---
title: Add load balancing to Spectrum applications · Cloudflare Load Balancing docs
description: You can configure Spectrum with Load Balancing to bring resiliency
  to your TCP or UDP based applications.
lastUpdated: 2025-09-03T10:05:39.000Z
chatbotDeprioritize: false
source_url:
  html: https://developers.cloudflare.com/load-balancing/additional-options/spectrum/
  md: https://developers.cloudflare.com/load-balancing/additional-options/spectrum/index.md
---

You can configure [Spectrum](https://developers.cloudflare.com/spectrum/) with Load Balancing to bring resiliency to your TCP or UDP based applications.

Leverage health monitors, failover, and traffic steering by selecting a load balancer as **Origin** when creating your Spectrum application.

The exact settings will vary depending on your use case. Refer to the following steps to understand the workflow.

***

## Set up

### 1. Configure your load balancer

1. In the Cloudflare dashboard, go to the **Load Balancing** page.

   [Go to **Load Balancing**](https://dash.cloudflare.com/?to=/:account/load-balancing)

2. Select an account where the Load Balancing add-on is [enabled](https://developers.cloudflare.com/load-balancing/get-started/enable-load-balancing/).

3. Go to **Load Balancing** and select **Create load balancer**.

4. On the **Load Balancer Setup**, select **Public load balancer**

5. Choose the website to which you want to add this load balancer.

6. On the **Hostname** page, define the settings presented and select **Next**.

   * Enter a **Hostname**, which is the DNS name at which the load balancer is available. For more details on record priority, refer to [DNS records for load balancing](https://developers.cloudflare.com/load-balancing/load-balancers/dns-records/).

     Warning

     To prevent issues with DNS resolution, the load balancer hostname should be different from the hostname (or domain) you intend to define for your Spectrum application.

   * Keep the orange cloud icon enabled, meaning the load balancer is proxied. This refers to the [proxy mode](https://developers.cloudflare.com/load-balancing/understand-basics/proxy-modes/) and, with Spectrum, traffic is always proxied.

   * Keep **Session Affinity** and **Failover across pools** disabled as these features are not supported with Spectrum.

7. On the **Add a Pool** page, define the settings presented and select **Next**.

   * Select one or more existing pools or [create a new pool](https://developers.cloudflare.com/load-balancing/pools/create-pool/#create-a-pool) [1](#user-content-fn-1).
   * If needed, update the [fallback pool](https://developers.cloudflare.com/load-balancing/understand-basics/health-details/#fallback-pools) [2](#user-content-fn-2).

8. On the **Monitors** page, define the settings presented and select **Next**.

   * Review the monitors attached to your pools.
   * If needed, you can attach an existing monitor or [create a new monitor](https://developers.cloudflare.com/load-balancing/monitors/create-monitor/#create-a-monitor).

9. On the **Traffic Steering** page, choose an option for [Traffic steering](https://developers.cloudflare.com/load-balancing/understand-basics/traffic-steering/steering-policies/) and select **Next**.

10. Keep **Custom Rules** page empty as this feature is not supported with Spectrum.

11. On the **Review** page:

* Review your configuration and make any changes.

  * If you set traffic steering to **Off**, re-order the pools in your load balancer to adjust the fallback order.
  * If you chose to set traffic steering to Random, you can [set weights to your pools](https://developers.cloudflare.com/load-balancing/understand-basics/traffic-steering/steering-policies/standard-options/#random-steering) (via the [API](https://developers.cloudflare.com/api/resources/load_balancers/methods/create/)) to determine the percentage of traffic sent to each pool.

* Choose whether to **Save as Draft** or **Save and Deploy**.

### 2. Configure your Spectrum application

1. In the Cloudflare dashboard, go to the **Spectrum** page.

   [Go to **Spectrum**](https://dash.cloudflare.com/?to=/:account/:zone/spectrum)

2. Select **Create an Application**. If this is your first time using Spectrum, the **Create an Application** modal appears.

3. Select your **[Application Type](https://developers.cloudflare.com/spectrum/reference/configuration-options/#application-type)**.

4. Under **Domain**, enter the domain that will use Spectrum.

5. Under **Edge Port**, enter the port Cloudflare should use for your application.

6. Under **Origin**, select **Load Balancer**.

7. Select the load balancer you want to use from the dropdown. Disabled load balancers will not show on the **Load Balancer** menu.

8. Select **Add**.

***

## Limitations

* Load Balancing [session affinity](https://developers.cloudflare.com/load-balancing/understand-basics/session-affinity/), [failover across pools](https://developers.cloudflare.com/load-balancing/understand-basics/adaptive-routing/#failover-across-pools), and [custom rules](https://developers.cloudflare.com/load-balancing/additional-options/load-balancing-rules/) are not supported by Spectrum.

* UDP health checks are only available with public monitoring. TCP can be used with both public and private monitoring.

## Footnotes

1. Within Cloudflare, pools represent your endpoints and how they are organized. As such, a pool can be a group of several endpoints, or you could also have only one endpoint (an origin server, for example) per pool. [↩](#user-content-fnref-1)

2. A fallback pool is the pool of last resort. When all pools are disabled or unhealthy, this is where the load balancer will send traffic. [↩](#user-content-fnref-2)
