6 ms·

Oracle cut its Always Free ARM limits to 2 OCPU / 12GB, enforced Aug 18

202 points by iplaypc 2mo ago

rf15 2mo ago
I wonder what other venues they try to maximise now that expenses and loans are what they are?
ajross 2mo ago
So... what did "Always" mean, exactly?
- parl_match 2mo ago
  If you have it, it'll always be free.
- pram 2mo ago
  Conditionally
- inigyou 2mo ago
  Not limited to exactly 12 months, like our competitor's promotion. Were you expecting a massive evil corporation to keep spending $50 every month on you forever?
  - ajross 2mo ago
    > Were you expecting a massive evil corporation to keep spending $50 every month on you forever? When they offer something "always"... yes? Are "always" and "forever" not synonyms? I'm not arguing about the economics or motivation, just pointing out that simple language says that they lied.
    - inigyou 2mo ago
      Were you expecting anything to last forever? The sun's gonna explode, you know.
      - ajross 2mo ago
        Expecting someone to lie doesn't mean rolling over and refusing to acknowledge it. Not unlike people making the expected reactionary cynical commentary on internet forums still demands a response. I mean, you're very perceptive! But that's not very interesting, it's sort of the price of admission here at HN. Oracle lying in its product naming is more so.
        inigyou 2mo ago
        When Amazon says something is always free in the free tier, it's opposite things that are free for the first 12 months of your account.
        ajross 2mo ago
        But... does Amazon say things in their free tier are "always" free? I don't think they do. This was an Oracle lie. If you take a service that you told someone was "always free" and start charging them for that, that's a lie. It just is. I'm gobsmacked that this community views this as acceptable marketing. Is this the moral foundation of our new era of startup overlords?
        qwytw 2mo ago
        > over and refusing to acknowledge it. I guess one option would be to vote with your walled and stop paying them? Oh.. wait.. Whatever Oracle is in general this specifically (and the reduced 2 CPU + 12 GB tier ) is still massively more "generous" than what any other cloud provider gives you for free.
        deleted 2mo ago
        [deleted]
    - skeeter2020 2mo ago
      In Canada we have a grocery chain called Superstore that posts many products as "Always $x.xx" but the prices have continually been increased over the years. I wouldn't call it a lie but it sure feels dirty and unethical. They used to use the president of the family corporation in all their ads too, but don't anymore and that's probably because he knows they're in the wrong on this and many other things (like the price fixing scandals).
      - jerf 2mo ago
        Ah, my favorite exception to fraud: Puffery. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffery If everyone knows it's a lie... well then I guess it's not a lie anymore, is it? I kind of understand why the law takes this position. If you really think about it's hard to imagine how to truly fix this. But it still feels pretty dirty.
        picofarad 2mo ago
        Origin of "puff peice", today I learned.
  - Nux 2mo ago
    There's a fallacy in there somewhere. I bet they're not spending $X/m on any of your free things, they're sitting on underutilised resources they're paying for anyway at probably very handsome rates. At worst this is included in their marketing budget.
- wang_li 2mo ago
  I would think that it means they have an offering that you won't be charged for, not that they will offer the exact same thing perpetually. Like Red Robin has free refills on many sides doesn't mean that those sides will be something they serve forever.
jmaw 2mo ago
Good callout to make sure people are aware. This change is totally fair from my perspective. I see the "always free" as "you will never pay for this for as long as you keep it" as opposed to "this will always be available, and free". People who use free services like this should generally be aware that they are likely to go away or be reduced at some point. I got hit by this with PlanetScale and had to move my stuff to a self-hosted postgres.
- freak42 2mo ago
  But that's not what's happening: People took the always free offer, but the offer they took ends now for them not just for new users.
  - 47282847 2mo ago
    “Always free ice cream” doesn’t guarantee the same flavors and amount per serving.
    - freak42 2mo ago
      We're not talking about ice cream.
RobotToaster 2mo ago
Never trust oracle.
trebligdivad 2mo ago
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?
- forinti 2mo ago
  I'll take 32KB, a 6502 core, and 2400 baud of bandwidth.
- zenoprax 2mo ago
  "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.
browningstreet 2mo ago
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.
throwaway67743 2mo ago
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...
- brazukadev 2mo ago
  it is still a sign that things aren't going well there
  - throwaway67743 2mo ago
    It's a negative product line, even half is still negative. People really need to start being grateful while whoring free services....
    - 0x262d 2mo ago
      "whoring"?
      - throwaway67743 2mo ago
        Reddit,even oracle forums, 99% complaints about free stuff not being available. It's why people don't offer this more regularly - instead of people being gracious it's like they're entitled to it.
        ssl-3 2mo ago
        It is difficult to believe that the king, perched upon his lofty throne, can hear any of what the peasants say in the squalor of the streets of the ghetto far below, on the other side of the lava moat.
