Is Oracle Cloud Always Free still 4 cores / 24GB?

No. Official docs now list 1,500 OCPU hours / 9,000 GB hours, which is about 2 OCPU plus 12GB always on. Community notes put the cut around June 15, 2026, with no standalone blog post. Whether paid PAYG accounts still get the old quota is not clearly written by Oracle.

What can Google Cloud e2-micro actually run?

1GB of RAM, a 30GB disk, and about 1GB of egress per month (China and Australia excluded). Fine for a personal site, a reverse proxy, or a heartbeat check; not for a database, a full Docker stack, or public downloads. Regions are usually limited to us-west1, us-central1, and us-east1.

Do AWS and Azure still offer always-free EC2 / VMs?

Not for new accounts. AWS’s new plan is up to $200 in credits for at most 6 months; when credits run out or the window ends, the account shuts. Azure is $200 / 30 days plus some 12-month free hours, then pay-as-you-go. Do not treat a trial as a permanent box.

Do Render, Koyeb, and Railway count as free VPS?

Not as a traditional VPS. They are app platforms: Render sleeps after about 15 minutes idle, Koyeb scales to zero after 1 hour idle, and Railway’s free tier is about $1 of credits per month. No root, no stable public IP expectation, and cold starts measured in minutes.

Can a free VPS run Xcode or iOS builds?

No. Every free tier here is Linux (and most are Arm or shared CPU). You cannot install Xcode or Simulator, and you will not pass Apple’s signing environment. Use Cloud Mac for iOS builds—do not gamble that on Oracle’s 12GB.

2026 free VPS ranking: 15+ always-free VPS / free cloud hosts compared by specs, traffic, price, and limits

Q: Are there still truly always-free, always-on VPS boxes in 2026?

Yes, but only two qualify as always-on Linux boxes: Oracle Cloud Always Free (Arm 2 OCPU / 12GB, or two AMD micros) and one e2-micro in the Google Cloud Free Tier. Most of the rest are trial credits, sleeping PaaS, or shared hosting with SSH.

TL;DR · six lines first

Only two free VPS boxes stay always-on with real root: Oracle Cloud Always Free, and one e2-micro in the Google Cloud Free Tier
Oracle already cut the quota in half: free accounts dropped from 4 OCPU / 24GB to 2 OCPU / 12GB, around June 15, 2026; the 200GB disk and ~10TB monthly egress are still there
AWS, Azure, DigitalOcean, and Vultr are not permanent boxes: credits last 30–180 days, then the instance dies or billing starts
Render / Koyeb / Railway / Hugging Face are app platforms that sleep, not VPS boxes; cold starts are measured in minutes
serv00 and alwaysdata are shared hosts with SSH, 512MB / 256MB of RAM—do not treat them as dedicated servers
A free Linux box cannot run Xcode. For iOS builds, use Cloud Mac—do not gamble signing on 12GB of Arm

Search “2026 free VPS” and the first two pages sell the same illusion: fifteen “always-free cloud hosts,” specs that look like an entry Droplet, and a footnote that finally admits “60-day trial,” “sleeps when idle,” or “1GB egress.” We split the list. Linux VMs that stay on, accept SSH, and can keep a $0 bill for the long haul: as of autumn 2026, only two hyperscalers still qualify. Everything else is credits, a container that sleeps, or shared hosting.

This piece compares 16 common free tiers by specs, traffic, price, and limits. Numbers follow vendor docs as of September 2026; promo pages move, so open the official site again before you click. Oracle’s silent spec cut is the reminder: a free-tier SLA is “it is still here today,” not “it will look like this next year.”

Always-on free VPS that still exist

12GB

Oracle Always Free RAM now

1GB

GCP e2-micro egress / month

Sort them first: always-on, trial credits, sleeping free tiers

In 2026, “free VPS” mixes at least four products. If a ranking does not split them first, core counts and traffic numbers are meaningless.

Type	What you actually get	2026 examples	Can it be a “permanent box”?
Always Free VM	A dedicated VM, root, public IP, no expiry date	Oracle Always Free, GCP e2-micro	Yes—with capacity and reclaim clauses
Trial / credits	Dollars or hours for a window	AWS, Azure, DO, Vultr, Alibaba Cloud, IBM	No. The calendar matters more than the spec sheet
PaaS free tier	A container or web service, often scale-to-zero	Render, Koyeb, Railway, HF Spaces	No. Idle means sleep
Shared host + SSH	A directory, databases, limited processes—not your own kernel	serv00, alwaysdata	Fine for a site; not a VPS

The table below puts all four in one place so you can compare “free in the ad” with “what you can actually run.” Rankings follow whether $0 still looks like a machine over the long haul, not peak core count.

