Not every request needs to reach your backend. Cloudflare Workers excel at handling lightweight, stateless operations like metadata extraction, URL validation, and API response shaping directly at the edge. These serverless functions run across 300+ global data centers, offering near-instant execution with no cold starts. Edge processing makes sense for latency-sensitive tasks that don't require persistent connections or heavy computation.

Good fits include token validation, A/B testing, and request transformation. Avoid Workers for database-heavy, CPU-intensive, or complex stateful workflows. The model shared by the author's experience at Allscreenshots uses Workers for link previews while keeping data storage and orchestration in the backend.

This split allows edge functions to preprocess requests and cache results, reducing load on central servers. Developers should weigh trade-offs like bundle size limits and debugging constraints before adopting this approach.