Oracle free VPS

Oracle Cloud's Always Free tier includes an Arm virtual machine that is genuinely useful for hosting add-ons. The catch is a signup process that rejects a lot of cards, and capacity that comes and goes.

Numbers change

As of late 2026, Always Free covers one VM.Standard.A1.Flex instance with 2 OCPUs and 12 GB RAM, plus 200 GB of total block storage and 10 TB/month of egress. Oracle has changed these numbers before; confirm on the Always Free resources page before you build anything.

Before you start

• A real credit or debit card. Prepaid and virtual cards are rejected.
• An address that matches your bank statement exactly.
• Patience: "Out of capacity" is normal in popular regions.

Create the instance

1. Sign up at oracle.com/cloud/free and open the console.

2. Compute → Instances → Create instance.

3. Image: Canonical Ubuntu 24.04.

4. Shape: Ampere → VM.Standard.A1.Flex, 2 OCPUs, 12 GB memory.

5. Networking: create a new VCN and a public subnet (defaults are fine).

6. SSH keys: upload your public key. Generate one locally if needed:

   ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "you@example.com"

7. Boot volume: 200 GB, performance 120 (the maximum included).

8. Create. If you get Out of capacity, try another availability domain, or try again later.

First login

ssh ubuntu@YOUR_PUBLIC_IP
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

Open ports — twice

Oracle blocks traffic in two places. You must change both.

1. Cloud security list

Instance → Networking → subnet → Security → default security list → Add ingress rules:

• Source 0.0.0.0/0, TCP, destination port 80
• Source 0.0.0.0/0, TCP, destination port 443

2. The instance firewall

Ubuntu images ship with iptables rules that persist:

sudo iptables -I INPUT 6 -m state --state NEW -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT
sudo iptables -I INPUT 6 -m state --state NEW -p tcp --dport 443 -j ACCEPT
sudo netfilter-persistent save

If you use ufw, open 80/443 there as well.

Install Docker and a proxy

Follow Docker basics. The example compose file works unchanged on Arm: AIOStreams, Comet and MediaFusion all publish multi-arch images.

Keep it free

• Do not create a second A1 instance or extra block volumes; the free allowance is exact.
• Do not upgrade to Pay-As-You-Go unless you set a budget alert first and understand the limits.
• Watch egress: 10 TB/month is a lot for a few add-ons, but a proxy streaming 4K to several people can approach it.
• Set a $1 budget alert in Billing → Budgets even on the free tier. It costs nothing and warns you before a surprise.

Maintenance

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y      # monthly
docker compose pull && docker compose up -d # after upstream releases
df -h                                       # 200 GB fills up with images and logs
docker system prune -af --volumes           # reclaim space (careful: removes unused volumes)

Enable automatic security updates:

sudo apt install unattended-upgrades -y
sudo dpkg-reconfigure --priority=low unattended-upgrades

Alternatives

If Oracle rejects you or has no capacity:

• Hetzner CX22 — a few euros a month, no capacity games.
• Contabo VPS — cheap but slower disk.
• A Raspberry Pi at home — free after hardware, needs a tunnel for HTTPS.
• Fly.io / Railway — PaaS, fine for one small add-on, more expensive at scale.

Next

• Docker basics
• AIOStreams
• Comet