Migrate from AWS EC2 to Cloudflare Workers in 2026

This is the foundation for everything else — and it's free.

1. Add your domain in the Cloudflare dashboard
2. Cloudflare imports your existing DNS records automatically
3. Update your nameservers at your registrar to point to Cloudflare
4. Wait for propagation (usually minutes, sometimes up to 24 hours)

What you gain immediately: Cloudflare's CDN, free SSL, DDoS protection, and the fastest authoritative DNS — all without changing a single line of code. Your EC2 app still runs exactly as before, but now it's behind Cloudflare's network.

R2 uses the S3-compatible API, which means most S3 tools and libraries work with R2 out of the box. Migration is straightforward.

Create your R2 bucket:

wrangler r2 bucket create my-app-files

Copy your S3 data to R2. You can use rclone, the most popular tool for cloud-to-cloud file transfers:

# Install rclone
brew install rclone  # macOS

# Configure S3 source (follow prompts)
rclone config  # add your AWS S3 remote

# Configure R2 destination
# Use S3-compatible config with your R2 credentials
# (found in Cloudflare dashboard → R2 → Manage R2 API Tokens)

# Sync everything
rclone sync s3-remote:my-bucket r2-remote:my-app-files

Update your app code. Since R2 uses the S3 API, you usually just need to change the endpoint URL and credentials in your S3 client config:

// Before (AWS S3)
const s3 = new S3Client({ region: 'us-east-1' });

// After (Cloudflare R2)
const s3 = new S3Client({
  region: 'auto',
  endpoint: 'https://YOUR_ACCOUNT_ID.r2.cloudflarestorage.com',
  credentials: {
    accessKeyId: R2_ACCESS_KEY,
    secretAccessKey: R2_SECRET_KEY
  }
});

What you gain: Zero egress fees. If you were spending $50–500/month on S3 data transfer, that drops to $0 immediately.

This is the most involved step. You're moving from PostgreSQL or MySQL to SQLite on D1. The good news: for most web apps, the SQL differences are minimal.

Create your D1 database:

wrangler d1 create my-app-db

Export your existing schema and data. If you're on PostgreSQL:

# Export schema
pg_dump --schema-only my_database > schema.sql

# Export data
pg_dump --data-only --inserts my_database > data.sql

Adapt the schema for SQLite. Key differences to handle:

• Replace SERIAL / AUTO_INCREMENT with INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT
• Replace TIMESTAMP / DATETIME with TEXT (SQLite stores dates as text)
• Replace BOOLEAN with INTEGER (0/1)
• Remove PostgreSQL-specific types (UUID, JSONB, ARRAY) — use TEXT with JSON strings instead
• Remove CREATE EXTENSION, ALTER SEQUENCE, and other Postgres-specific statements

Apply to D1:

# Apply schema
wrangler d1 execute my-app-db --remote --file=schema.sql

# Import data
wrangler d1 execute my-app-db --remote --file=data.sql

Verify your data with MyD1: Open MyD1, connect to your D1 database, and visually browse your tables to confirm everything migrated correctly. It's much faster than running queries in the terminal. See how to browse D1 visually.

This step depends on what framework you're using. The easiest path is using a framework with a Cloudflare adapter:

• SvelteKit — @sveltejs/adapter-cloudflare (full tutorial here)
• Next.js — @opennextjs/cloudflare
• Nuxt — built-in Cloudflare preset
• Remix — Cloudflare Workers template
• Hono — native Workers support, great for APIs
• Plain Node.js / Express — rewrite to use the Workers API (the biggest lift)

Set up your wrangler.toml:

name = "my-app"
compatibility_date = "2026-01-01"

[[d1_databases]]
binding = "DB"
database_name = "my-app-db"
database_id = "your-d1-id"

[[r2_buckets]]
binding = "R2"
bucket_name = "my-app-files"

Update your database queries. Replace your PostgreSQL/MySQL client with D1's API:

// Before (PostgreSQL with pg)
const result = await pool.query(
  'SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = $1', [userId]
);
const user = result.rows[0];

// After (Cloudflare D1)
const user = await env.DB
  .prepare('SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = ?')
  .bind(userId)
  .first();

Test locally:

wrangler dev

This runs your app locally with real D1 and R2 emulation. Test everything before deploying.

Deploy:

wrangler deploy

Your app is now live on 330+ locations worldwide.

Since your DNS is already on Cloudflare (Step 1), switching traffic is simple:

1. Go to your Cloudflare dashboard → Workers & Pages → your project → Custom Domains
2. Add your domain (e.g., myapp.com)
3. Cloudflare automatically updates DNS and provisions SSL
4. Traffic now hits your Workers app instead of EC2

Zero downtime: DNS propagation is near-instant within Cloudflare's network. Your old EC2 instance still runs until you shut it down — keep it as a fallback for a few days, then terminate it when you're confident.

Once you've verified everything works on Cloudflare:

• Terminate your EC2 instance(s)
• Delete the RDS database (after a final backup)
• Empty and delete S3 buckets
• Remove CloudFront distributions
• Delete ALB, target groups, and security groups
• Clean up unused IAM roles and policies
• Delete the Route 53 hosted zone
• Review your next AWS bill — it should be $0