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Cloud Free Tiers Compared: What You Actually Get

Free tiers come in three shapes, and the differences matter more than the headline numbers.

Three different kinds of free

  1. Always free: a set of resources that remain free indefinitely within limits.
  2. Time-limited free: services free for a period after sign-up, then billed normally.
  3. Credits: a balance that offsets any usage until it is spent or expires.

Most providers offer some combination. Reading which kind you have been given is the difference between a free workload and a surprise invoice.

Oracle Cloud has the most generous always-free tier

Oracle’s Always Free allocation covers compute, storage and databases and does not expire. For a small always-on workload it is genuinely usable rather than a demonstration.

The trade-off is that Oracle’s sign-up process is well known for being difficult, and always-free capacity is subject to availability in a given region.

AWS moved to a credit model

AWS restructured its free offering in July 2025. Accounts created after 15 July 2025 receive a Free Account Plan providing up to $200 in credits over six months, rather than the previous twelve-month free tier with monthly service allowances.

Accounts created before that date keep the legacy twelve-month arrangement. Over thirty services remain always free regardless of plan. This is one case where the account’s creation date genuinely changes what it is worth.

Google Cloud and Azure combine both

Google Cloud provides new users with $300 in credits valid for 90 days, alongside a set of always-free service allowances that continue afterwards.

Azure gives $200 in credits for the first 30 days, plus twelve months of free access to selected services and a set of services that stay free indefinitely.

The traps in every free tier

  • Only specific instance types and regions qualify; launching a slightly different shape bills at full rate
  • Free allowances are monthly, so exceeding them mid-month starts charging
  • Some resources attached to a free instance, such as extra storage or a static IP, are not themselves free
  • Credits mask usage, so charge-based alerts stay silent until they run out
  • Free tiers end without stopping your resources, which continue and bill

Treat it as a trial, not a plan

Free tiers are for evaluation and small experiments. Building something you depend on entirely inside one means the expiry date becomes an outage or an invoice.

Set a billing alert on day one even when everything is free, and note the expiry date somewhere you will see it.

Accounts on the platforms discussed here: Buy AWS Accounts, Buy Google Cloud Accounts, Buy Azure Accounts, Buy Oracle Cloud Accounts.

Accounts on the platforms discussed here, with every configuration and price published up front:

Further reading

Official documentation

Provider behaviour, quotas and pricing are defined by the platform itself. These are the first-party references for the services discussed above:

Frequently asked questions

For an always-on small workload, Oracle Cloud's Always Free allocation is the most generous. For evaluating a broad platform, the credit-based offers go further.

From 15 July 2025 new accounts receive a Free Account Plan of up to $200 in credits over six months instead of the previous twelve-month free tier. Older accounts keep the legacy arrangement.

No. They keep running and start billing, which is why a budget alert matters even on a free account.

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