16-vendor table: specs, traffic, price, limits

These are published vendor tiers, not lab benches. Promo codes, education credits, and grandfathered old accounts are out of scope.

Vendor / tier	Compute	Disk	Egress	Price / window	Key limits
Oracle Always Free Ampere	2 OCPU / 12GB Arm (can split into two VMs)	200GB block storage total	~10TB / month	$0, while the account lasts	Home region only; capacity shortages are common; idle may be stopped
Oracle Always Free AMD Micro	Up to 2× E2.1.Micro (~1/8 OCPU + 1GB)	Counts toward the 200GB above	Counts toward the 10TB above	$0, while the account lasts	For x86 compatibility; this is a micro
Google Cloud e2-micro	1 instance, shared 2 vCPU burst / 1GB	30GB standard disk	~1GB / month (China, Australia excluded)	$0, while the account lasts	us-west1 / us-central1 / us-east1 only
AWS Free Plan	Services of your choice within credits	Deducted from credits	Deducted from credits	Up to $200, at most 6 months	Account closes when credits or the window end; not an always-on t3.micro
Azure free account	B1s and similar 12-month hour packs + credits	Per plan	Per plan	$200 / 30 days; some services 12 months	Upgrade to PAYG within 30 days or it stops
GCP trial credits	Any billable resource	—	—	About $300 / 90 days	Stacks with Always Free, but the trial expires
Oracle free trial	Any shape within trial credits	—	—	About $300 / 30 days	Falls back to Always Free limits when it ends
DigitalOcean	Droplets and similar	Per Droplet	Per plan	About $200 / 60 days	No always-free compute; cheapest Droplet is about $4 / month after
Vultr	Cloud Compute	Per instance	Per plan	Common promo about $250 / 30 days	Promos change; then pay-as-you-go
Alibaba Cloud International / trial	Promo ECS	Per promo	Per promo	Campaign credits, not a resident tier	Business review, region, and new-customer gates
IBM Cloud	Lite services + trial credits	—	—	Common $200 / 30 days (after PAYG)	No clear always-free general-purpose VPS
Render Free	0.1 CPU / 512MB Web Service	No persistent disk (sites use build output)	Counts toward workspace bandwidth	$0; 750 instance hours / month	Sleeps after ~15 minutes idle; free Postgres expires in 30 days
Koyeb Free	0.1 vCPU / 512MB / 2GB SSD	2GB, no Volume	Docs say egress is not billed for now, with a 100GB free mention	$0, 1 instance per org	Scales to zero after 1 hour idle; FRA or WASH only
Railway Free	Up to 1 vCPU / 0.5GB	Volume max 500MB	$0.05 / GB (service)	$0 + about $1 / month in credits	Trial also has $5 / 30 days; over credits it stops or you upgrade
Hugging Face Spaces	CPU Basic: 2 vCPU / 16GB	~50GB ephemeral disk	No published hard cap	$0 (public Space)	Sleeps after ~48 hours idle; not a general-purpose VPS
serv00	Shared, 512MB RAM, 15 processes	3GB SSD	Claimed unlimited	$0	Shared hosting; EU nodes; forum support
alwaysdata Free	1/4 CPU / 256MB	1GB (includes mail store)	Unmetered	€0	Not for commercial use; sites must stay on alwaysdata.net
Fly.io (new accounts)	No new free tier	—	Pay-as-you-go	Card required, metered	Older accounts may still have a 3×256MB legacy allowance

Three names this table leaves out on purpose

Cloudflare Workers / Pages: edge functions, not a VPS—do not compare core counts
Hetzner / BandwagonHost entry plans: cheap, not free
Mainland China “¥0 trial” lightsails: usually 7–30 days, then auto-convert to paid; bill accidents are more common than on overseas trials

Tier 1: real always-free VPS

What this tier shares: no expiry date in the plan name, you get one (or two) VMs, and the bill can stay $0. The cost is capacity queues, region locks, and docs that vendors can rewrite any day.

Oracle Cloud Ampere A1

In autumn 2026 this is still the only free-tier box that can honestly run containers. The official Always Free docs say Ampere A1 (VM.Standard.A1.Flex) is free for the first 1,500 OCPU hours and 9,000 GB hours each month; for Always Free tenants that is about 2 OCPU + 12GB always on. You can keep it as one VM or split it into two 1-OCPU machines.

Community diffs of the docs: the old quota was 3,000 OCPU hours / 18,000 GB hours (4 OCPU / 24GB). It flipped to the current tier around June 15, 2026—no blog post, no email. InfoQ’s July write-up matches Reddit tickets. Some support agents have said PAYG may still get the old 4/24. “May” is not a capacity plan.

