OCI Cloud Free Tier FAQ

What is Oracle Cloud Free Tier?

Oracle Cloud Free Tier allows you to sign up for an Oracle Cloud account which provides a number of Always Free services and a Free Trial with US$300 of free credit to use on all eligible Oracle Cloud Infrastructure services for up to 30 days. The Always Free services are available for an unlimited period of time. The Free Trial services may be used until your US$300 of free credits are consumed or the 30 days has expired, whichever comes first.

Who should use Oracle Cloud Free Tier?

Oracle Cloud Free Tier services are for everyone. Whether you’re a developer building and testing applications, a startup founder creating new systems with the intention of scaling later, an enterprise looking to test things before moving to cloud, a student wanting to learn, or an academic developing curriculum in the cloud, Oracle Cloud Free Tier enables you to learn, explore, build and test for free.

Who is eligible for Oracle Cloud Free Tier?

One Oracle Cloud Free Trial or Always Free account is permitted per person. Please note:

• Creating or attempting to create multiple free accounts is prohibited.
• All contact and billing information provided must be accurate, valid, and used with consent for the duration of the account.
• Failure to comply with these requirements may result in the suspension or termination of your account.

Why do I need to provide credit or debit card information when I sign up for Oracle Cloud Free Tier?

To provide free Oracle Cloud accounts to our valued customers, we need to ensure that you are who you say you are. We use your contact information and credit/debit card information for account setup and identity verification. Oracle may periodically check the validity of your card, resulting in a temporary “authorization” hold. These holds are removed by your bank, typically within three to five days, and do not result in actual charges to your account.

What payment methods does Oracle accept?

We accept credit cards and debit cards that function like credit cards. We do not accept debit cards with a PIN or virtual, single-use, or prepaid cards.

Is Oracle Cloud Free Tier available in all countries?

Oracle Cloud Free Tier is currently available in all regions where commercial Oracle Cloud Infrastructure service is available. See the data regions page for detailed service availability.*** If your first-choice data region isn’t available, please select an adjacent region. If you are unable to find the country or territory you require, please contact Oracle Sales or Cloud Support using the Chat link in the menu bar. The Oracle Sales team can help you sign up for Oracle Cloud Free Tier.

How do I sign up for Oracle Cloud Free Tier?

You can sign up on the Oracle Cloud Free Tier sign up page.

How do I get help if I have problems signing up or signing in including Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)?

Contact the Oracle Cloud support team using the Chat link in the menu bar.

Does Oracle Cloud Free Tier include service level agreements (SLAs) and technical support?

Oracle Cloud Free Tier does not include SLAs. Community support through our forums is available to all customers. Customers using only Always Free resources are not eligible for Oracle Support. Limited support is available for Oracle Cloud Free Tier with Free Trial credits. After you use all of your credits or after your trial period ends (whichever comes first), you must upgrade to a paid account to access Oracle Support. If you choose not to upgrade and continue to use Always Free Services, you will not be eligible to raise a service request in My Oracle Support.

What are Always Free services?

Always Free services are part of Oracle Cloud Free Tier. Always Free services are available for an unlimited time. Some limitations apply. As new Always Free services become available, you will automatically be able to use those as well.

The following services are available as Always Free:

• HeatWave
• AMD-based Compute
• Arm-based Ampere A1 Compute
• Block Volume
• Object Storage
• Archive Storage
• Flexible Load Balancer
• Flexible Network Load Balancer
• VPN Connect
• Autonomous Data Warehouse
• Autonomous Transaction Processing
• Autonomous JSON Database
• NoSQL Database (Phoenix Region only)
• APEX Application Development

• Resource Manager (Terraform)
• Monitoring
• Notifications
• Logging
• Application Performance Monitoring
• Service Connector Hub
• Vault
• Bastions
• Security Advisor
• Virtual Cloud Networks
• Site-to-Site VPN
• Content Management Starter Edition
• Email Delivery

What can I do with Always Free Oracle Autonomous Database?

