Definition
Oblivious HTTP (OHTTP) is a split-trust privacy protocol (IETF RFC 9458) that separates client identity from request content across independently operated relays and gateways, so no single party can see both who is requesting and what is requested.
Key Points
- 2026-10-02: cloudflare launches managed cloudflare-ohttp-gateway + renamed cloudflare-ohttp-relay (2026-10-02-cloudflare-ohttp-gateway-techreport)
- Used in private-cloud-compute, flo-health Anonymous Mode, Apple iCloud Private Relay
- Related evolution path includes masque for broader proxy traffic
- Debugging is hard by design: visibility needed to diagnose faults is the visibility the protocol denies
- cloudflare open-sourced pvcli (Apache 2.0) as a curl-like CLI debugger for OHTTP (MASQUE planned) aimed at humans and ai-agents