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By Neil D —

How Oracle OCI Free Tier Provides Free Resource

First of all, if you are not aware, Oracle has their cloud service that competes with AWS, Azure and Google. However, there is one big difference that it offers - it has generous resources on its free tier. In fact, this entire blog runs on it through an Ubuntu instance with Ghost platform. It only took me a few minutes to register, create and instance and access my server. If you are more familiar with AWS or Azure, it may require some time to get used to but should be a quick read if you are just going to use it for basic stuff with minimal configurations.

What is Oracle Cloud Free Tier?

Oracle’s Free Tier provides developers with access to two types of free resources:

  • Always Free Services: These are available indefinitely, as long as they are actively used.
  • 30-Day Free Trial: Includes $300 in free credits to explore additional services.

Oracle’s Free Tier includes several services that are particularly useful for developers:

  1. Compute Instances
    • 2x AMD-based virtual machines (VM.Standard.A1.Flex) with up to 4 ARM OCPUs and 24GB RAM in total.
    • 1x Intel-based VM (VM.Standard.E2.1.Micro) with 1 OCPU and 1GB RAM.
    • Suitable for hosting web applications, testing APIs, or running automation scripts.
  2. Autonomous Databases
    • 2x Always Free Oracle Autonomous Databases with up to 20GB of storage each.
    • Options for Autonomous Transaction Processing (ATP) and Autonomous Data Warehouse (ADW).
    • Ideal for developing database-driven applications without management overhead.
  3. Block and Object Storage
    • 200GB Block Volume storage.
    • 20GB Object Storage, useful for storing files, images, and backups.
  4. Networking and Security
    • Load balancer with 10Mbps bandwidth.
    • Flexible Virtual Cloud Network (VCN) setup with security policies.
    • Useful for creating secure, scalable applications.
  5. Other Notable Free Services
    • Monitoring and logging services.
    • Container Engine for Kubernetes (OKE) for deploying containerized applications.
    • Functions for serverless computing.
ORACLE OCI Always Free Compute

I was able to install multiple Ubuntu instance using their service. Of course, within the limitations of their free tier resources. It's very useful for lightweight server requirements that will make your development journey or project easier.

I will be sharing guides in the future on how I created my blog step by step but below is an overview.

Getting Started with OCI Free Tier:

  1. Sign up on the Oracle Cloud website.
  2. Verify your account (requires a credit card for validation, but no charges if you stay within Free Tier limits).
  3. Launch services from the OCI Console.
  4. Monitor usage to ensure you’re within the Free Tier limits.

Conclusion

The Oracle Cloud Free Tier is an excellent choice for developers looking for a reliable, cost-free cloud platform to build, test, and deploy applications. Whether you're working on personal projects, learning cloud technologies, or setting up a development environment, OCI provides a great set of free services to get started.