idle wait time in 2023

The workload

On 28 September 2023, Cloudflare published a blog post announcing a new Workers usage model, and its own platform changelog records the model, named Workers Standard, becoming available starting 31 October 2023. The workload fell on Paid accounts, not Free ones: existing Paid customers had to check which usage model their account used and opt in through the dashboard, since the changelog states a Worker's own configuration-file setting is overridden once an account has switched. Migration was not instant; the blog post states a deadline of 1 March 2024 for paid accounts to move over.

What the documents show

Verified: the blog post states the prior model billed for the full wall-clock duration of a request, including time spent idle waiting on network or I/O calls. Verified: the new Standard model instead bills only for CPU time used, and gives a numeric example: a request taking 100 milliseconds of wall time but only 10 milliseconds of CPU work was previously billed for the full 100 milliseconds, and under Standard is billed for 10. Verified: the same post states the Free plan itself was not the subject of the change, remaining, in its own phrase, the same generous Free plan; its specific request and CPU-time figures are stated on the separate pricing page a companion entry covers. The changelog corroborates the rollout date; neither document describes a change to the Free plan's own ceilings.

The operating cost

Verified: the practical effect is that idle wait time inside a request no longer accrues charges under Standard, which the post frames as a cost reduction for I/O-bound Workers, without a percentage or dollar figure for any typical account. Estimated: whether a given Worker's bill falls under Standard depends on what share of its wall-clock time was idle versus CPU-active, a ratio the post does not compute and cannot be supplied without the account's own request logs. The Free plan's cost, per the post's framing, did not change.

The stop condition

The changelog names a hard deadline: paid accounts had until 1 March 2024 to migrate, after which the prior Bundled model was no longer an option. Editorially, for a founder reading this now, the relevant check is simpler: confirm which usage model the account is on today, since the setting is managed through the dashboard rather than a Worker's own configuration file, and a stale assumption would misstate the workload's actual cost.

• Is the account's current Workers usage model Standard or the prior Bundled model, and where is that setting actually controlled?
• Does the workload spend meaningful time idle waiting on I/O, which is the specific case this billing change addresses?
• Did the Free plan's own request and CPU-time figures change as part of this announcement, or only the paid billing method?

The verifiable record here is a change to how paid usage is measured, not a change to the Free plan's stated ceilings; conflating the two would overstate what Cloudflare's own blog post and changelog actually document.