With Oracle Autonomous Database now always free, developers can access a full database experience and built-in development tools for free—without worrying about losing work at the end of a trial period. Autonomous Database is a multimodel database for virtually any type of data (including relational, JSON, spatial, graph, multimedia, XML, files, and more), any workload (transactional, data warehouse, and analytics), and any interface (full SQL, REST data access, and language drivers). The service includes free development tools such as SQL Developer IDE, Oracle Application Express (APEX) for low-code app creation, Oracle REST Data Services, and powerful command-line utilities. To keep building even when you are disconnected from Oracle Cloud, you can mix Always Free Oracle Autonomous Database with a compatible always-free version of Oracle Database that runs on your laptop (see Oracle Database XE).

What can I do with Always Free Oracle Cloud Infrastructure?

With Always Free Oracle Cloud Infrastructure services, you get the essentials you need to build and test applications in the cloud. This includes two compute instances, NVMe SSD-powered block storage, high-bandwidth object storage, archive storage, and load balancing, all on our enterprise-grade virtual networks. These resources enable you to prototype two-tier high availability applications, test server cloning and other advanced storage features, or build basic data pipelines with object storage, as just a few examples. Coupling with Always Free Autonomous Database or our Free Tier gives you even more options. Our cloud infrastructure includes rich APIs, SDKs for Java, Python, Ruby, and Go, and cool plug-ins for Jenkins, Packer, and Grafana. And you can automate it all with Terraform.

I need more instances or larger sizes of Always Free services. What should I do?

If your cloud account is in Free Trial period or has paid status, you can directly upgrade an Always Free resource to a paid resource to get more processing power, data storage, and network bandwidth. If your account has finished Free Trial without upgrading to paid status, you can continue using Always Free resources but you cannot upgrade Always Free resources to paid resources until the account is first upgraded to paid status.

You may upgrade an account to paid status at any time from the Account Management area in Oracle Cloud Console. You will be able to choose between Pay As You Go or Monthly Flex plans. Alternatively, you may contact Oracle Sales for assistance. See cloud cost estimator for details.

In addition, you may spend free credits during a Free Trial period to create more instances or larger instances than allowed for Always Free. Note that paid instances created during a trial period will be reclaimed when the Free Trial ends, whereas Always Free resources will continue to be available even after the Free Trial period.

What is the advantage of moving to Pay As You Go accounts after the trial?

You have access to customer support to open tickets and troubleshoot account issues. Pay As You Go accounts are subject to different capacity limits than Always Free accounts. As you move from development and testing to production scenarios, you may need to use resources outside of Always Free limits. You will have access to the latest portfolio of OCI services, such as artificial intelligence, and you only pay for what you use.

How do I know how much I am going be charged for Pay As You Go services?

You will only be charged for services that you use that exceeds Always Free. You can find information about costs in the Oracle Cloud Price List and the Oracle cloud cost estimator.

I just signed up and I can’t access specific services. What can I do?

Registering your account with all services and regions can take a few minutes. Check again after a few minutes have passed.

How do I change which resources I want to designate as Always Free?

In short, you can’t. Eligible resources are designated Always Free when they are created. After you provision an Always Free resource, the Always Free status is not transferable to another resource. However, you can delete an existing Always Free resource in order to create a new Always Free resource in its place.

My resources no longer appear. How can I restore them?

If you have a Free Tier account and your resources no longer appear, it’s likely that your Free Trial has expired and your paid resources have been reclaimed (terminated). You can verify if this is the case by doing the following:
Log in to the Console
Check for a banner at the top of the Console with the following text: “You are using a Free Tier account. To access all services and resources, upgrade to a paid account.”

If you see this message, your resources have been reclaimed and can’t be restored.

I get an “out of host capacity” error when I try to create an Always Free Compute instance. What can I do?

An "out of host capacity" error indicates a temporary lack of Always Free shapes in your home region. Oracle is working to provide more capacity, though it might take several days before additional capacity is available in your home region. If your home region has multiple availability domains, try creating the instance in a different availability domain. If that doesn’t work, wait a while, and then try to launch the instance again.

Is my Free Tier account eligible for support?

