What’s somewhat complicated here is its apples and oranges. Cloudflare offers DNS and a proxy service. The OP is using both. The comparisons are merely DNS services. I wasn’t clear on X whether OP was getting confused that the IP we return via DNS (which points to our proxy) doesn’t change, or if they were concerned that behind the proxy we’re not routing correctly. I think after reading this the answer is the latter. Confident we always will route optimally as it’s in our interest and our customers’. But why we’re not failing over on failure is interesting. That looks like, as John said, a difference between free and paid plans that if it made sense at some point doesn’t obviously today. Will figure out what’s up and get fixed.
Regardless, it's really cool to watch you both engage with this
Don't forget all the people at Cloudflare who responded to a ping from me on a Saturday and looked into it.
We are going to make the change. This will improve our free accounts so it's a win for everyone. Thanks to OP for writing this up!