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  • This will remove a non-insignificant chunk of Tor network capacity. Many of those OCI free-tier instances were set and forget Tor relay nodes, especially since they're de facto unmetered.
    by roncesvalles
  • This reminded me that I tried to create the account on the Oracle Cloud and claim the free tier.

    I tried a few times it always went to some sort of verification that after some time ended up in a rejection with no follow up process.

    fun

    by Gabrys1
  • The question is how far can they lower it while still claiming to have still provided the 'always free' - I mean can they reduce my nice free VM to 32k of ram and a 1/1000 of a core and a byte of bandwidth/month?
    by trebligdivad
  • I'll take 32KB, a 6502 core, and 2400 baud of bandwidth.
    by forinti
  • "Always Free" should probably be interpreted in the context of a recurring monthly contract: "of all the resources you use these will always be included at no additional charge"

    The same applies to "Free for Life" offers: "free until it no longer makes commercial sense"

    Low expectations are key. I've been using my full quota of free resources for 3+ years without an issue and I'm grateful for having a place to run various non-commercial services. I also know enough to understand that this is not the full Oracle Experience and that I shouldn't give them any money.

    by zenoprax
  • If by "just," you mean a couple of weeks ago, yes.

    I noticed the change to their documentation about two weeks ago. A couple days later, I checked my own account for something unrelated. My main instance (using 12 GB of RAM) was still up, but another that I only used for testing random things had just vanished from my account without a trace.

    I get that they are well within their rights to reduce the Always Free resources (or even eliminate them entirely), but I did not get any notification that this was changing, nor that they would be terminating my instances that took the account above the Always Free limits. It would honestly have been _less_ sneaky (and potentially damaging) to simply start charging for resources above the new limit.

    But, Oracle gonna Oracle I guess.

    by bityard
  • Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower
    by coredog64
  • It was communicated beginning the middle of June but it's taken them a couple of months to get round to actually doing it - it's not at all reasonable to criticise given the offering. Or even any offering, nobody else even comes close. Also OCI is just technically better than every other cloud, always was. And cheaper. Also their suggestion is to upgrade to "PAYG" as it has been for several years.
    by throwaway67743
  • > But, Oracle gonna Oracle I guess.

    This is one of the rare instances where I don't really have an issue with Oracle doing something any sane business would to be honest. It's a free resource and RAM and storage have increased in cost substantially.

    by giancarlostoro
  • You pay in other ways.

    You’ll spend hours upon hours trying to get a free spot. And like anything free it’s full of spam.

    Your free server will likely have a blacklisted ip address.

    Oracle is exceptionally frustrating to use in the first place. Pay the 5$ a month and use AWS or Digital Ocean

    by 999900000999
  • Also apparently they will randomly terminate your instances if they think you’re not using them enough. Or if you’re using them too much. Can’t tell, it’s not transparent.

    Also, their control plane is so poorly designed, it makes AWS Console feel like good UX.

    by drdexebtjl
  • > Your free server will likely have a blacklisted ip address. > > Oracle is exceptionally frustrating to use in the first place. Pay the 5$ a month and use AWS or Digital Ocean

    Funny thing that you mention this because according to Xenedra it's my DO IP that's blacklisted (even though I have it for years with no bad activities) but the free Oracle one is fine.

    I was quite surprised by that.

    by Thom2000
  • I tried getting some free ARM oracle servers a couple months back. I ended up setting up a whole PAYG setup, eventually got tired of trying to get their cloud to actually provision me any of these supposed free ARM systems, and have been a customer for a couple months now paying ~80/mo for the couple VPS's I've been playing with.

    Speaking as an Oracle customer, let me heartily disrecommend them to everyone. Terrible experience.

    by gryfft
  • Thanks for saving me some time. I wanted a free little server in case my home RPi is down for whatever reason. Not surprised it's too good to be true.
    by frollogaston
  • Their reputation is what keeps me away from anything free of theirs.
    by giancarlostoro
  • It's where I run my Hermes. C'est la vie.

    If this is the first casualty of the Ellisonpocalypse I'm fine with it. May they all whither and go away.

    by browningstreet
  • They continue to be incredibly generous. 2 vCPUs and 12 GB of RAM is extraordinary for no cost.
    by arjie
  • It is extraordinary, but it also was incredibly hard to procure. Most data centres were almost immediately out of instances, and only the original batch of always free land grabbers really got these instances.

