> do you want Cloudflare to cache it and serve it with very few hits to your cheap server, or do you want your compute costs to expand to cope with the requests?

Usually you have something like a platform/tool/service that is mostly static requests that could be cached, with some dynamic requests that couldn't, as they're CRUD requests or similar.

If your struggling to serve static content, then do go ahead and slap Cloudflare on top of that bad boy and probably your visitors will be a bit happier, instead of upgrading from a cheap VPS.

If you're struggling to serve the dynamic requests, Cloudflare/CDN won't matter because these things actually need to be processed by your backend.

So instead of trying to shave 50ms off from my simple static requests with a CDN, I'd much happier to optimize for all the requests, including the "dynamic requests" that need to hit the backend anyway.

I'll still go for a dedicated server with proper connection and performance rather than a shitty cheap VPS with a CDN in front off it.