Web traffic continued to expand in 2024, while its composition varied sharply by device, country, browser, protocol, and type of automated activity. Cloudflare’s 2024 Year in Review covers traffic trends from January 1 through December 1, 2024, using observations from its global network.
Table of contents
- Global traffic and network scale
- Mobile, desktop, and browser usage
- Search referrals and online services
- Web protocols and technology adoption
- Bots, APIs, and automated traffic
- Security, disruptions, and mitigated traffic
- IPv6, routing, and email security
Global traffic and network scale
Cloudflare reported that global Internet traffic grew 17.2% in 2024. The measurement belongs to the period covered by the Cloudflare 2024 Year in Review, so it describes observed changes during January 1 to December 1 rather than a full calendar-year comparison.
The same review recorded a large increase in traffic associated with Starlink. Global traffic from Starlink grew 3.3 times in 2024, while Starlink traffic from Malawi grew 38 times. These figures describe traffic growth observed on Cloudflare’s network and should not be read as a forecast of future satellite Internet adoption.
Cloudflare’s network served more than 63 million HTTP(S) requests per second on average and handled over 42 million DNS requests per second on average in 2024. Its network spanned more than 330 cities in over 120 countries and regions. The 2024 publication was the fifth annual Cloudflare Radar Year in Review.
The scale of this network helps explain why the report contains a broad mix of application, infrastructure, device, and security measurements. It also means the figures describe traffic visible to Cloudflare, not every request made across the entire Internet.
Mobile, desktop, and browser usage
Desktop remained the larger traffic source globally in 2024, but mobile represented a substantial share. Cloudflare measured 41.3% of global traffic from mobile devices and 58.7% from desktop devices. Those two percentages describe the reported global device split for the review period.
The device balance was not uniform across countries. More than 77% of traffic in Sudan, Cuba, and Syria came from mobile devices. These country-level figures show why a global average can conceal very different access patterns.
Apple and Android also had distinct geographic patterns. Nearly one-third of mobile device traffic globally came from Apple iOS devices. Android had a greater than 90% share of mobile device traffic in 29 countries or regions, while peak iOS mobile device traffic share exceeded 60% in eight countries or regions.
Chrome was the leading browser by a wide margin in Cloudflare’s global request observations. Safari accounted for 15.5% of browser requests, while Chrome accounted for 65.8%.
| Global traffic measure | 2024 observation |
|---|---|
| Mobile device traffic | 41.3% |
| Desktop device traffic | 58.7% |
| Chrome browser requests | 65.8% |
| Safari browser requests | 15.5% |
These are different measures: device shares describe the source category of traffic, while browser shares describe browser requests. They should not be combined into a single market-share calculation.
Search referrals and online services
Google referred greater than 88% of global search traffic in 2024 according to the Cloudflare 2024 Year in Review. The result was not identical on every operating system or in every market. On Windows devices, Google drove 80% of search referrals globally, while Bing held a 10.4% share.
South Korea provided a more locally distributed example. Google drove about two-thirds of search referrals there, Naver drove 29.2%, and Daum had 1.3%. The source describes the Google figure as approximate and the Naver and Daum figures as specific shares, so the values should retain those levels of precision.
| Search-referral measure | 2024 observation |
|---|---|
| Google global search referrals | Greater than 88% |
| Google referrals on Windows globally | 80% |
| Bing referrals on Windows globally | 10.4% |
| Google referrals in South Korea | About two-thirds |
| Naver referrals in South Korea | 29.2% |
| Daum referrals in South Korea | 1.3% |
Google also remained the most popular Internet service overall in 2024. Within individual categories, OpenAI remained number one in Generative AI, Binance remained number one in Cryptocurrency, WhatsApp remained the top Messaging platform, and Facebook remained the top Social Media site.
Web protocols and technology adoption
Nearly half of web requests used HTTP/2 in 2024, while 20.5% used HTTP/3. The Cloudflare report also found that 13.0% of TLS 1.3 traffic used post-quantum encryption. These measurements describe protocol and encryption characteristics of observed traffic, not the percentage of websites that support each technology.
