---
title: Smart Tiered Cache
description: Reduce origin requests by serving cached content from upper-tier data centers.
image: https://developers.cloudflare.com/core-services-preview.png
---

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### Tags

[ Caching ](https://developers.cloudflare.com/search/?tags=Caching) 

# Smart Tiered Cache

Availability

Available in all Smart Shield packages.

With data centers around the world, Cloudflare caches content very close to end users. However, if a piece of content is not in cache, the Cloudflare data centers must contact the origin server to receive the cacheable content. Tiered cache works by dividing Cloudflare's data centers into a hierarchy of lower-tiers and upper-tiers, where only upper-tiers can ask your origin for content.

Smart Tiered Cache dynamically selects the single closest upper tier for each of your website’s origins with no configuration required, using our in-house performance and routing data. Cloudflare collects latency data for each request to an origin, and uses the latency data to determine how well any upper-tier data center is connected with an origin. As a result, Cloudflare can select the data center with the lowest latency to be the upper-tier for an origin.

#### Public cloud origins

Origins hosted on public cloud providers (AWS, GCP, Azure, or Oracle Cloud) often use [anycast ↗](https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/learning/cdn/glossary/anycast-network/) or regional unicast networking, which prevents Smart Tiered Cache from determining the origin location through latency probing alone. To solve this, you can set a **cloud region hint** that tells Smart Tiered Cache which cloud provider and region your origin is in. Smart Tiered Cache then selects a primary upper-tier data center close to that cloud region, plus a fallback in a different location for resilience. To set up a cloud region hint, refer to [Set a cloud region hint](https://developers.cloudflare.com/cache/how-to/tiered-cache/#set-a-cloud-region-hint).

#### Load Balancing interaction

While Smart Tiered Cache selects one Upper Tier per origin, when using Load Balancing, Smart Tiered Cache will select the single best Upper Tier for the entire [Load Balancing Pool](https://developers.cloudflare.com/load-balancing/understand-basics/load-balancing-components/#pools).

#### Caveats

You need to be careful when updating your origin IPs/DNS records while Smart Tiered Cache is enabled. Depending on the changes made, it may cause the existing assigned upper tiers to change, resulting in an increased `MISS` rate as cache is refilled in the new upper tiers. If the origin is switched to a network behind anycast, it will significantly reduce the effectiveness of Smart Tiered Cache unless you set a [cloud region hint](https://developers.cloudflare.com/cache/how-to/tiered-cache/#set-a-cloud-region-hint).

```json
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```