URL normalization settings

The Cloudflare dashboard provides the following settings to manage URL normalization:

• Normalization type (default: RFC-3986)

  • Selects the type of normalization to perform:

    • RFC-3986 – Applies URL normalization strictly according to RFC 3986 ↗.

    • Cloudflare – In addition to what is defined in RFC 3986, applies extra URL normalization techniques.

• Normalize incoming URLs (default: On)

  • Configures the URLs of all incoming traffic to Cloudflare:

    • When enabled, all incoming URLs are normalized before they pass to subsequent Cloudflare features that can receive a URL as input, such as Page Rules, WAF custom rules, Workers, and Access.
    • When disabled, incoming URLs are not normalized before passing to subsequent Cloudflare features.

• Normalize URLs to origin (default: Off)

  • Configures URLs sent to the origin:

    • When enabled, requests sent to the origin are normalized.
    • When disabled, requests sent to the origin are not modified.

  • You can only view and enable this option when Normalize incoming URLs is enabled.

For examples of how these settings affect URL normalization, refer to the URL normalization examples.