I personally think that Custom Lists is one of the killer features of Cloudflare — and it doesn’t get used nearly as much as it should.
What are Lists?
A List in Cloudflare is a block of information or values that can be used in a rule. Currently, Cloudflare allows you to use IP addresses, ASNs, and Hostnames in a List. Once you have values in a List, you can create a rule that references it.
A List is account-wide, meaning it can be referenced by any domain you’ve onboarded to Cloudflare. If you manage a lot of domains, updating a single List will save you a lot of time — you won’t have to adjust the same rule across dozens of domains. A single List can also be referenced in multiple rules.
It’s worth noting that Hostnames and ASNs can only be used in Lists if you’re on an Enterprise Plan. Business plans and below can only use IP addresses in Lists.
Examples of How You Can Use a List
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Allow trusted IPs – Create a List of important IP addresses, such as your office’s static IPs or those of key remote workers. You can reference this List in a rule to bypass a Cloudflare Managed Rule that might interfere with your HTML editor across all your domains.
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Block known bad IPs – Maintain a List of malicious or unwanted IPs, and apply a block rule across all your Cloudflare domains.
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Protect staging/dev sites – Add your staging or dev sites to a List, then create a rule to block unknown IPs from accessing them. This helps prevent Google or others from indexing those sites. (Enterprise-only feature)
Managing Your Lists
You can find Lists in your dashboard under:
https://dash.cloudflare.com → Your Account → Manage Account → Settings → Lists
There are restrictions on List names — you can’t use spaces or special characters. Naming conventions are a must if you plan to have many Lists, otherwise it’ll get confusing quickly. You can’t rename a List once it’s created, so it’s worth getting it right the first time.
I suggest using a naming style like:
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webcontrol_office_ip -
global_bad_ipaddresses
I also like to use the comments field to note change control or approval references for traceability.
Hint: You can paste multiple hosts or values at once into the List creation page — Cloudflare will automatically split them onto new lines!
Current Limits
Cloudflare recently increased the number of Lists you can have. Below are the current limits:
| Plan | Number of Lists | Total Values | Value Types |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 1 | Up to 10,000 per list | IPs only |
| Pro | 10 | Up to 10,000 total across all lists | IPs only |
| Business | 10 | Up to 10,000 total across all lists | IPs only |
| Enterprise | 1,000 | Up to 500,000 total across all lists | IPs, Hosts, and ASNs |
Built-in (Managed) Lists
Cloudflare also provides some managed Lists, such as Open Proxies and other threat-based lists. Availability depends on your subscription plan. These can be used directly in your firewall rules to save time and improve consistency.
For more information, visit Cloudflare’s documentation on Lists.
Final Thoughts
Cloudflare Lists are one of those features that quietly make managing multiple domains much easier. They help you stay consistent, reduce human error, and make bulk rule changes far more efficient. If you’re not using them already — start small with a single IP List and you’ll quickly see their value.
