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Posted on May 3 • Originally published at toolfreebie.com

Oracle Cloud Always Free: Get a 4-Core 24GB ARM VPS for Free

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Oracle Cloud Always Free: A Truly Permanent Free VPS

Most “free” cloud tiers expire after 12 months. Oracle Cloud is different. The Oracle Cloud Always Free tier gives you a legitimate, permanent free cloud server — including a 4-core 24 GB ARM VM that never expires and never requires a paid upgrade.

This is not a trial. Oracle has maintained the Always Free tier since 2019, and it remains the most generous permanent free cloud offering from any major provider.

What You Get for Free — Forever

Compute (The Main Draw)

Ampere A1 ARM instances: 4 OCPUs + 24 GB RAM total — allocate however you want (e.g., one 4-core 24 GB VM, or four 1-core 6 GB VMs)
AMD Micro instances: 2 × VM.Standard.E2.1.Micro (1/8 OCPU, 1 GB RAM each)
OS: Ubuntu, Oracle Linux, CentOS, Debian — your choice

Storage

Block storage: 200 GB total (across all volumes)
Object storage: 20 GB (S3-compatible)
Archive storage: 20 GB

Networking

Outbound bandwidth: 10 TB/month
Load balancer: 1 × 10 Mbps
VCN (Virtual Cloud Network): 2 free
Public IPs: 2 free

Database

Autonomous Database: 2 × 20 GB (supports Oracle DB, JSON, APEX)

Other Services

OCI Vault: Key management
Monitoring & logging: 500 million datapoints/month
Email Delivery: 100 emails/day

Oracle Cloud vs Other Free VPS Options

Provider	Free Compute	RAM	Storage	Bandwidth	Expires?
Oracle Cloud (A1)	4 ARM cores	24 GB	200 GB	10 TB/mo	Never
Oracle Cloud (AMD)	2 × 1/8 vCPU	2 × 1 GB	200 GB shared	10 TB/mo shared	Never
Google Cloud (e2-micro)	1 × e2-micro	1 GB	30 GB HDD	1 GB/mo	Never
AWS Free Tier (t2.micro)	1 × t2.micro	1 GB	30 GB	15 GB/mo	12 months
Azure Free (B1s)	1 × B1s	1 GB	64 GB SSD	15 GB/mo	12 months
Fly.io	3 shared VMs	256 MB each	3 GB	160 GB/mo	Never (but very small)

Oracle’s A1 ARM tier dominates every other always-free offering. 24 GB RAM is enough to run serious workloads: a Dockerized web app, a small Kubernetes cluster, a self-hosted AI inference server, or a private VPN.

How to Get Started

Step 1: Sign Up

Go to oracle.com/cloud/free and click Start for free
Fill in your account details and verify your email
You’ll need to provide a credit card — Oracle uses it for identity verification only. You won’t be charged unless you manually upgrade to a paid account
Select your home region carefully — this cannot be changed later. US regions (Ashburn, Phoenix) tend to have the most A1 availability

Step 2: Create an A1 ARM Instance

In the OCI Console, go to Compute → Instances → Create Instance
Under Image and shape, click Change shape
Select Ampere → VM.Standard.A1.Flex
Set OCPUs to 4 and RAM to 24 GB
Under Add SSH keys, upload your public key or generate a new one
Click Create

Your instance will be ready in 1–3 minutes.

Step 3: Connect via SSH

# Default username for Ubuntu is "ubuntu"
ssh -i ~/.ssh/your-key ubuntu@YOUR_PUBLIC_IP

# Verify you're running on ARM
uname -m
# Output: aarch64

Step 4: Open Firewall Ports

OCI blocks all inbound traffic by default. You need to open ports in two places:

1. Security List (OCI Console): Networking → Virtual Cloud Networks → Your VCN → Security Lists → Add Ingress Rules for the ports you need (80, 443, 8080, etc.)

