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

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

#81

Post by devy »

collabs wrote: post #40
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #37

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 s…

> Always Free - No credit card required, sign up. This is what the new limit applies to I don't think this is true. I just tried to sign up and it says ---- Payment/Identity Verification - You will not be charged You won’t be charged for using OCI Free Tier. If you choose to upgrade your account to Paid tier, you will only be charged for services used over your Always Free limits. If you don’t upgrade your account to…

Yep. It's NOT possible to sign up OCI without a payment method now. I signed up late last month and observed the same.

Additionally, it's next to impossible to spin up a free instance even if you provision it under the limit. Every single availability zone in the U.S. have all been constantly "emitting out of capacity" errors for free tier resource allocation. Ironically, if you provisioning beyond the free tier, they are ALL success.

So it looks like Oracle shawdow banned the free tier (or only allow a fixed set of free tier resources that are completely saturated all the time (unless someone spin down their free tier instances).

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

#82

Post by sva_ »

silisili wrote: post #53
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #37

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 s…

Did "always free" ever really work? When I set mine up months ago, the advice was use PAYG with free tier, because Always Free would always report it had no capacity available. Sure enough, I tested it and this was true at the time.

Trick is to make a bit larger instance, then scale it down to the always free limits - or so I've heard. You might pay a small amount, but totally worth it. That Arm server with 4 oCPU, 24GB, 200GB SSD is a beast, I've had it since 2022.

Btw make sure you crank up the SSD speed all the way, as long as it is in the always free limit, you won't be charged for it ... Even though it says you will.

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

#83

Post by daneel_w »

silisili wrote: post #53
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #37

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 s…

Did "always free" ever really work? When I set mine up months ago, the advice was use PAYG with free tier, because Always Free would always report it had no capacity available. Sure enough, I tested it and this was true at the time.

It has for me. I've had several permanent Arm-VPSes running in OCI for almost 4 years, without paying a single cent. But I'm on a paid tenancy, by having provided a verified payment card, which I think is the distinction that the OP is trying to describe.

A "free tenancy" has limitations: e.g. your provisioned Free(tm) resources can suddenly be yoinked in order to satisfy an allocation from a user who's in a paid tenancy, even if that allocation also fits inside their Free(tm) envelope and ends up costing $0.00/mo. Simply put, the "paying" customers have dibs, even on free stuff.

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

#84

Post by Nux »

inigyou wrote: post #7
ajross wrote: post #3

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

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?

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.

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

#86

Post by tcdent »

eli wrote: post #69
downrightmike wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Need to sell your info to data brokers

The amount of abuse of free VMs must be absolutely immense even with credit card verification. I’m not sure there needs to be additional secret motives.

Coupled with the fact that free VM is marketing, nothing more, it's odd people would feel any other way.

The idea that a company would give compute away for free without one-or-more underlying motives is incredibly naive.

The users of this are not owed anything.

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

#87

Post by daneel_w »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #37

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 s…

What you mean to describe is a free tenancy vs a paid tenancy, the latter having provided a validated payment method which gives them a higher priority on allocations, even if they are of the "Always Free" kind (a single x86-64 vCPU + 1 GB RAM) or "Free-Eligible" kind (e.g. a certain amount of the Arm stuff), even if the user never paid anything.

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

#88

Post by smoe »

snailmailman wrote: post #17

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…

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

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

#89

Post by sophacles »

tcdent wrote: post #86
eli wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of abuse of free VMs must be absolutely immense even with credit card verification. I’m not sure there needs to be additional secret motives.

Coupled with the fact that free VM is marketing, nothing more, it's odd people would feel any other way. The idea that a company would give compute away for free without one-or-more underlying motives is incredibly naive. The users of this are not owed anything.

The real problem is that humans hear terms like "always" and assume "always" means "always". The things in marketing love to take advantage of this. (see also: unlimited).

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

#90

Post by frollogaston »

gryfft wrote: post #47

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…

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.
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