Oracle Cloud Free Tier
Oracle Cloud’s free offer: a 30-day trial, then “Always Free” resources with no time limit, including a real ARM virtual machine you administer yourself.
Strengths
- A complete virtual machine, root access, with no end date, where other free tiers give a function or a container
- A credit card requested to verify your identity, never charged while the account stays Always Free
- 10 TB of outbound traffic a month, a volume nobody else offers for free
Limitations
- A machine staying under 20% CPU, network and memory for seven days is reclaimed by Oracle
- The ARM limit went from 4 CPUs and 24 GB to 2 and 12 on 15 June 2026, with no public announcement; above it, machines on an Always Free account are disabled, then deleted after 30 days
- Everything else is on you: operating system, firewall, certificates, backups, updates
Best for
- A personal project that needs an always-on machine, with no budget
- Learning to run a Linux server on a real machine rather than locally