2. Instance firewall (iptables/firewalld):

# Ubuntu — disable the default iptables rule that blocks everything
sudo iptables -F
sudo iptables -P INPUT ACCEPT

# Or open specific ports only
sudo iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT
sudo iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 443 -j ACCEPT
sudo netfilter-persistent save

What You Can Run on a Free 4-Core 24 GB Oracle VM

Web Applications

# Deploy a Node.js app with Nginx reverse proxy
sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y nginx nodejs npm
npm install -g pm2
pm2 start app.js --name myapp
pm2 startup && pm2 save

Docker and Compose

# Install Docker on ARM (Ubuntu)
curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sh
sudo usermod -aG docker ubuntu

# Run a full stack app
docker compose up -d

Self-Hosted AI with Ollama

# Install Ollama (ARM-compatible)
curl -fsSL https://ollama.com/install.sh | sh

# Run Llama 3.2 (3B) — fits easily in 24 GB
ollama pull llama3.2
ollama run llama3.2

# Expose API on port 11434
OLLAMA_HOST=0.0.0.0 ollama serve

With 24 GB RAM, you can run Llama 3.2 3B, Mistral 7B (quantized), or Gemma 2 2B comfortably. These are CPU-only on ARM, but perfectly usable for low-traffic API endpoints or background processing.

Kubernetes (k3s)

# Install k3s (lightweight Kubernetes)
curl -sfL https://get.k3s.io | sh -

# Check status
sudo k3s kubectl get nodes

VPN Server (WireGuard)

# Install WireGuard
sudo apt install -y wireguard

# Use the automated setup script
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/angristan/wireguard-install/master/wireguard-install.sh
bash wireguard-install.sh

Use with OpenClaw to Automate Your Oracle VM

Once your Oracle Cloud VM is running, you can use OpenClaw to automate tasks on it. OpenClaw is an open-source AI agent that can connect to your server via SSH MCP tools and run commands on your behalf.

For example, you can give OpenClaw instructions like “deploy my latest Docker image” or “check disk usage and send a report” — it will SSH into your Oracle VM and handle it without you writing shell scripts manually.

This makes the Oracle free VM even more powerful: it’s always-on infrastructure that an AI agent can maintain and operate for you.

Common Issues and Fixes

“Out of capacity” when creating A1 instances

This is the most common problem. Oracle’s A1 capacity fills up quickly in popular regions. Solutions:

Try a less popular region (Tokyo, Singapore, Stockholm, Amsterdam)
Try again at off-peak hours (2–5 AM UTC)
Use the OCI CLI or API to retry automatically — many users write a script that polls every few minutes until an instance is created
Create 4 separate 1-core 6 GB instances instead of one 4-core 24 GB — smaller instances are easier to allocate

Reclamation Warning

Oracle can theoretically “reclaim” Always Free instances if they show no usage for 30+ days. To prevent this, make sure your instance is actually running something — even a simple cron job that pings a URL every day counts as activity.

Credit Card Charges

Oracle charges a small temporary authorization hold ($1–$2) on signup to verify your card. This is reversed within a few days. You will not be charged as long as you stay within Always Free limits and don’t manually enable paid services.

Always Free Limits to Watch

Resource	Always Free Limit	What Happens if Exceeded
A1 OCPUs	4 total	Cannot create more instances (blocked)
A1 RAM	24 GB total	Cannot create more instances (blocked)
Block storage	200 GB	Cannot create more volumes (blocked)
Outbound bandwidth	10 TB/month	Charged per GB over limit
Object storage	20 GB	Charged per GB over limit

Bandwidth overages are the only real billing risk. 10 TB/month is enormous for most projects, but if you’re running a high-traffic service, set up a Budget Alert in OCI (Billing → Budgets) to get notified if spending approaches any threshold.

Is Oracle Cloud Always Free Worth It?

Yes — with caveats.

Use Oracle Cloud Always Free if:

You need a permanent free VPS with real resources (4 cores, 24 GB RAM)
You want to self-host Docker apps, AI models, or databases for free
You’re comfortable with OCI’s more complex console (it’s enterprise-grade)

Avoid if:

You need GPU compute — Oracle has no free GPU tier
You need managed databases at scale — the free Autonomous DB is limited
You’re a complete beginner — OCI’s interface is more complex than DigitalOcean or Render

Final Recommendation

Oracle Cloud Always Free is the best free VPS available in 2026. No other provider gives you 4 cores, 24 GB RAM, 10 TB bandwidth, and 200 GB storage that truly never expires. The signup friction (credit card, regional availability) is annoying, but worth it for what you get.

For comparison: Google Cloud’s always-free e2-micro has 1/4 of a core and 1 GB RAM. Oracle’s A1 is 24× more RAM for free. That gap is hard to ignore.

If A1 capacity is unavailable in your region at signup, try a different region or retry during off-peak hours. The resource is worth the patience.

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