    - brazukadev 2mo ago
      You should be grateful to life, your family, your faith, God if you believe.
speedgoose 2mo ago
I know we aren’t supposed to do meta comments but while this information is interesting, the link needs to be labelled as AI slop. HN needs this new LinkedIn feature.
arjie 2mo ago
They continue to be incredibly generous. 2 vCPUs and 12 GB of RAM is extraordinary for no cost.
- llm_nerd 2mo ago
  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.
  - mapkkk 2mo ago
    If you "upgrade" your account to PAYG you will not have this limitation. The "no free instances available" issue is only for accounts without a payment method. I got this confirmed with a salesperson ~2yrs ago when I first set up my free tier on there.
    - everfrustrated 2mo ago
      Can confirm. I opened a new account and could never get any ARM instances in Ashburn region (capacity error). Signed up for PAYG (took a day - who knows why) and now no capacity problems.
      - monocasa 2mo ago
        > took a day - who knows why I bet they want to see the test payment work it's way through the system, which given the number of midnight batch jobs that still exist in banks means waiting a day.
        everfrustrated 2mo ago
        It's only a preauth payment. It doesn't settle.
- abirch 2mo ago
snailmailman 2mo ago
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.
- indigodaddy 2mo ago
  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..
- smoe 2mo ago
  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
markatto 2mo ago
These were never actually available anyways, I tried multiple times over the years in multiple regions and I always got “no capacity”.
- bityard 2mo ago
  Weird, I've been running instances for many years and never had an issue spinning a new one up. Did you have a trial account or PAYG account? (There is a difference, trial account instances are harder to get and are subject to termination at any time.)
  - mapkkk 2mo ago
    I can second this. Back when I first set up my free tier resources there I confirmed this with a sales rep, PAYG accounts will have immediate access to free tier resources, that limitation is only for trial accounts.
  - markatto 2mo ago
    IIRC, the docs say you're supposed to be able to use it with a trial account. I think I did try to sign up for the other kind and ran into a wall where I had to contact support or a sales rep, and the last thing I ever want to do is talk to Oracle sales.
bityard 2mo ago
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.
- coredog64 2mo ago
  Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower
  - qrobit 2mo ago
    https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=2305 https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=2305
    - sva_ 2mo ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15886728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15886728
- giancarlostoro 2mo ago
  > 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.
  - KronisLV 2mo ago
    > I don't really have an issue with Oracle doing something any sane business would to be honest. I don’t have an issue with the reduction, but the communication around it could have been better.
rvz 2mo ago
"Always Free" is never free without changes to existing limits.
pikdum 2mo ago
Interesting, I definitely haven't received an email from Oracle about this yet. Guess I'll have to move this server somewhere else now though. Maybe OVH?
- sunaookami 2mo ago
  Same, haven't received anything. Maybe because I'm from the EU? EDIT: After logging in I see a banner: "Always Free A1 Resource Limit Update Always Free Ampere A1 Compute entitlements have changed. This update does not affect your paid resources, existing paid workloads or bill. Contact support for further questions." It's not clear what this means for PAYG users though? EDIT2: In th Price List it says "Each paid tenancy gets the first 3,000 OCPU hours and 18,000 GB hours per month for free to create Ampere A1 Compute instances" (https://www.oracle.com/cloud/price-list/ https://www.oracle.com/cloud/price-list/). The word "paid" was not there before (check Wayback Machine). This would still make 4 OCPUs for PAYG customers possible. Confusing.
caminanteblanco 2mo ago
A substantially better article: https://www.infoq.com/news/2026/07/oracle-cloud-free-tier-limits/ 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_topic-Always_Free_Resources.htm https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/FreeTier/freetier...
- munchler 2mo ago
  Thank you. The OP's article is clearly AI-written.
Handy-Man 2mo ago
That's an AI slop blog
- throwaway67743 2mo ago
  But it's an honest take!
SOLAR_FIELDS 2mo ago
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.
- 0x262d 2mo ago
  Thanks for clarifying this. The article is heavily AI-written and unsurprisingly does not make that distinction, which is annoying. Not a very high quality source post for this.
- mapkkk 2mo ago
  I was under the impression that PAYG accounts having access to the old provisioning limits is still very ambiguous. This article (https://www.infoq.com/news/2026/07/oracle-cloud-free-tier-limits/ https://www.infoq.com/news/2026/07/oracle-cloud-free-tier-li...) mentioned by another commenter also mentions that it's still very much in the air. Though I can also confirm the provisioning behavior for PAYG vs. trial accounts w/o payment info.
- collabs 2mo ago
bluegatty 2mo ago
Don't use Oracle for anything.
gryfft 2mo ago
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.
- giancarlostoro 2mo ago