Cloudflare identified React, PHP, and jQuery among the most popular website technologies in 2024. WordPress held greater than 50% share among content management systems. Google Analytics remained the most widely used analytics provider.
Marketing automation showed a different competitive relationship: HubSpot had nearly twice the usage share of Marketo and MailChimp. Because the source reports this as a relative comparison rather than exact shares, it supports a directional conclusion but not a precise percentage gap.
The transport and application figures can be read together as a snapshot of how websites and services were delivered during the measurement period. HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 describe request protocols; React, PHP, jQuery, WordPress, analytics tools, and marketing systems describe technologies detected or categorized in the web ecosystem.
Bots, APIs, and automated traffic
Not all web traffic comes from people using browsers. Googlebot generated the highest volume of request traffic to Cloudflare in 2024. The United States generated over a third of global bot traffic, and 68.5% of observed bot traffic came from the top 10 countries.
Organizations also accounted for identifiable shares of global bot traffic. Amazon Web Services represented 12.7%, while Google represented 7.8%. These are shares of observed bot traffic attributed to those entities, not measures of their total Internet usage or the quality of the requests.
Automated API requests showed a notable change in client-language shares. Go-based clients made almost 12% of automated API requests in 2024, and Go’s share increased by approximately 40% compared with 2023. NodeJS’s share fell by just over 30% compared with 2023.
The year-over-year changes are relative changes in share, not percentage-point changes. For example, an increase of approximately 40% does not specify how many percentage points Go gained. The source supplies the direction and relative scale, but not a starting and ending share for a percentage-point calculation.
Security, disruptions, and mitigated traffic
Cloudflare observed 225 major Internet disruptions globally in 2024. In addition, 20.7% of TCP connections were unexpectedly terminated before useful data exchange. These measures describe reliability and connection outcomes visible to Cloudflare during the review period.
Cloudflare mitigated 6.5% of global traffic in 2024. Of global traffic, 3.2% was mitigated as a DDoS attack or by WAF Managed Rules. The narrower DDoS-or-WAF figure is part of the broader mitigated-traffic measurement and should not be added to it.
Mitigation levels varied by geography. Traffic from Albania had a mitigated share of 42.9%. Libya had a DDoS/WAF mitigated share of 19.2%, while the United States had a mitigated traffic share of 5.0% and South Korea had a mitigated traffic share of 8.1%.
| Security measure | 2024 observation |
|---|---|
| Global traffic mitigated by Cloudflare | 6.5% |
| Global traffic mitigated as DDoS or by WAF Managed Rules | 3.2% |
| Albania mitigated traffic share | 42.9% |
| Libya DDoS/WAF mitigated share | 19.2% |
| United States mitigated traffic share | 5.0% |
| South Korea mitigated traffic share | 8.1% |
The differences between these country figures should be treated as observations from Cloudflare’s network, not as a universal ranking of national cyber risk. Traffic composition, network coverage, and the types of requests handled can all affect a provider-specific measurement.
IPv6, routing, and email security
Aggregated across 2024, 28.5% of IPv6-capable requests were made over IPv6. Adoption varied by country: India reached 68.9% IPv6 adoption, while Malaysia reached 59.6%.
Routing security also changed during the period. RPKI-valid IPv4 address space increased by 4.7%, and RPKI-valid routes increased by 6.4%. The share of global IPv4 address space covered by valid routes rose from 38.9% to 43.6%, while the share of global IPv6 address space covered by valid routes rose from 57.6% to 60.9%.
These values refer to separate routing measurements. Address-space coverage and route counts are related but are not interchangeable, so the increases should be read independently.
Email security provided another view of malicious activity. An average of 4.3% of emails were determined to be malicious in 2024. Among malicious email messages, 42.9% contained deceptive links and 35.1% contained identity deception.
The Cloudflare 2024 Year in Review also reported that the top 10 countries by Internet speed all had average download speeds above 200 Mbps. This is an average-speed observation for the listed top 10 countries, not a claim that every connection in those countries exceeded 200 Mbps.