Completely free cloud server options include: Amazon Web Services (AWS) free tier, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) free forever tier, Microsoft Azure 12-month free tier, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) free tier, and various Open source projects and services provided by non-profit organizations. Free cloud servers are generally suitable for learning, testing, and development purposes rather than for production environments. Among them, the permanent free tier of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) provides users with unlimited free usage rights, allowing users to continue to use certain basic resources even after the trial period. Oracle's Free Tier includes two free virtual machine instances, sufficient storage and bandwidth, and is suitable for individual developers or small projects.
Amazon's AWS offers an extensive free tier designed to allow users to experience its cloud services without paying fees. AWS's free benefits are usually limited to 12 months, after which users need to pay based on actual usage or stop using it.
Main contents of AWS free tier:
Provides 750 hours of EC2 micro instance usage per month. Has 5GB of Amazon S3 storage space. Provides 1GB of outbound network traffic per month.The AWS free tier is great for low-cost prototyping required for cloud computing experiments, student learning, and launching early-stage companies.
As a new cloud service provider, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure provides a more attractive free tier-the permanent free tier.
Free resources included in Oracle’s perpetual free tier:
Two A1 core ARM-based or two AMD-based virtual machines. 1GB of memory per virtual machine. 100GB of inbound and outbound data transfer per month.OCI's free tier is especially important for users who want to use cloud resources long-term without worrying about service interruption after the trial period.
Microsoft Azure offers free access to certain services for 12 months, after which users will be charged based on the services they use.
Azure’s free services include:
Limited B1S standard virtual machine use. Limited bandwidth data transfer. Some services, such as Azure Functions, Cosmos DB, etc., have fixed free quotas.This free tier is aimed at developers who want to test new ideas or launch small projects on the Azure platform.
Google Cloud Platform has a range of products that are always free, with a 12-month free trial of $300.
Free resources for GCP:
One F1-micro instance is provided every month. Standard 5GB cloud storage is provided. (5GB is limited to the United States) Free use of Firebase and Google Kubernetes Engine.This free plan of GCP is a very valuable resource for individual developers who want to experience Google cloud services and start small projects.
In addition to these mainstream cloud providers, there are also many open source projects and non-profit organizations that provide free cloud resources to support open source communities and educational projects.
These services tend to be more flexible and can provide support for specific needs, such as continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD), code hosting and data analysis projects. Examples include GitLab's CI/CD pipeline, Travis CI, CircleCI, etc. However, use of these resources is often subject to the specific regulations and restrictions of the respective organization.
In summary, major cloud service providers provide users with a variety of free cloud server options. While these free resources often come with usage restrictions, they provide excellent opportunities to learn, test, and validate new ideas. When choosing a free cloud server, users should make a choice based on their needs, the specific use cases they want to test, and their preferences for service providers.
1. Why choose to use a free cloud server? Free cloud servers are an affordable choice for start-ups, small personal websites, or users who need to temporarily deploy some lightweight applications. By using free cloud servers, users can obtain a certain scale of computing resources and storage space for free without paying high fees.
2. What free cloud server providers are there? There are currently some well-known cloud server providers on the market that provide free cloud servers, such as Amazon AWS's EC2 free package, Google Cloud Computing's Always Free plan, Alibaba Cloud's student servers, etc. These providers usually provide a certain free quota for users to use, and also provide some additional services and tools to help users better manage and expand cloud servers.
3. What are the usage restrictions of free cloud servers? Although free cloud servers provide free computing resources and storage space, users need to be aware that these free services usually have some usage restrictions. For example, monthly traffic usage, computing resource scale, storage space size, etc. may be limited. In addition, some functions and services may only be available for a limited time, and you will need to pay to continue using them after the limit is exceeded. Therefore, when choosing to use a free cloud server, you need to carefully read the provider's terms of service to understand usage restrictions and potential cost risks.