Disk: 200GB of block storage in total; boot volumes have a 47GB floor. Do not max two VMs at 100GB each and then attach extras.
Traffic: about 10TB of egress a month—almost unmatched on a free tier.
Region: Always Free compute must live in the tenant’s home region. Pick carefully; changing home region is not a dropdown.
Capacity: out of host capacity is normal, not a click error. Switch ADs, try another hour, or upgrade to PAYG and still launch Always Free shapes—those are the three usual paths.
Reclaim: the community has long said idle boxes may be stopped after about 7 days. Use it as a monitor, not an empty VM that just sits there.

Fits: a personal site, a reverse proxy, light Docker, self-hosted DNS, a small bot. Does not fit: a production database, public large files, or “it is free so we will mine on it” on the same box.

Oracle Cloud AMD Micro

The same Always Free envelope also lets you launch up to two VM.Standard.E2.1.Micro instances (AMD, about 1/8 OCPU + 1GB). That quota is separate from Ampere. You will want it for x86 binaries, older images, or certain panels; do not compare the performance to 2 OCPU of Arm.

A common setup: Ampere runs the main service, one Micro is a jump host or compatibility layer. The 200GB disk is shared by the whole family, not 200GB per VM.

Google Cloud e2-micro

Google’s Always Free compute is one e2-micro: shared dual vCPU with burst, 1GB of RAM, 30GB of standard persistent disk. Regions are usually locked to us-west1, us-central1, and us-east1. Egress is about 1GB / month (docs exclude the free allowance toward China and Australia).

Versus Oracle, GCP’s upside is a complete ecosystem and API. The downside is that the box itself is tiny. After the OS, the app often has a few hundred MB left. 1GB of egress means a personal blog is fine; one crawl or one image pull can start a bill. Always Free and the $300 / 90-day trial are two ledgers—do not spend the trial and assume “it stays free after.”

Opened hard-drive platters and actuator, standing in for free cloud-host disk quotas and boot-volume floors — Free-tier disk usually runs out before CPU: Oracle’s boot volume has a 47GB floor; GCP’s whole VM is 30GB.

Tier 2: hyperscaler trials and credits

What this tier shares: the calendar matters more than the core count. Good for learning a console, moving an architecture once, or a PoC—not as a blog’s “always-free VPS.”

Vendor	Typical 2026 wording	After it expires	What it is actually for
AWS	New accounts up to $200 ($100 at signup + up to $100 more from tasks); Free Plan lasts 6 months or until credits run out	Free Plan closes the account; staying on means switching to Paid	Touch IAM, S3, a short stretch of EC2—not a home NAS
Azure	$200 / 30 days; plus B1s-class 12-month free hours and a set of Always Free services	No PAYG upgrade in 30 days and it stops; after 12 months VM hours are metered	.NET / Entra experiments; a B1s as a one-year toy is fine
GCP trial	About $300 / 90 days	Falls back to Always Free (that one e2-micro)	A short load-test window—do not confuse it with e2-micro
Oracle trial	About $300 / 30 days	Falls back to Always Free (2 OCPU / 12GB)	Get capacity first, then decide on PAYG
DigitalOcean	About $200 / 60 days; plus free static sites and Functions credits	No permanent Droplet; entry is about $4 / month	Evaluate the panel and network; the 60-day window is tight
Vultr	Common ~$250 / 30-day new-customer code	Metered; entry instances are a few dollars	A short route test—not a “permanent $250”
Alibaba Cloud International	Promo ECS / credits, often with business or new-customer review	Paid when the campaign ends	Only worth the paperwork if you already need the Alibaba ecosystem
IBM Cloud	Lite services + a common $200 / 30 days (after PAYG)	No equivalent always-free general-purpose VPS	Try a specific Lite API, not a general host

AWS needs its own footnote: older posts still say “750 hours of t2/t3.micro a month.” New accounts are on a credit plan. Copying the 2022 “one free micro for a year” into a 2026 ranking is how you walk a reader into a bill.

Tier 3: free clouds that sleep

The “free cloud hosts” developers find first now are usually app platforms. They are pleasant to use, but they sleep when idle, and you do not get the root or sticky public IP you assumed.

Render Free: Web Service about 0.1 CPU / 512MB, 750 free instance hours per workspace per month; sleeps after about 15 minutes idle, and the next request cold-starts for about a minute. Free Postgres expires 30 days after you create it. Static sites are free, but they eat bandwidth and build minutes.
Koyeb Free: one 512MB / 0.1 vCPU / 2GB SSD instance per org, Frankfurt or Washington, D.C. only; no Worker role, no Volume; scales to zero after 1 hour idle.
Railway: free trial $5 / 30 days; long-term Free is about $1 of credits a month, with a per-service cap around 1 vCPU / 0.5GB and a 500MB volume. Hobby at $5 / month is the first tier that feels livable.
Hugging Face Spaces CPU Basic: 2 vCPU / 16GB looks richer than Oracle, but it is a public demo container. It sleeps after about 48 hours idle, and the disk is ephemeral. Fine for a Gradio / model demo, not a home VPS.
Fly.io: new accounts have no free tier; you bind a card and pay as you go. Older accounts may still have a legacy allowance of up to three 256MB shared machines—do not write that into a new-signup tutorial.