  Their reputation is what keeps me away from anything free of theirs.
- frollogaston 2mo ago
  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.
  - wastedpotencial 2mo ago
    I've been on the free tier 1vCPU x86 / 1GB RAM for years and it was a perfect experience. I recently upgraded to the 4/24, and indeed you need to change to PAYG or otherwise it's out of capacity, but still no problem and within the free limits. For your use case, if the 1/1 instance is enough, I highly recommend Oracle and it's not something I imagined myself saying.
    - frollogaston 2mo ago
      Thanks, that might still be useful for me. I did want more RAM to make it equivalent to my 4GB RPi, but 1GB is enough to at least act as a relay server.
      - Gander5739 2mo ago
        You might find this guide helpful: https://guides.viren070.me/selfhosting/oracle https://guides.viren070.me/selfhosting/oracle
dilyevsky 2mo ago
Did anyone really expect OCI deal not to become, shall we say, less generous as they slowly creep up their market share? Anyone banking on OCI being cheaper provider is playing a game of musical chairs.
999900000999 2mo ago
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
- drdexebtjl 2mo ago
  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.
  - somenameforme 2mo ago
    In my situation they ended up randomly closing my account a week or so after it was setup. I'd tried a few times to get an instance, and failed. Then my login suddenly didn't work and their all so helpful customer support was 'yes your account has been closed' 'why' 'we can't tell you that.' That was after my card and everything was already setup with the company. Oracle's reputation is 100% deserved.
    - Dimtree 2mo ago
      I'm in the same boat. I thought "how bad could it be, surely people are exaggerating" and signed up to check out their free tier. My account was killed without notice about a month after setup and I got the same treatment from support, they just instantly closed my ticket with "you account terminate." They did eventually notify me by email a full 60 days after actually deleting my VMs and the email had a little blurb with "it would be a pleasure to serve you in the near future" but I'm pretty sure they banned me from the platform permanently. Never trust Oracle. Using Oracle products professionally is tantamount to negligence. You will come to regret it eventually.
- Thom2000 2mo ago
  > 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.
josefritzishere 2mo ago
Ellison is bankrupting Oracle on his AI psychosis.
- pessimizer 2mo ago
  God willing
Havoc 2mo ago
To their credit their limits were historically crazy high compared to their competition. So I find it hard to fault them for this move. ...their tendency to delete accounts haphazardly with no obvious pattern as to who gets hit on the other hand is kind shitty. Mine's been good for years while others even with paid accounts don't fare so well
roncesvalles 2mo ago
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.
throwatdem12311 2mo ago
Gotta cover One Rich Asshole Called Larry Elison’s crazy AI debts somehow.
- chasil 2mo ago
  I realized some time ago that Oracle spelled backwards is "el caro," which (according to Google translate) means "the expensive one" in Spanish.
Gabrys1 2mo ago
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
sva_ 2mo ago
It is a nothing burger, for PAYG it stays the way it is: > Each paid tenancy gets the first 3,000 OCPU hours and 18,000 GB hours per month for free to create Ampere A1 Compute instances. This free-tier usage is shared across Bare Metal, Virtual Machine, and Container Instances. https://www.oracle.com/cloud/price-list/ https://www.oracle.com/cloud/price-list/ When I login, top banner also says: > Always Free Ampere A1 Compute entitlements have changed. This update does not affect your paid resources, existing paid workloads or bill. Contact support for further questions. Which is slightly ambitious, but I would orientate around what the price list says.
lenerdenator 2mo ago
Imagine doing business with a going concern related to Larry Ellison, and doing so unironically.
3dedb728-3f77 2mo ago
Is this an ads to get people who are interested in a low cost device / free device? Is this a second order ads?
sourcecodeplz 2mo ago
you can also get 2 x 1vCPU x86 / 1GB RAM those are besides the ARM ones. block storage is 200gb, which can now be split in 100gb volumes. before you could split it in 4 and have 4 VMs (min was 50gb for boot volume).
monocasa 2mo ago
Giving my payment info Oracle feels like giving matches to an arson.
queenkjuul 2mo ago
Oof. Not actually the end of the world for me but i do have two of their free instances that i rely on every day. Lucky for me i mostly just use the functionally unlimited bandwidth they give out for free (VPN to my home server so i can access Plex, Nextcloud etc via my domain name--basically zero CPU, but lots of big file transfers) My god though, OCI is an absolute shambles, far and away the most awful cloud related UI of any variety I've ever used. Early on i didn't realize just how impossible it was to provision free resources, i got really lucky (probably helps i signed up in the middle of the night? Idk) but i deleted a misconfigured instance that i couldn't figure out how to fix... Took me a couple days to claim another. They say they don't take prepaid or virtual cards but pretty sure they accepted my Privacy.com virtual card which i retroactively set a $1 spending limit on. I'll still have to go make sure they're not gonna try and charge me though. Can't trust em one bit (except with my VPN traffic lmao)
8MEM 2mo ago
[dead]

