Subject: Cloudflare Nameservers vs Google DNS/OpenDNS

Hi there,

Thanks for the great question. Cloudflare’s nameservers differ from services like Google DNS or OpenDNS in a key way:

• Cloudflare Nameservers are authoritative DNS servers — they serve DNS records for domains hosted on Cloudflare.
• Google DNS / OpenDNS are public resolvers — they resolve queries on behalf of users but don’t host domain DNS records themselves.

To answer your second question — if you want to use Cloudflare as your CDN, you’ll need to delegate your domain to Cloudflare’s authoritative nameservers. You can't use Cloudflare as a CDN while still keeping your DNS hosted entirely by your registrar or host.

That said, Cloudflare can integrate with some external DNS setups using partial (CNAME) setup for Enterprise plans.

Tools I’d use: DNS tab in Cloudflare, dig NS yourdomain.com

Let me know your current setup and I can guide you on the best approach!