Cloudflare changelogs | R2

Agents, R2, Containers - Backup and restore API for Sandbox SDK

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Sandboxes now support createBackup() and restoreBackup() methods for creating and restoring point-in-time snapshots of directories.

This allows you to restore environments quickly. For instance, in order to develop in a sandbox, you may need to include a user's codebase and run a build step. Unfortunately git clone and npm install can take minutes, and you don't want to run these steps every time the user starts their sandbox.

Now, after the initial setup, you can just call createBackup(), then restoreBackup() the next time this environment is needed. This makes it practical to pick up exactly where a user left off, even after days of inactivity, without repeating expensive setup steps.

const sandbox = getSandbox(env.Sandbox, "my-sandbox");

// Make non-trivial changes to the file system
await sandbox.gitCheckout(endUserRepo, { targetDir: "/workspace" });
await sandbox.exec("npm install", { cwd: "/workspace" });

// Create a point-in-time backup of the directory
const backup = await sandbox.createBackup({ dir: "/workspace" });

// Store the handle for later use
await env.KV.put(`backup:${userId}`, JSON.stringify(backup));

// ... in a future session...

// Restore instead of re-cloning and reinstalling
await sandbox.restoreBackup(backup);

Backups are stored in R2 and can take advantage of R2 object lifecycle rules to ensure they do not persist forever.

Key capabilities:

Persist and reuse across sandbox sessions — Easily store backup handles in KV, D1, or Durable Object storage for use in subsequent sessions
Usable across multiple instances — Fork a backup across many sandboxes for parallel work
Named backups — Provide optional human-readable labels for easier management
TTLs — Set time-to-live durations so backups are automatically removed from storage once they are no longer neeeded

To get started, refer to the backup and restore guide for setup instructions and usage patterns, or the Backups API reference for full method documentation.

R2 - Improve Global Upload Performance with R2 Local Uploads - Now in Open Beta

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Local Uploads is now available in open beta. Enable it on your R2 bucket to improve upload performance when clients upload data from a different region than your bucket. With Local Uploads enabled, object data is written to storage infrastructure near the client, then asynchronously replicated to your bucket. The object is immediately accessible and remains strongly consistent throughout. Refer to How R2 works for details on how data is written to your bucket.

In our tests, we observed up to 75% reduction in Time to Last Byte (TTLB) for upload requests when Local Uploads is enabled.

This feature is ideal when:

Your users are globally distributed
Upload performance and reliability is critical to your application
You want to optimize write performance without changing your bucket's primary location

To enable Local Uploads on your bucket, find Local Uploads in your bucket settings in the Cloudflare Dashboard, or run:

npx wrangler r2 bucket local-uploads enable <BUCKET_NAME>

Enabling Local Uploads on a bucket is seamless: existing uploads will complete as expected and there’s no interruption to traffic. There is no additional cost to enable Local Uploads. Upload requests incur the standard Class A operation costs same as upload requests made without Local Uploads.

For more information, refer to Local Uploads.

R2 - R2 Data Catalog now supports automatic snapshot expiration

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT

R2 Data Catalog now supports automatic snapshot expiration for Apache Iceberg tables.

In Apache Iceberg, a snapshot is metadata that represents the state of a table at a given point in time. Every mutation creates a new snapshot which enable powerful features like time travel queries and rollback capabilities but will accumulate over time.

Without regular cleanup, these accumulated snapshots can lead to:

Metadata overhead
Slower table operations
Increased storage costs.

Snapshot expiration in R2 Data Catalog automatically removes old table snapshots based on your configured retention policy, improving performance and storage costs.

# Enable catalog-level snapshot expiration
# Expire snapshots older than 7 days, always retain at least 10 recent snapshots
npx wrangler r2 bucket catalog snapshot-expiration enable my-bucket \
  --older-than-days 7 \
  --retain-last 10

Snapshot expiration uses two parameters to determine which snapshots to remove:

--older-than-days: age threshold in days
--retain-last: minimum snapshot count to retain

Both conditions must be met before a snapshot is expired, ensuring you always retain recent snapshots even if they exceed the age threshold.

This feature complements automatic compaction, which optimizes query performance by combining small data files into larger ones. Together, these automatic maintenance operations keep your Iceberg tables performant and cost-efficient without manual intervention.

To learn more about snapshot expiration and how to configure it, visit our table maintenance documentation or see how to manage catalogs.

Containers, R2 - Mount R2 buckets in Containers

Fri, 21 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Containers now support mounting R2 buckets as FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) volumes, allowing applications to interact with R2 using standard filesystem operations.