Community support through our forums is available to all customers. Customers using only Always Free resources are not eligible for Oracle Support. Limited support is available to Free Tier accounts with Free Trial credits. After you use all of your credits or after your trial period ends (whichever comes first), you must upgrade to a paid account to access Oracle Support. If you choose not to upgrade and continue to use Always Free Services, you will not be eligible to raise a service request in My Oracle Support. See Getting Help and Contacting Support.

Are Always Free services available for paid accounts?

Yes, for paid accounts using universal credit pricing.

What is Free Trial?

Free Trial is part of Oracle Cloud Free Tier and provides US$300 of free credits to use on all eligible Oracle Cloud Infrastructure services for up to 30 days. The Free Trial period may end either because all free credits are spent or 30 days has been reached.

For how long can I use my Free Trial credits?

You must use all your Free Trial credits within 30 days of signing up for Oracle Cloud Free Tier. Any credits that are unused at the end of the 30-day period will automatically expire. The Always Free services will continue to be available for unlimited time as long as you use the services.

Is it possible to extend my Free Trial?

If you need additional credits or time, you can schedule a call with an Oracle sales representative using the Upgrade page in the Console. Sales representatives have the authority to extend trials or issue additional credits if appropriate.

If you don't see an Upgrade link on the Console page you’re viewing, you can click the Oracle Cloud logo at the top of the Console and then look for the Upgrade link in the sidebar on the right side of the page.

What happens when my Free Trial expires or my credits are used up?

When you've reached the end of your 30-day trial or used all your Free Trial credits (whichever comes first), you’ll be notified and will have a grace period of 30 days, starting from the expiration date, to upgrade to paid. You will no longer be able to create new paid resources, but your account will remain active. Your resources will continue to exist for a few days, allowing you to upgrade your account and keep your resources before they're reclaimed by Oracle. If you do not upgrade to paid by the end of the grace period, your Free Trial service instances and data will be deleted. (Note that reclaimed resources can’t be recovered—they are permanently deleted.)

Resources identified as Always Free will not be reclaimed. After your Free Trial expires, you'll continue to be able to use and manage your existing Always Free resources, and can create new Always Free resources according to tenancy limits.

However, if you have more Ampere A1 Compute instances provisioned than are available for an Always Free tenancy, all existing Ampere A1 instances are disabled and then deleted after 30 days, unless you upgrade to a paid account. To continue using your existing Arm-based instances as an Always Free user, before your trial ends, ensure that your total use of OCPUs and memory across all the Ampere A1 Compute instances in your tenancy is within the Always Free limit.

If I upgrade, do I keep my Free Trial credit balance?

Yes, if you upgrade during the Free Trial period, you won’t be billed until you've reached the end of your 30-day trial or used all of your Free Trial credits (whichever comes first). You’ll be notified by email when billing begins.

After I upgrade my account, can I downgrade?

There is no option to downgrade your account. However, with a paid account, you’ll continue to have access to Always Free resources, and you’ll only pay for the standard resources you use. No minimums and no prepayment are required for your paid account.

How do I recover my data once the 30-day Free Trial comes to an end?

You are responsible for exporting and importing all of your data manually or using tools supported by the object storage.

What is Oracle Cloud Promotion?

Oracle Cloud Promotion is another term for Free Trial.

How do I convert my Oracle Cloud Free Tier account to a paid account?

You can upgrade your cloud account to paid at any time. Simply go to Account Management in the Oracle Cloud Console and complete the upgrade steps.

Is my credit usage rate discounted during Free Trial?

Yes, during the Free Trial period of 30 days, your usage rates are discounted. This will let you gain free, hands-on experience with the wide range of Oracle Cloud services.

What are the discounted rates?

During the 30-day Free Trial period, you will just pay the Oracle IaaS rates for all platform services including Oracle Database Cloud, Java Cloud Service (WebLogic), and other services which are normally billed at higher rates.

How do I terminate my Free Tier account?

Please refer to the documentation section on deleting a Free Tier Tenancy and Cloud Account for details on account termination.