    Which I imagine is what motivated this change.

    by llm_nerd
  • Are there any other incredibily generous offerings out there for computer resources? What are the best things that I'm not using?
    by abirch
  • The A1 has been available for 6 years without a rug pull or reductions until now on a very overly generous offering - whatever you think of oracle, it's something else. My instances from 2020 are still running...
    by throwaway67743
  • it is still a sign that things aren't going well there
    by brazukadev
  • Years ago I had an Oracle free instance which I shut down, didn't have any use that was worth the security maintenance time.

    Recently wanted to make a new free instance at the lowest settings, but my zone is completely overbooked. Oracle does not let you move your free instance to a new zone.

    According to what I read, the only way to spin up a new free instance is run a script elsewhere to attempt instance creation every minute using the API; and that takes an average of a couple weeks to bring something up.

    by axus
  • I’m mostly fine with this. Their free teir was crazy generous. 24GB of ram for free is a lot. They were a very popular host for free Minecraft servers because of it.

    Their communication about this change has been pretty awful. It began with a silent change to the docs a month or so back, and a lot of people worrying that they would suddenly be charged. It looks like there’s actually a date associated with the change now at least. This article mentions an email that went out? I haven’t gotten any such email. I’ve already reduced my instances to within the upcoming limit, so maybe that’s why? I don’t know.

    by snailmailman
  • Yep still an excellent free tier. The storage (200G?) and transfer (10TB I think still!?) haven't changed, and also you still get 2 free AMD64 1G VMs, so all in all, still awesome. I know people have complained about OCI/Oracle in general and shenanigans by Oracle re: their free tier instances, but my 2 instances (one A1 which I have downsized to within new limits, and one AMD) have been humming along for years and years with no issues..
    by indigodaddy
  • This is the email I received yesterday.

    I think them downsizing the free tier is perfectly fine. Giving two weeks’ notice before terminating instances is not. But since this is Oracle, I always assumed they’d do something villainy someday, so it’s a bit whatever.

    ---

    Hello,

    We're writing to let you know about an important update regarding Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Always Free compute.

    The Always Free compute limits have been updated. If your tenancy is currently using Always Free compute resources above the new limits, you must reduce your usage by August 18, 2026.

    Beginning on August 18, 2026, Oracle will begin enforcing the updated Always Free compute limits. Compute instances that exceed the Always Free entitlement will be automatically terminated.

    Current Always Free compute limits

        Up to 2 Ampere A1 OCPUs
    Up to 12 GB of memory
    If your tenancy is already within these limits, no action is required.

    Your tenancy and other Always Free services will remain available. If compute instances are terminated because they exceed the Always Free entitlement, you can launch new Always Free compute instances within the current limits at any time.

    You can review the current Always Free limits and manage your compute resources in the OCI Console.

    For more information, see:

        Always Free Documentation
    Thank you for using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

    The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Team

    by smoe
  • A substantially better article: https://www.infoq.com/news/2026/07/oracle-cloud-free-tier-li...

    The actual Oracle docs: https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/FreeTier/freetier...

    by caminanteblanco
  • Thank you. The OP's article is clearly AI-written.
    by munchler
  • For what it's worth, I am a user of this and I'd like to clear up one thing that is not obvious here:

    There are actually two tiers of Free here that Oracle offers.

    Always Free - No credit card required, sign up. This is what the new limit applies to

    PAYG - You give a credit card, but like AWS and GCP there is a "free" tier for people who are on pay as you go plans. From what I can tell, the PAYG subscribers are not subject to this lower limit, only Always Free users.

    In other words, if you want the old provisioning limits for free you just have to put your credit card info in.

    There are additional reasons that you would want to switch to PAYG - for instance, oracle will literally tear down your always free resources if you are idling them, they are watching CPU and memory and if they see them idled they will take them away. Also, even provisioning always free instances is a challenge - most people have to write bots that attempt on a regular basis, since they appear to only allow you to register when existing resources are freed up, either by the reaper referenced earlier or by someone deprovisioning their always free resources. Neither of these limitations apply on the PAYG tier

    It's worth clearing up, because this amount of free resources is worth a nonzero amount of money, if you provisioned comparable resources on any of the tier 1 or tier 2 cloud's you would be paying well over $1k/year for what they are handing over for free. AWS + GCP free compute offerings are anemic in comparison. It's a significant amount of compute.

    by SOLAR_FIELDS
  • Compared to any normal hosting provider, you'd be paying 50 €/year for what Oracle is handing over for free. Plus you don't need to use the absolute trainwreck that is the OCI web console.

    "Cloud" providers are not the only way and you get precisely none of their benefits if all you do is run a single instance, so they're really not a good comparison.

    by franga2000
  • I'm a PAYG subscriber and I have a single 4/24 server running. I've been on the free tier for the last year and my billing alert went off yesterday. It was set to $1.
    by sunnynuts