Free VPS in 2026: 6 Real Options (Oracle, GCP, AWS)

Last updated: 11 September 2026. Every allowance below was checked against the provider's own documentation that day.

Short answer: Two providers give a genuinely free, always-on VPS with no expiry. Oracle Cloud Always Free is the capable one: 2 Arm Ampere cores and 12GB of RAM, 200GB of block storage and 10TB of egress a month. Google Cloud gives one small e2-micro. Everything else marketed as a free VPS is a time-limited trial or a credit grant.

Two providers give a genuinely free, always-on VPS in 2026: Oracle Cloud Always Free and the Google Cloud free tier. Oracle is the standout, with 2 Arm Ampere cores and 12GB of RAM always-on at $0 forever (its monthly allowance also lets you run 4 cores for roughly half the month), enough to run containers, a small app, or several self-hosted services on one box. Everything else marketed as a free VPS is a time-limited trial or a credit grant. This guide separates the two free-forever options from the trials, lists the exact specs and the catches, and shows which to use for what. If what you need is somewhere to put a website rather than a server of your own, the catalogue of 30 free hosting providers covers that instead, including hosts with PHP and a control panel.

How do the free VPS tiers compare?

Provider	Specs	Duration	Card required	Best for
Oracle Cloud Always Free	2 Arm Ampere cores + 12GB RAM always-on (or 2 AMD micro VMs), 200GB storage, 10TB/mo egress	Always free	Yes	The only real free-forever VPS with usable specs
Google Cloud free tier	1 e2-micro (2 shared vCPU burst, 1GB RAM), 30GB disk	Always free	Yes	A tiny always-on box in the GCP ecosystem
AWS Free Tier	New accounts: up to $200 in credits. Legacy: t3.micro, 750 hours/mo	New: 6 months. Legacy: 12 months	Yes	Exploring AWS on credits
Azure free	750 hours/mo each of B1s, B2pts v2 (Arm) and B2ats v2 (AMD), plus $200 credit	12 months + 30 days	Yes	Learning Azure for a year
Google Cloud trial	$300 credit, any machine type	90 days	Yes	A short-term larger VPS
GitHub Student Pack	Azure $100, Heroku $13/mo for 24 months. DigitalOcean's $200 ended in 2026	While a student	Varies	Students, though it is thinner than it was

Oracle Cloud Always Free

Specs: The Always Free allowance is 1,500 Ampere A1 (Arm) OCPU-hours and 9,000 GB-hours of memory per month, which works out to 2 OCPUs and 12GB of RAM running always-on, as one VM or split in two. You can instead spend the same budget on up to 4 OCPUs for roughly half the month. Separately you also get 2 AMD-based micro VMs (1/8 OCPU and 1GB RAM each). Plus 200GB of block volume storage with five volume backups, and 10TB of outbound data transfer per month.
Duration: Always free, no expiry, not a 12-month trial
Card required: Yes, for identity verification at signup
How to start: Sign up at oracle.com/cloud/free, create a VM instance, choose the Ampere (Arm) shape
Catches: Oracle halved this allowance on 15 June 2026, from 4 OCPU and 24GB to 2 OCPU and 12GB, and never announced it: no blog post, no customer notice, just changed numbers in the documentation. Most people found out when an instance stopped. Oracle then emailed Always Free accounts that instances still over the new limit would be terminated from 18 August 2026, and that date has passed, so any guide still quoting four cores is describing a machine you can neither create nor keep. Arm capacity in popular regions is sometimes exhausted, returning an "out of host capacity" error, so pick your home region carefully or retry. Idle instances are reclaimed on a published rule: across a 7-day window, 95th-percentile CPU under 20%, network under 20%, and on A1 shapes memory under 20%. The signup flow is stricter than most.
Best for: A real free server. Two Arm cores and 12GB of RAM run Docker, a small web app with a database, a VPN, or a self-hosted tool comfortably.

Oracle Always Free is the answer to "is there a real free VPS" in 2026. Nothing else free comes close on specs. The trade-off is signup friction and the idle-reclamation policy, both manageable if you actually use the box.

Google Cloud free tier

Specs: One e2-micro instance (2 shared vCPUs that burst, 1GB RAM) with a 30GB standard persistent disk, plus 1GB of egress from North America per month
Duration: Always free, in the us-west1, us-central1, and us-east1 regions
Card required: Yes
How to start: Create an e2-micro in an eligible region from the Google Cloud console
Catches: 1GB of RAM is tight for anything beyond a small service, the instance must live in one of the three eligible US regions to stay free, and egress beyond 1GB per month is billed. Confirm current limits before relying on them.
Best for: A small always-on box, a cron runner, a lightweight API, or anyone already standing up other resources in Google Cloud.

