Back Up Home Assistant to Cloudflare R2: A Free & Easy Guide

Back Up Home Assistant to Cloudflare R2: A Free & Easy Guide

March 5, 2026 Sarah Wu - Tech Editor Tech and Science

If you’ve followed the Home Assistant community, you likely already appreciate the open-source platform’s flexibility. But managing all that flexibility—the automations, the carefully-crafted dashboards, the integrations—requires a solid backup strategy. While Home Assistant offers snapshot capabilities, and you can handle backups outside the platform, a streamlined, integrated solution has been missing. Now, thanks to a recent update in February, that’s changed: Home Assistant now backs up directly to Cloudflare R2, and the free tier provides a surprisingly viable option for many users.

This development addresses a critical demand for Home Assistant enthusiasts. Following the 3-2-1 backup strategy—keeping three copies of your data across two different storage mediums, with one off-site—can be challenging when relying primarily on local storage. Cloud storage solves the off-site problem, but free tiers often come with limitations. Cloudflare R2, however, offers a compelling alternative.

Why Employ Cloud Storage?

The core benefit of off-site backups is resilience. Imagine a scenario where your server or network-attached storage (NAS) running Home Assistant experiences a failure. Losing your configuration, automation rules, and custom integrations can be incredibly disruptive. Regular backups minimize downtime and data loss. Cloud storage provides a convenient and relatively inexpensive way to achieve this off-site redundancy.

And What’s So Good About Cloudflare R2?

Cloudflare R2 distinguishes itself from other cloud storage solutions, like Amazon S3, with its pricing model. While most providers charge for both storage and data transfer, R2 only charges for storage. This makes it particularly attractive for frequent backups, where egress costs can quickly add up. It’s designed to encourage scaling, and the generous free tier—10GB of storage—is perfectly suited for home labs and personal setups. Given Cloudflare’s broader infrastructure and security focus, it also offers a level of reliability that’s reassuring for critical data.

As Adam Conway notes in a recent XDA Developers article, this integration is a welcome addition for those serious about data safety.

Setting It All Up Is Easy

To obtain started, you’ll need a Cloudflare account. If you don’t already have one, you can create one here. Here’s a step-by-step guide to connecting Cloudflare R2 to your Home Assistant installation:

  1. Log in to your Cloudflare account.
  2. Go to Storage &amp. databases > R2 object storage.
  3. Click Create bucket, if you don’t already have one.
  4. Generate access keys for the bucket.
  5. Go to your Home Assistant dashboard.
  6. Go to Settings > Integrations.
  7. Search “Cloudflare R2”.

The integration will prompt you for the necessary credentials: access key ID, secret access key, bucket name, and endpoint URL. Once authenticated, you can select what Home Assistant components to back up—configurations, databases, logs, and more. You can also configure the backup frequency within Home Assistant.

Protect Yourself and Your Smart Home

Configuring backups within Home Assistant itself is equally straightforward. Navigate to Settings > Backups and click Set up backups. From there, you can fine-tune what data is included in your backups. The automatic option is a good starting point for most users. Once a backup is completed, you can select Cloudflare R2 as the destination.

This integration isn’t just about convenience; it’s about building a robust disaster recovery plan for your smart home. Regular backups, combined with the 3-2-1 strategy, can save you hours—or even days—of reconfiguration and data recovery in the event of a system failure. And with Cloudflare R2’s pricing, it’s an accessible solution for a wide range of Home Assistant users.

Beyond the technical setup, it’s worth remembering the broader implications of data loss. As Conway points out in his work for XDA, losing your Home Assistant configuration isn’t just about losing convenience; it’s about losing the time and effort invested in creating a personalized smart home experience. A reliable backup strategy is, an investment in peace of mind.

The Home Assistant community is constantly evolving, and this integration with Cloudflare R2 is a testament to that. It’s a practical solution to a common problem, and it demonstrates the platform’s commitment to empowering users with greater control over their data and their smart homes.