202 points by iplaypc 2mo ago

rf15 2mo ago

I wonder what other venues they try to maximise now that expenses and loans are what they are?

ajross 2mo ago

So... what did "Always" mean, exactly?

parl_match 2mo ago
If you have it, it'll always be free.
pram 2mo ago
Conditionally
inigyou 2mo ago
Not limited to exactly 12 months, like our competitor's promotion. Were you expecting a massive evil corporation to keep spending $50 every month on you forever?
- ajross 2mo ago
  > Were you expecting a massive evil corporation to keep spending $50 every month on you forever? When they offer something "always"... yes? Are "always" and "forever" not synonyms? I'm not arguing about the economics or motivation, just pointing out that simple language says that they lied.
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    Were you expecting anything to last forever? The sun's gonna explode, you know.
    - ajross 2mo ago
      Expecting someone to lie doesn't mean rolling over and refusing to acknowledge it. Not unlike people making the expected reactionary cynical commentary on internet forums still demands a response. I mean, you're very perceptive! But that's not very interesting, it's sort of the price of admission here at HN. Oracle lying in its product naming is more so.
      - inigyou 2mo ago
        When Amazon says something is always free in the free tier, it's opposite things that are free for the first 12 months of your account.
        ajross 2mo ago
        But... does Amazon say things in their free tier are "always" free? I don't think they do. This was an Oracle lie. If you take a service that you told someone was "always free" and start charging them for that, that's a lie. It just is. I'm gobsmacked that this community views this as acceptable marketing. Is this the moral foundation of our new era of startup overlords?
      - qwytw 2mo ago
        > over and refusing to acknowledge it. I guess one option would be to vote with your walled and stop paying them? Oh.. wait.. Whatever Oracle is in general this specifically (and the reduced 2 CPU + 12 GB tier ) is still massively more "generous" than what any other cloud provider gives you for free.
        deleted 2mo ago
        [deleted]
  - skeeter2020 2mo ago
    In Canada we have a grocery chain called Superstore that posts many products as "Always $x.xx" but the prices have continually been increased over the years. I wouldn't call it a lie but it sure feels dirty and unethical. They used to use the president of the family corporation in all their ads too, but don't anymore and that's probably because he knows they're in the wrong on this and many other things (like the price fixing scandals).
    - jerf 2mo ago
      Ah, my favorite exception to fraud: Puffery. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puffery If everyone knows it's a lie... well then I guess it's not a lie anymore, is it? I kind of understand why the law takes this position. If you really think about it's hard to imagine how to truly fix this. But it still feels pretty dirty.
      - picofarad 2mo ago
        Origin of "puff peice", today I learned.
- Nux 2mo ago
  There's a fallacy in there somewhere. I bet they're not spending $X/m on any of your free things, they're sitting on underutilised resources they're paying for anyway at probably very handsome rates. At worst this is included in their marketing budget.
wang_li 2mo ago
I would think that it means they have an offering that you won't be charged for, not that they will offer the exact same thing perpetually. Like Red Robin has free refills on many sides doesn't mean that those sides will be something they serve forever.