The right use: previews, demos, weekend projects. The wrong use: a production API, a payment webhook, or a bot that must stay up 24 hours—then a complaint that “free VPS is unstable.”

Tier 4: free shared hosting with SSH

serv00: 3GB SSD, 512MB RAM, 15 processes, 100 sites, 16 databases (MySQL 10 + PostgreSQL 3 + MongoDB 3), traffic listed as unlimited, EU nodes, SSH and cron. It is hostuno’s community shared host, not a dedicated VM. Fine for a static site, a small PHP app, or practicing a panel; not for Docker, kernel modules, or “I want my own public IP.”

alwaysdata Free: 1GB disk, 256MB RAM, 1/4 CPU, 3-day backup retention, unmetered traffic. After the June 2025 revamp, the free tier cannot bind a custom domain—sites stay on alwaysdata.net, and commercial use is explicitly disallowed. SSH and multiple runtimes are still there, but the product is a personal sandbox, not a shop.

Limits matter more than specs

Rankings love core counts. What actually punches through a free tier is usually one of these five.

Limit	Who gets hit first	What happens
Egress	GCP e2-micro (~1GB / month)	One scan or one image pull starts a bill
Out of capacity	Oracle Ampere	The account is approved; the VM will not launch
Idle reclaim / sleep	Oracle, Render, Koyeb, HF	Monitors die, cert renewals fail, webhooks time out
Cards and upgrades	Azure, AWS, mainland lightsails	The trial auto-converts to paid, or the account simply closes
Wrong architecture	Oracle Ampere (Arm)	x86 images, closed-source panels, and some Docker images will not run

Two more that rarely make the table, and still catch people every year: identity checks you cannot pass (virtual cards, VoIP, data-center IPs at signup), and using a free box to send mail, proxy, or mine—instant bans. Free-tier abuse controls are stricter than paid, not looser.

How to choose: five scenarios

You want a long-term $0 Linux box with SSH: start with Oracle Ampere; add a Micro if you need x86. Keep GCP e2-micro as a spare or as a way to learn GCP.
You only need a weekend demo: Render or Koyeb, and accept the cold start. Do not sit through Oracle verification for this.
You want to learn one cloud’s console: use that cloud’s trial credits, set a calendar, and delete resources when it ends.
You only need a static site or a little PHP: serv00 / alwaysdata is enough—save the verification time.
You need to compile iOS, run Simulator, or ship TestFlight: every free Linux box is out. See What Is a Mac Cloud Server? and a month of Xcode 27 cost.

FAQ

Are there still truly always-free, always-on VPS boxes in 2026?

Yes, but only two qualify: Oracle Always Free, and that one GCP e2-micro. Treat everything else as a trial, a sleeping platform, or shared hosting.

Is Oracle still 4 cores / 24GB?

Not on free accounts. The docs are 2 OCPU / 12GB. Whether PAYG still has the old quota is not locked in writing—do not buy services against 24GB.

Is e2-micro enough for a blog?

Static or extremely light dynamic, yes. 1GB of RAM plus 1GB of egress will not survive a theme store, outbound backups, or a scan. If traffic grows, move to Oracle or a paid entry instance.

Can I still get a free t3.micro from AWS for a year?

Not on a new account, not the way old posts describe it. It is now a Free Plan of up to $200 for at most 6 months; when the window or the credits end, the account closes.

Do Render and Koyeb count as free VPS?

No. There is no stable “this machine is always up” expectation. Cold starts and sleep are the product, not a bug.

Can I install Xcode on a free VPS?

No. All of them are Linux. iOS builds, certificates, and Simulator need Cloud Mac.

How do I keep a trial from becoming a bill?

Before you bind a card, read whether expiry auto-converts to paid. Set a budget alert, put the end date on a calendar, and delete unused disks and public IPs immediately. On GCP, that 1GB of egress will send the first invoice faster than the CPU will.

Close

Three lines: In autumn 2026, the only always-on free Linux VPS boxes left are Oracle Always Free and GCP e2-micro; Oracle was cut from 4/24 to 2/12 and is still the spec king. AWS, Azure, DO, and Vultr are credits; Render / Koyeb / Railway sleep; serv00 / alwaysdata are shared hosts. A free tier is for learning and toys—not a production SLA, and never Xcode.

Ask first whether you want “a $0 box that stays up” or “a demo this weekend can show.” Those two answers no longer sit on the same row of the same ranking.