Common use cases include:

Bootstrapping containers with datasets, models, or dependencies for sandboxes and agent environments
Persisting user configuration or application state without managing downloads
Accessing large static files without bloating container images or downloading at startup

FUSE adapters like tigrisfs, s3fs, and gcsfuse can be installed in your container image and configured to mount buckets at startup.

FROM alpine:3.20

# Install FUSE and dependencies
RUN apk update && \
    apk add --no-cache ca-certificates fuse curl bash

# Install tigrisfs
RUN ARCH=$(uname -m) && \
    if [ "$ARCH" = "x86_64" ]; then ARCH="amd64"; fi && \
    if [ "$ARCH" = "aarch64" ]; then ARCH="arm64"; fi && \
    VERSION=$(curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/tigrisdata/tigrisfs/releases/latest | grep -o '"tag_name": "[^"]*' | cut -d'"' -f4) && \
    curl -L "https://github.com/tigrisdata/tigrisfs/releases/download/${VERSION}/tigrisfs_${VERSION#v}_linux_${ARCH}.tar.gz" -o /tmp/tigrisfs.tar.gz && \
    tar -xzf /tmp/tigrisfs.tar.gz -C /usr/local/bin/ && \
    rm /tmp/tigrisfs.tar.gz && \
    chmod +x /usr/local/bin/tigrisfs

# Create startup script that mounts bucket
RUN printf '#!/bin/sh\n\
    set -e\n\
    mkdir -p /mnt/r2\n\
    R2_ENDPOINT="https://${R2_ACCOUNT_ID}.r2.cloudflarestorage.com"\n\
    /usr/local/bin/tigrisfs --endpoint "${R2_ENDPOINT}" -f "${BUCKET_NAME}" /mnt/r2 &\n\
    sleep 3\n\
    ls -lah /mnt/r2\n\
    ' > /startup.sh && chmod +x /startup.sh

CMD ["/startup.sh"]

See the Mount R2 buckets with FUSE example for a complete guide on mounting R2 buckets and/or other S3-compatible storage buckets within your containers.

R2 - R2 Data Catalog table-level compaction

Mon, 06 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMT

You can now enable compaction for individual Apache Iceberg tables in R2 Data Catalog, giving you fine-grained control over different workloads.

# Enable compaction for a specific table (no token required)
npx wrangler r2 bucket catalog compaction enable <BUCKET> <NAMESPACE> <TABLE> --target-size 256

This allows you to:

Apply different target file sizes per table
Disable compaction for specific tables
Optimize based on table-specific access patterns

Learn more at Manage catalogs.

R2 - R2 Data Catalog now supports compaction

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT

You can now enable automatic compaction for Apache Iceberg tables in R2 Data Catalog to improve query performance.

Compaction is the process of taking a group of small files and combining them into fewer larger files. This is an important maintenance operation as it helps ensure that query performance remains consistent by reducing the number of files that needs to be scanned.

To enable automatic compaction in R2 Data Catalog, find it under R2 Data Catalog in your R2 bucket settings in the dashboard.

Or with Wrangler, run:

npx wrangler r2 bucket catalog compaction enable <BUCKET_NAME>  --target-size 128 --token <API_TOKEN>

To get started with compaction, check out manage catalogs. For best practices and limitations, refer to about compaction.

R2 - R2 Dashboard experience gets new updates

Thu, 01 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT

We're excited to announce several improvements to the Cloudflare R2 dashboard experience that make managing your object storage easier and more intuitive:

All-new settings page

We've redesigned the bucket settings page, giving you a centralized location to manage all your bucket configurations in one place.

Improved navigation and sharing

Deeplink support for prefix directories: Navigate through your bucket hierarchy without losing your state. Your browser's back button now works as expected, and you can share direct links to specific prefix directories with teammates.
Objects as clickable links: Objects are now proper links that you can copy or CMD + Click to open in a new tab.

Clearer public access controls

Renamed "r2.dev domain" to "Public Development URL" for better clarity when exposing bucket contents for non-production workloads.
Public Access status now clearly displays "Enabled" when your bucket is exposed to the internet (via Public Development URL or Custom Domains).

We've also made numerous other usability improvements across the board to make your R2 experience smoother and more productive.

Pipelines, R2, Workers - Cloudflare Pipelines now available in beta

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Cloudflare Pipelines is now available in beta, to all users with a Workers Paid plan.

Pipelines let you ingest high volumes of real time data, without managing the underlying infrastructure. A single pipeline can ingest up to 100 MB of data per second, via HTTP or from a Worker. Ingested data is automatically batched, written to output files, and delivered to an R2 bucket in your account. You can use Pipelines to build a data lake of clickstream data, or to store events from a Worker.