jmaw 2mo ago

Good callout to make sure people are aware. This change is totally fair from my perspective. I see the "always free" as "you will never pay for this for as long as you keep it" as opposed to "this will always be available, and free". People who use free services like this should generally be aware that they are likely to go away or be reduced at some point. I got hit by this with PlanetScale and had to move my stuff to a self-hosted postgres.

freak42 2mo ago
But that's not what's happening: People took the always free offer, but the offer they took ends now for them not just for new users.
- 47282847 2mo ago
  “Always free ice cream” doesn’t guarantee the same flavors and amount per serving.
  - freak42 2mo ago
    We're not talking about ice cream.

RobotToaster 2mo ago

Never trust oracle.

trebligdivad 2mo ago

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?

forinti 2mo ago
I'll take 32KB, a 6502 core, and 2400 baud of bandwidth.
zenoprax 2mo ago
"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.

browningstreet 2mo ago

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.

throwaway67743 2mo ago

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...

brazukadev 2mo ago
it is still a sign that things aren't going well there
- throwaway67743 2mo ago
  It's a negative product line, even half is still negative. People really need to start being grateful while whoring free services....
  - 0x262d 2mo ago
    "whoring"?
    - throwaway67743 2mo ago
      Reddit,even oracle forums, 99% complaints about free stuff not being available. It's why people don't offer this more regularly - instead of people being gracious it's like they're entitled to it.
      - ssl-3 2mo ago
        It is difficult to believe that the king, perched upon his lofty throne, can hear any of what the peasants say in the squalor of the streets of the ghetto far below, on the other side of the lava moat.
  - brazukadev 2mo ago
    You should be grateful to life, your family, your faith, God if you believe.

speedgoose 2mo ago

I know we aren’t supposed to do meta comments but while this information is interesting, the link needs to be labelled as AI slop. HN needs this new LinkedIn feature.

arjie 2mo ago

They continue to be incredibly generous. 2 vCPUs and 12 GB of RAM is extraordinary for no cost.

llm_nerd 2mo ago
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.
- mapkkk 2mo ago
  If you "upgrade" your account to PAYG you will not have this limitation. The "no free instances available" issue is only for accounts without a payment method. I got this confirmed with a salesperson ~2yrs ago when I first set up my free tier on there.
  - everfrustrated 2mo ago
    Can confirm. I opened a new account and could never get any ARM instances in Ashburn region (capacity error). Signed up for PAYG (took a day - who knows why) and now no capacity problems.
    - monocasa 2mo ago
      > took a day - who knows why I bet they want to see the test payment work it's way through the system, which given the number of midnight batch jobs that still exist in banks means waiting a day.
      - everfrustrated 2mo ago
        It's only a preauth payment. It doesn't settle.
abirch 2mo ago

snailmailman 2mo ago

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.

indigodaddy 2mo ago
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..
smoe 2mo ago
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

markatto 2mo ago

These were never actually available anyways, I tried multiple times over the years in multiple regions and I always got “no capacity”.

