Oracle free tier in 2026 — still worth the hassle?

This is the realest thing in the thread. I used to run four A1s across two accounts until I actually timed it. 90 minutes a month minimum, more during reclaim season.

Switched two workloads to Vultr's tiny tier and one to InterServer. Not free but the time I got back let me finish a side project that actually made money.

Still keep one Oracle box though. Numbers do go brrr.

The $1 hold is real but it falls off in a few days, not a big deal

What actually got me was the "always free" vs "free trial" confusion in the console. Clicked the wrong template once and got an email about usage limits. Took an hour to unwind

This is the reframe that should be in the wiki. I spent a weekend writing terraform for three regions after my first reclaim. Never added up those hours until now

For a portfolio site though, sarahjey, just use Vultr's static tier or something. You want the box for learning, not for showing work

Late to this but

InterServer has a similar cheap tier now, though their network isn't as good as Contabo's — https://contabo.com/en/vps/. Still, "it compiles and stays compiled" is worth money.

Did you ever open-source that rebuild script?

Late to this but

I burned a weekend last month rebuilding a pytorch env after reclaim killed my A1. Two hours of babysitting is optimistic if you actually do anything with the box besides keep it alive.

For ML workloads I just rent Ampere on GreenCloudVPS by the hour now. Costs maybe $4/month for my actual usage pattern and I don't have to run a cron job pretending to be busy.

Still keep one Oracle ARM as a cold backup though. Hard to beat the storage allowance even if the compute is a coin flip.

Debit is fine, I used Vietcombank debit with no issues. The hold drops off in a day.

On the uptime thing — 73% is optimistic if you don't automate. I learned that the hard way when my always-free instance got reclaimed mid-demo. Now I keep a HostHatch backup that spins up in two minutes via terraform. Portfolio site stays up, Oracle stays free, I sleep fine.

22 days quiet but maybe someone else has a better reclaim-evasion cron? My current one is just stress-ng for 30s every 6 hours, feels crude

I think you're overcomplicating the math for hobbyists. Most people running free tiers aren't billing their time at consultant rates.

That said, 41 days since anyone replied, so I'll just add: if you're actually worried about a portfolio site, put it on Vultr or HostHatch for $2/month and sleep soundly. The free tier games are for people who enjoy the puzzle, not for anything you need to stay up.