Oracle Free Tier — Is not free.

Oracle Always Free VM requires a paid upgrade.

You might have stumbled around Oracle’s Always free services and got a brand new VM with 4 CPUs/24 GB memory* and other Always Free Eligible services from Oracle. Let me share my experience to make you aware of the shady service of Oracle’s cloud service and read between the lines.

I know such articles don’t get promoted by platforms nor they’d appear easily in the Google search to help developers become aware. Nor any developer is going to be searching with terms like “Is Oracle Cloud really free” or “Does Oracle always free have hidden costs”.

Hopefully, this will be useful, since you are not alone if this happens with your account.

Instead, the developers would be searching “How to set up a free VM with Oracle always free”. They land upon a nice Youtube video and once everything works, simply start using it.

I am going to share my experience with no rants and put it as it is about Oracle’s free tier — Always free services.

The telephone game upon sudden termination of my account without my consent or notification. And came to conclude that in order to use Oracle’s Always Free service, a paid upgrade is required.

Always Free by Oracle— advertisement vs reality

Once you have calculated 3000 oCPU and 18,000 GB hours per month to human-readable spec, which is — 4 CPUs/24GB RAM*, there is nothing to worry about here. It is in plain English, what could go wrong? Oracle’s Cloud Free Tier Always Free is not free, is the correct statement here.

My Story

First Week

I signed up for Oracle’s cloud accounts. The initial setup was straightforward, involving a lot of email verifications and requiring credit card details. After the signup was complete, I received the free $300 credits and was able to spin the brand new VM for the specs that fall under the “Always Free” eligible specs. I monitored my credits for any hidden costs that are being deducted from the free trial credits, so I can soon change the spec to match the Always free eligible specs. The free trial credit is supposed to last 30 days, and my VM…