bityard 2mo ago
Weird, I've been running instances for many years and never had an issue spinning a new one up. Did you have a trial account or PAYG account? (There is a difference, trial account instances are harder to get and are subject to termination at any time.)
- mapkkk 2mo ago
  I can second this. Back when I first set up my free tier resources there I confirmed this with a sales rep, PAYG accounts will have immediate access to free tier resources, that limitation is only for trial accounts.
- markatto 2mo ago
  IIRC, the docs say you're supposed to be able to use it with a trial account. I think I did try to sign up for the other kind and ran into a wall where I had to contact support or a sales rep, and the last thing I ever want to do is talk to Oracle sales.

bityard 2mo ago

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.

coredog64 2mo ago
Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower
- qrobit 2mo ago
  https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=2305 https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=2305
  - sva_ 2mo ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15886728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15886728
giancarlostoro 2mo ago
> 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.
- KronisLV 2mo ago
  > I don't really have an issue with Oracle doing something any sane business would to be honest. I don’t have an issue with the reduction, but the communication around it could have been better.

rvz 2mo ago

"Always Free" is never free without changes to existing limits.

pikdum 2mo ago

Interesting, I definitely haven't received an email from Oracle about this yet. Guess I'll have to move this server somewhere else now though. Maybe OVH?

sunaookami 2mo ago
Same, haven't received anything. Maybe because I'm from the EU? EDIT: After logging in I see a banner: "Always Free A1 Resource Limit Update Always Free Ampere A1 Compute entitlements have changed. This update does not affect your paid resources, existing paid workloads or bill. Contact support for further questions." It's not clear what this means for PAYG users though? EDIT2: In th Price List it says "Each paid tenancy gets the first 3,000 OCPU hours and 18,000 GB hours per month for free to create Ampere A1 Compute instances" (https://www.oracle.com/cloud/price-list/ https://www.oracle.com/cloud/price-list/). The word "paid" was not there before (check Wayback Machine). This would still make 4 OCPUs for PAYG customers possible. Confusing.

caminanteblanco 2mo ago

A substantially better article: https://www.infoq.com/news/2026/07/oracle-cloud-free-tier-limits/ 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_topic-Always_Free_Resources.htm https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/FreeTier/freetier...

munchler 2mo ago
Thank you. The OP's article is clearly AI-written.

Handy-Man 2mo ago

That's an AI slop blog

throwaway67743 2mo ago
But it's an honest take!

SOLAR_FIELDS 2mo ago

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.

0x262d 2mo ago
Thanks for clarifying this. The article is heavily AI-written and unsurprisingly does not make that distinction, which is annoying. Not a very high quality source post for this.
mapkkk 2mo ago
I was under the impression that PAYG accounts having access to the old provisioning limits is still very ambiguous. This article (https://www.infoq.com/news/2026/07/oracle-cloud-free-tier-limits/ https://www.infoq.com/news/2026/07/oracle-cloud-free-tier-li...) mentioned by another commenter also mentions that it's still very much in the air. Though I can also confirm the provisioning behavior for PAYG vs. trial accounts w/o payment info.
collabs 2mo ago

bluegatty 2mo ago

Don't use Oracle for anything.

gryfft 2mo ago

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.

giancarlostoro 2mo ago
Their reputation is what keeps me away from anything free of theirs.
frollogaston 2mo ago
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.
- wastedpotencial 2mo ago
  I've been on the free tier 1vCPU x86 / 1GB RAM for years and it was a perfect experience. I recently upgraded to the 4/24, and indeed you need to change to PAYG or otherwise it's out of capacity, but still no problem and within the free limits. For your use case, if the 1/1 instance is enough, I highly recommend Oracle and it's not something I imagined myself saying.
  - frollogaston 2mo ago
    Thanks, that might still be useful for me. I did want more RAM to make it equivalent to my 4GB RPi, but 1GB is enough to at least act as a relay server.
    - Gander5739 2mo ago
      You might find this guide helpful: https://guides.viren070.me/selfhosting/oracle https://guides.viren070.me/selfhosting/oracle

dilyevsky 2mo ago

Did anyone really expect OCI deal not to become, shall we say, less generous as they slowly creep up their market share? Anyone banking on OCI being cheaper provider is playing a game of musical chairs.

