ExpressTURN vs Cloudflare Calls

TL;DR

Cloudflare Calls is a SaaS WebRTC platform: SFU + TURN + signaling primitives bundled together. ExpressTURN is a focused TURN provider you bolt onto your own SFU (mediasoup, Janus, LiveKit, Pion, etc.) or peer-to-peer pipeline. If you want a managed SFU, look at Cloudflare Calls. If you've already built or chosen an SFU and just need TURN, ExpressTURN is far cheaper.

Side-by-side

When Cloudflare Calls is the right choice

• You need an SFU and don't want to operate one. Cloudflare runs the media routing for you.
• You're already heavily invested in Cloudflare's stack (Workers, R2, D1) and prefer one vendor.
• Your bandwidth profile is small enough that metered pricing won't surprise you.

When ExpressTURN is the right choice

• You've already chosen an SFU (mediasoup, Janus, LiveKit, OvenMediaEngine, Pion) — Cloudflare Calls doesn't add value, just locks you in.
• You're doing peer-to-peer (PeerJS, simple-peer, plain WebRTC) and just need a relay fallback.
• You want flat predictable pricing instead of per-GB metering.
• You want the option to switch TURN providers later without rewriting your media path.

Hybrid pattern

Some teams use Cloudflare Workers for signaling, run their own SFU on a VPS, and use ExpressTURN for relay. Each piece is best-of-breed and replaceable.

Migration to TURN-only

If you're considering moving off Cloudflare Calls and onto your own SFU + ExpressTURN, the TURN piece looks like:

const pc = new RTCPeerConnection({
  iceServers: [
    { urls: 'stun:stun.expressturn.com:3478' },
    {
      urls: ['turn:relay1.expressturn.com:3478?transport=udp',
             'turns:relay1.expressturn.com:443?transport=tcp'],
      username: 'YOUR_EXPRESSTURN_USERNAME',
      credential: 'YOUR_EXPRESSTURN_PASSWORD'
    }
  ]
});

The harder part is the SFU swap, not the TURN swap. See our mediasoup, LiveKit, Janus, and Pion recipes.

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