AWS Free Tier

Specs: New accounts (since July 15, 2025) get up to $200 in credits, $100 at signup plus up to $100 more for completing onboarding steps, to spend on any eligible service including EC2. There is no dedicated 750-hour EC2 pool anymore; instance usage just draws down the credit balance, and a broader range of instance types is allowed. Accounts created before that date keep the legacy 750-hours-per-month t3.micro (or t2.micro) allowance.
Duration: New accounts: 6 months, or until the credits run out. Legacy accounts: 12 months. Not always free either way.
Card required: Yes
How to start: Create a Free Plan account, then launch an instance from the EC2 console; usage draws from your credits
Catches: The Free plan account closes on its own six months after you open it, or when the credits run out, whichever comes first. That is the part worth knowing: the box goes away rather than quietly starting to bill you, and AWS states you are not charged unless you convert to a paid plan. What survives the six months is the separate always-free allowance, 30-plus services free within monthly usage limits on either plan. On legacy accounts, going beyond 750 hours or adding a second instance is billed.
Best for: Exploring AWS on credits for a few months, or a project you know will move to paid (or off AWS) before the credits run out.

Azure free

Specs: 750 hours per month each of three burstable VM sizes for 12 months, B1s (x86), B2pts v2 (Arm-based) and B2ats v2 (AMD-based), alongside a $200 credit usable in the first 30 days on anything
Duration: 12 months for the VM, 30 days for the credit
Card required: Yes
How to start: Create a B1s or B2pts v2 VM from the Azure portal under the free account
Catches: Same shape as AWS: the free VM is a 12-month window, and the $200 credit expires fast. After a year the VM bills at standard rates.
Best for: Learning Azure for a year, or burning the $200 credit on a short-lived larger machine. If you take this tier, take the Arm B2pts v2 rather than the B1s that most guides still name: it is the most capable of the three and it is free on the same 750 hours.

Free trials and credits

When you need more than a micro box for a short time, signup credits beat any free tier. Google Cloud gives a $300 credit for 90 days that runs any machine type. DigitalOcean offers $200 over 60 days, Vultr's new-account promotion currently runs up to $300 on a much shorter clock, and Linode (Akamai) gives $100 for 60 days. Credit promotions move far more often than free tiers do, so treat those three as the offer of the month rather than a fixed rate. These are not free forever, but for a launch, a load test, or a month of real compute they are effectively free and far more powerful than an e2-micro.

What can a student get?

The GitHub Student Developer Pack used to be the easy answer here, and in 2026 it got materially worse. DigitalOcean wound its offer down: redemption closed on 31 July 2026, and every Pack credit expired on 1 August 2026, including credits students had already redeemed and expected to hold for a full year. What is left for compute is Microsoft Azure ($100, ages 18 and over) and Heroku ($13 a month for 24 months), alongside the tooling credits. AWS runs its own educational programs separately. A verified student email is still the only requirement, but the pack no longer beats Oracle Always Free on compute, and a student who needs a server should start with Oracle.

Free forever or free trial: which should I take?

If you need a box that stays free indefinitely, there are exactly two real choices: Oracle Always Free (use this unless you specifically need Google's ecosystem) and the Google Cloud e2-micro. If you need power for a short window, use a credit: Google's $300, DigitalOcean's $200, or Vultr's promo. If you are learning a specific cloud, take that provider's free window, six months of credits on AWS or twelve months of VM hours on Azure, and set a calendar reminder for the expiry. For a hobby server that should never get a bill, Oracle's Arm instance is the clear pick.

What will a free VPS not do?

A free VPS is real compute, but it is not a managed product. There is no uptime SLA, so do not put anything you cannot afford to lose a few hours of on it alone. Egress is capped (10TB on Oracle is generous, 1GB on GCP is not), and blowing the cap bills you. Oracle reclaims idle Always Free instances, so an unused box is not guaranteed to stay up. Support is community-level. For a side project, a VPN, a bot, or a staging environment these are fine trade-offs. For revenue-critical production, pair a free box with a cheap dedicated server or a paid VPS as the primary.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a truly free VPS with no time limit in 2026?

Yes. Oracle Cloud Always Free and the Google Cloud free tier both run an always-on VPS at $0 with no expiry. Oracle is the most capable, with 2 Arm Ampere cores and 12GB of RAM always-on. Everything else marketed as a free VPS is a time-limited trial or a credit grant.

What is the best free VPS in 2026?

Oracle Cloud Always Free. Its Arm Ampere A1 allowance gives 2 cores and 12GB of RAM always-on, 200GB of block storage, and 10TB of monthly egress, free forever. That is enough to run containers, a small production app, or several self-hosted services on one box.

Does a free VPS require a credit card?

Usually yes. Oracle, Google Cloud, AWS, and Azure all ask for a card during signup for identity verification. You are not charged for staying within Always Free or free-tier limits, but the card is required to create the account and stops most abuse.

Can I run production on a free VPS?

For hobby and light production, yes, especially on Oracle's Arm instances. But free tiers carry no uptime guarantee, have egress caps, and Oracle can reclaim idle Always Free instances. For anything revenue-critical, treat a free VPS as a staging or side-project box, not your only server.

Why is Oracle's free tier so much more generous than AWS or GCP?

It is a loss-leader to pull developers onto Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, and Oracle's own Arm Ampere hardware is cheap for them to give away. The result is a free allowance (2 cores, 12GB RAM always-on) that dwarfs the 1GB micro instances offered free by AWS and Google.

Running anything interesting on a free VPS? I keep this list current as providers change their free tiers. Reply if a spec has shifted or a provider belongs on the table.