999900000999 2mo ago

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

drdexebtjl 2mo ago
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.
- somenameforme 2mo ago
  In my situation they ended up randomly closing my account a week or so after it was setup. I'd tried a few times to get an instance, and failed. Then my login suddenly didn't work and their all so helpful customer support was 'yes your account has been closed' 'why' 'we can't tell you that.' That was after my card and everything was already setup with the company. Oracle's reputation is 100% deserved.
  - Dimtree 2mo ago
    I'm in the same boat. I thought "how bad could it be, surely people are exaggerating" and signed up to check out their free tier. My account was killed without notice about a month after setup and I got the same treatment from support, they just instantly closed my ticket with "you account terminate." They did eventually notify me by email a full 60 days after actually deleting my VMs and the email had a little blurb with "it would be a pleasure to serve you in the near future" but I'm pretty sure they banned me from the platform permanently. Never trust Oracle. Using Oracle products professionally is tantamount to negligence. You will come to regret it eventually.
Thom2000 2mo ago
> 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.

josefritzishere 2mo ago

Ellison is bankrupting Oracle on his AI psychosis.

pessimizer 2mo ago
God willing

Havoc 2mo ago

To their credit their limits were historically crazy high compared to their competition. So I find it hard to fault them for this move. ...their tendency to delete accounts haphazardly with no obvious pattern as to who gets hit on the other hand is kind shitty. Mine's been good for years while others even with paid accounts don't fare so well

roncesvalles 2mo ago

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.

throwatdem12311 2mo ago

Gotta cover One Rich Asshole Called Larry Elison’s crazy AI debts somehow.

chasil 2mo ago
I realized some time ago that Oracle spelled backwards is "el caro," which (according to Google translate) means "the expensive one" in Spanish.

Gabrys1 2mo ago

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

sva_ 2mo ago

It is a nothing burger, for PAYG it stays the way it is: > Each paid tenancy gets the first 3,000 OCPU hours and 18,000 GB hours per month for free to create Ampere A1 Compute instances. This free-tier usage is shared across Bare Metal, Virtual Machine, and Container Instances. https://www.oracle.com/cloud/price-list/ https://www.oracle.com/cloud/price-list/ When I login, top banner also says: > Always Free Ampere A1 Compute entitlements have changed. This update does not affect your paid resources, existing paid workloads or bill. Contact support for further questions. Which is slightly ambitious, but I would orientate around what the price list says.

lenerdenator 2mo ago

Imagine doing business with a going concern related to Larry Ellison, and doing so unironically.

3dedb728-3f77 2mo ago

Is this an ads to get people who are interested in a low cost device / free device? Is this a second order ads?

sourcecodeplz 2mo ago

you can also get 2 x 1vCPU x86 / 1GB RAM those are besides the ARM ones. block storage is 200gb, which can now be split in 100gb volumes. before you could split it in 4 and have 4 VMs (min was 50gb for boot volume).

monocasa 2mo ago

Giving my payment info Oracle feels like giving matches to an arson.

queenkjuul 2mo ago

Oof. Not actually the end of the world for me but i do have two of their free instances that i rely on every day. Lucky for me i mostly just use the functionally unlimited bandwidth they give out for free (VPN to my home server so i can access Plex, Nextcloud etc via my domain name--basically zero CPU, but lots of big file transfers) My god though, OCI is an absolute shambles, far and away the most awful cloud related UI of any variety I've ever used. Early on i didn't realize just how impossible it was to provision free resources, i got really lucky (probably helps i signed up in the middle of the night? Idk) but i deleted a misconfigured instance that i couldn't figure out how to fix... Took me a couple days to claim another. They say they don't take prepaid or virtual cards but pretty sure they accepted my Privacy.com virtual card which i retroactively set a $1 spending limit on. I'll still have to go make sure they're not gonna try and charge me though. Can't trust em one bit (except with my VPN traffic lmao)

8MEM 2mo ago

[dead]