30 days of credits. Then free forever.

Oracle Cloud Free Tier has two parts. A US$300 credit (about ₹26,000) to try anything for 30 days. And a set of Always Free services that keep running after the trial ends.

oracle.com/cloud/free — how the Free Tier works.

200 GB block storage

10 TB outbound data every month

2 Autonomous Databases

2 small AMD VMs (1 GB each) on top

That’s enough to run n8n, your scrapers, a Telegram bot or an AI agent 24/7 without paying a rupee.

It took me 3 tries. Do it in 1.

Finish within 30 minutes

Go to oracle.com/cloud/free → Start for free. The email verification link expires 30 minutes after you open it, and everything you typed is wiped. Keep your address, phone and card ready before you click.

Pick your home region carefully

You can never change it, and your Always Free server lives there. Pick the closest one. I’m in Bangalore, so I chose India South (Hyderabad). Mumbai works too.

Use a credit card

Debit and prepaid cards get declined. Oracle places a small temporary hold to verify it, then releases it. You are not charged unless you upgrade.

Create the ARM server before capacity runs out.

Compute → Instances → Create instance

Image: Ubuntu 22.04 or 24.04. Click Change shape → Ampere → VM.Standard.A1.Flex. Set 2 OCPU and 12 GB. Look for the Always Free-eligible tag.

Save the SSH key

Download the private key on the same screen. You can’t download it again later. Then ssh -i key.pem ubuntu@<your IP>.

“Out of capacity”? Keep trying

Free ARM servers are in demand. Switch the availability domain (AD-1/2/3) if your region has more than one, try again at odd hours, or retry every few minutes. It usually goes through within a day.

Keep it alive. Oracle can reclaim Always Free servers that sit idle. Run something real on it. Upgrading to Pay As You Go keeps the free limits and stops reclaiming, but set a budget alert first.

Next →

Free server. Now get people to use what you run on it. Turn the page.