How to Leverage Cloudflare Workers / Pages Free Tier to Deploy a Zero-Cost VPN – Practical Tutorial

This article shares a hands-on tutorial for setting up a free VPN based on the GitHub open-source project edgetunnel.

The main idea is to use Cloudflare Workers/Pages as an edge entry point, accept client connections via WebSocket, parse protocols, forward traffic, and generate subscription links at Cloudflare’s edge nodes. It then works with clients like Clash, Shadowrocket, v2rayN, Hiddify, etc.

It supports three deployment methods: Workers, Pages GitHub, and Pages Upload. This tutorial uses Pages Upload as an example, because that method requires no specialized knowledge.

1️⃣ Create a Pages Application

1. Click direct-upload-demo.zip to download the Cloudflare Pages demo project archive.
2. Prepare a Cloudflare account, and go to Compute and AI > Workers and Pages > Create Application.
3. Select the Pages tab, then click Drop files > Get started.
4. Project Name: enter any value, but it must be a brand new name to avoid a 1101 error. It is recommended to append a random number, e.g., edt123123123.
5. Click Upload from computer, select the direct-upload-demo.zip archive downloaded in step 1, and wait for the upload to complete.
6. Click Deploy site and wait for deployment to finish.
7. A success message indicates the initial deployment is complete! Click Continue with project to proceed with setting up variable bindings and KV.

2️⃣ Set Up Admin Variables

1. Go to the project settings page, click the Settings tab, then add variables and secrets:
2. Click + Add. Set Type to Text, Variable name to ADMIN, and Value to the WebUI admin password. Use a strong password to avoid brute‑force attacks.
3. The variable is now set. If you forget the password, you can return to this page to view it.

3️⃣ Bind a KV Namespace

1. Go to Storage and Databases > Workers KV > + Create Instance to create a namespace.
2. Name the namespace as you like. It is recommended to name it EDT2 for clarity. Click Create to finish.
3. Return to the project settings page, click Settings > Bindings > + Add > KV Namespace.
4. Variable name must be the uppercase KV. Select the namespace you just created (EDT2). Click Save to complete the binding.
5. Go back to the project settings page to confirm the binding is successful.

4️⃣ Redeploy to Activate the Variables!

1. Click edgetunnel-main.zip to download the latest project archive.
2. Click Create deployment, and upload the edgetunnel-main.zip archive you just downloaded.
3. Select Production as the deployment environment. Click Upload from computer, choose the archive, and wait for the upload.
4. Click Save and Deploy, then wait for the deployment to complete.

Note: If you need to change the admin password, you must re‑upload and deploy after modifying the variable, otherwise the variable will not take effect!

5️⃣ Bind a Custom Domain

1. Go to the Pages application, click the Custom domains tab, then click Set up a custom domain.
2. Add a custom domain.
3. Choose Begin CNAME setup.
4. Record name: edt2; CNAME record value: edt123123123.pages.dev.
5. Go to your domain registrar and add the CNAME record.
6. Return to the Custom domains tab, click Finish DNS setup later, and wait for domain verification.
7. After 10–30 minutes, if verification succeeds, you will see a domain bound successfully message.

6️⃣ Log In to the EDT2 Admin Panel

1. Visit /admin to reach the login page. For example, if your custom domain is edt2.fxxk.cloudns.org, you would visit https://edt2.fxxk.cloudns.org/admin.
2. Enter the admin password and click Log in to access the admin panel.
3. After successful login, you will see the management page. If you are a beginner, you can simply use the subscription without any further tweaking.