Create your first pipeline with a single command:

$ npx wrangler@latest pipelines create my-clickstream-pipeline --r2-bucket my-bucket

🌀 Authorizing R2 bucket "my-bucket"
🌀 Creating pipeline named "my-clickstream-pipeline"
✅ Successfully created pipeline my-clickstream-pipeline

Id:    0e00c5ff09b34d018152af98d06f5a1xvc
Name:  my-clickstream-pipeline
Sources:
  HTTP:
    Endpoint:        https://0e00c5ff09b34d018152af98d06f5a1xvc.pipelines.cloudflare.com/
    Authentication:  off
    Format:          JSON
  Worker:
    Format:  JSON
Destination:
  Type:         R2
  Bucket:       my-bucket
  Format:       newline-delimited JSON
  Compression:  GZIP
Batch hints:
  Max bytes:     100 MB
  Max duration:  300 seconds
  Max records:   100,000

🎉 You can now send data to your pipeline!

Send data to your pipeline's HTTP endpoint:
curl "https://0e00c5ff09b34d018152af98d06f5a1xvc.pipelines.cloudflare.com/" -d '[{ ...JSON_DATA... }]'

To send data to your pipeline from a Worker, add the following configuration to your config file:
{
  "pipelines": [
    {
      "pipeline": "my-clickstream-pipeline",
      "binding": "PIPELINE"
    }
  ]
}

Head over to our getting started guide for an in-depth tutorial to building with Pipelines.

R2 - R2 Data Catalog is a managed Apache Iceberg data catalog built directly into R2 buckets

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Today, we're launching R2 Data Catalog in open beta, a managed Apache Iceberg catalog built directly into your Cloudflare R2 bucket.

If you're not already familiar with it, Apache Iceberg is an open table format designed to handle large-scale analytics datasets stored in object storage, offering ACID transactions and schema evolution. R2 Data Catalog exposes a standard Iceberg REST catalog interface, so you can connect engines like Spark, Snowflake, and PyIceberg to start querying your tables using the tools you already know.

To enable a data catalog on your R2 bucket, find R2 Data Catalog in your buckets settings in the dashboard, or run:

npx wrangler r2 bucket catalog enable my-bucket

And that's it. You'll get a catalog URI and warehouse you can plug into your favorite Iceberg engines.

Visit our getting started guide for step-by-step instructions on enabling R2 Data Catalog, creating tables, and running your first queries.

R2 - Set retention polices for your R2 bucket with bucket locks

Thu, 06 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT

You can now use bucket locks to set retention policies on your R2 buckets (or specific prefixes within your buckets) for a specified period — or indefinitely. This can help ensure compliance by protecting important data from accidental or malicious deletion.

Locks give you a few ways to ensure your objects are retained (not deleted or overwritten). You can:

Lock objects for a specific duration, for example 90 days.
Lock objects until a certain date, for example January 1, 2030.
Lock objects indefinitely, until the lock is explicitly removed.

Buckets can have up to 1,000 bucket lock rules. Each rule specifies which objects it covers (via prefix) and how long those objects must remain retained.

Here are a couple of examples showing how you can configure bucket lock rules using Wrangler:

Ensure all objects in a bucket are retained for at least 180 days

npx wrangler r2 bucket lock add <bucket> --name 180-days-all --retention-days 180

Prevent deletion or overwriting of all logs indefinitely (via prefix)

npx wrangler r2 bucket lock add <bucket> --name indefinite-logs --prefix logs/ --retention-indefinite

For more information on bucket locks and how to set retention policies for objects in your R2 buckets, refer to our documentation.

R2 - Super Slurper now supports migrations from all S3-compatible storage providers

Mon, 24 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Super Slurper can now migrate data from any S3-compatible object storage provider to Cloudflare R2. This includes transfers from services like MinIO, Wasabi, Backblaze B2, and DigitalOcean Spaces.

For more information on Super Slurper and how to migrate data from your existing S3-compatible storage buckets to R2, refer to our documentation.

R2 - Super Slurper now transfers data to R2 up to 5x faster

Fri, 14 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Super Slurper now transfers data from cloud object storage providers like AWS S3 and Google Cloud Storage to Cloudflare R2 up to 5x faster than it did before.

We moved from a centralized service to a distributed system built on the Cloudflare Developer Platform — using Cloudflare Workers, Durable Objects, and Queues — to both improve performance and increase system concurrency capabilities (and we'll share more details about how we did it soon!)

Time to copy 75,000 objects from AWS S3 to R2 decreased from 15 minutes 30 seconds (old) to 3 minutes 25 seconds (after performance improvements)

For more information on Super Slurper and how to migrate data from existing object storage to R2, refer to our documentation.