{"id":79676,"date":"2026-10-30T04:23:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T04:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.devopsschool.com\/blog\/?p=79676"},"modified":"2026-10-30T04:23:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T04:23:12","slug":"oracle-cloud-always-free-complete-summary-october-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.devopsschool.com\/blog\/oracle-cloud-always-free-complete-summary-october-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Oracle Cloud Always Free \u2014 Complete Summary (October 2026)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Oracle’s official Always Free documentation<\/a>, Oracle provides cloud resources that remain free for the lifetime of your account, not just for the initial 30-day trial. These benefits apply to eligible Free Tier and paid accounts, within the documented limits. Oracle Docs<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Always Free resources at a glance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Category<\/th>Resource<\/th>Always Free allowance<\/th><\/tr>
Compute<\/td>AMD VPS<\/td>2 VMs, 1 GB RAM each<\/td><\/tr>
<\/td>ARM Ampere A1 VPS<\/td>2 OCPUs + 12 GB RAM total<\/td><\/tr>
Storage<\/td>Block storage<\/td>200 GB total, including boot disks<\/td><\/tr>
<\/td>Block volume backups<\/td>5 backups<\/td><\/tr>
<\/td>Object storage<\/td>20 GB combined (free-only account)<\/td><\/tr>
<\/td>Object Storage API<\/td>50,000 requests\/month<\/td><\/tr>
Database<\/td>Oracle Autonomous AI Database<\/td>2 databases, 20 GB each<\/td><\/tr>
<\/td>MySQL HeatWave<\/td>1 DB system, 50 GB storage + 50 GB backup<\/td><\/tr>
<\/td>Oracle NoSQL<\/td>3 tables, 25 GB each<\/td><\/tr>
<\/td>NoSQL operations<\/td>133 million reads + 133 million writes\/month<\/td><\/tr>
Networking<\/td>Virtual Cloud Networks<\/td>2 VCNs (free-only accounts)<\/td><\/tr>
<\/td>Flexible Load Balancer<\/td>1, at 10 Mbps<\/td><\/tr>
<\/td>Network Load Balancer<\/td>1<\/td><\/tr>
<\/td>Outbound bandwidth<\/td>10 TB\/month<\/td><\/tr>
<\/td>Site-to-Site VPN<\/td>Up to 50 IPsec connections<\/td><\/tr>
<\/td>Bastion<\/td>Free service<\/td><\/tr>
Security<\/td>Certificates<\/td>150 certificates + 5 certificate authorities<\/td><\/tr>
<\/td>Vault secrets<\/td>150 secrets<\/td><\/tr>
<\/td>HSM key versions<\/td>20 versions<\/td><\/tr>
<\/td>Software-protected encryption keys<\/td>Free<\/td><\/tr>
Monitoring<\/td>Monitoring ingestion<\/td>500 million data points<\/td><\/tr>
<\/td>Monitoring retrieval<\/td>1 billion data points<\/td><\/tr>
<\/td>Logging<\/td>10 GB\/month shared allowance for free-only accounts<\/td><\/tr>
<\/td>APM<\/td>1,000 tracing events + 10 synthetic runs\/hour<\/td><\/tr>
<\/td>Dashboards<\/td>100<\/td><\/tr>
Automation<\/td>Resource Manager (Terraform)<\/td>100 stacks, 2 concurrent jobs<\/td><\/tr>
<\/td>Connector Hub<\/td>2 connectors<\/td><\/tr>
Communication<\/td>Email Delivery<\/td>3,000 emails\/month<\/td><\/tr>
<\/td>Notifications<\/td>1 million HTTPS + 1,000 email notifications\/month<\/td><\/tr>
Management<\/td>Fleet Application Management<\/td>First 25 managed resources\/month<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Source: Oracle OCI Always Free Resources documentation. Some quotas vary by account type, home region and service availability. Oracle Docs<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Free VPS details<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

AMD \u2014 VM.Standard.E2.1.Micro<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2 VMs<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

1 GB RAM each<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1\/8 OCPU per VM, burst capability<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ARM \u2014 VM.Standard.A1.Flex<\/p>\n\n\n\n

12 GB<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

2 OCPUs total<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1 or 2 ARM VMs<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Example ARM configurations<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Configuration<\/th>CPUs<\/th>RAM<\/th><\/tr>
1 ARM server<\/td>2<\/td>12 GB<\/td><\/tr>
2 ARM servers<\/td>1 each<\/td>6 GB each<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Important: Oracle’s currently published page specifies 2 OCPUs and 12 GB RAM for ARM Always Free, rather than the older commonly cited 4 OCPUs and 24 GB. Its monthly allowances are 1,500 OCPU-hours and 9,000 GB-hours. Oracle Docs<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. What you can host for free<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Application<\/th>Recommendation<\/th><\/tr>
WordPress website<\/td>ARM VPS<\/td><\/tr>
Personal or small business website<\/td>AMD or ARM VPS<\/td><\/tr>
Docker applications<\/td>ARM VPS<\/td><\/tr>
Node.js \/ Python applications<\/td>ARM VPS<\/td><\/tr>
Self-hosted GitHub Actions runner<\/td>ARM VPS<\/td><\/tr>
Small Kubernetes lab (K3s)<\/td>ARM VPS<\/td><\/tr>
Development MySQL database<\/td>Free MySQL HeatWave<\/td><\/tr>
Oracle APEX applications<\/td>Autonomous AI Database<\/td><\/tr>
VPN server<\/td>AMD VPS<\/td><\/tr>
Monitoring stack<\/td>ARM VPS, subject to resource limits<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

4. Important restrictions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
    \n
  • Lifetime free: There is no fixed expiration date for Always Free resources while the account remains eligible.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Home region: Always Free compute and block volumes must be deployed in your tenancy’s home region.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Idle instances: Oracle may reclaim instances that meet its low CPU, network and, for ARM, memory utilization criteria over seven days.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Capacity: Free VPS instances are not guaranteed to be immediately available. You may encounter an Out of host capacity error.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Shared storage quota: The 200 GB block storage allowance includes your VM boot disks, not 200 GB extra per VM.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Billing: Paid accounts can still use Always Free allowances, but usage beyond eligible limits can incur charges.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Email: Outbound TCP port 25 is blocked by default unless Oracle grants an exemption. Oracle Docs<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    5. My conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Oracle Always Free is particularly attractive for hosting a small number of Linux servers and applications because it combines free compute, 200 GB block storage and 10 TB monthly outbound data transfer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    For a developer or small startup, the best starting configuration is one ARM VM with 2 OCPUs and 12 GB RAM, assuming that capacity is available. It can host multiple lightweight Docker services while staying within the published compute allowance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    For production hosting, however, plan for backups, monitoring and possible instance reclamation rather than treating the free tier as guaranteed infrastructure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    According to Oracle’s official Always Free documentation, Oracle provides cloud resources that remain free for the lifetime of your account, not just for the initial 30-day trial…. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_joinchat":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11138],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-tools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devopsschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devopsschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devopsschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devopsschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devopsschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79676"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.devopsschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79677,"href":"https:\/\/www.devopsschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79676\/revisions\/79677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devopsschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devopsschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devopsschool.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}