Empire Edge is a single Traefik-native edge in front of any web app: an identity gate, a WAF-lite, DNS management, and a caching CDN — adopted with one middleware label. The CDN and DNS layers are free; you only pay for the access gate. Self-hosted. No per-app SDK.
See pricing Read the docsTraefik consults one
/verify endpoint for every protected route. Apps ship with zero auth code,
backed by EliteSSO JWT + owner-key / magic-link login.
Per-client rate-limiting and hardened security headers (HSTS, frame-deny, no-sniff) chain in as reusable middlewares.
Edge cache (Cache-Control + stale-while-revalidate) and gzip/br compression, plus DNS record management — the former EmpireCDN / EmpireDNS, now bundled free into Empire Edge.
Same edge model — access, WAF, DNS and CDN — a third of the price, self-hostable.
| Cloudflare | Empire Edge | |
|---|---|---|
| Access / user / mo | $3 – $7 (Access) | $2 – $5 |
| CDN + edge cache | Paid tiers / metered | Free tier |
| DNS management | Free w/ CF account | Free, self-host option |
| Per-app auth code | None (edge) | None (edge) |
| Self-host option | No | Yes |
| Add an app | Dashboard policy | One Traefik label |