# Oracle's Free 4-Core 24GB Server: From Signup to Running Oracle's Always Free plan gives you a 4-core, 24 GB ARM server every month — no expiry, no charge. The same specs cost $80–100/month on AWS. This post strings together signup, pitfalls, instance creation, and keep-alive. {{< image src="/pictures/posts/oracle-free-vps-flow.svg" caption="Oracle free VPS: the full path from preparation to running" alt="Oracle free VPS full workflow" title="Full workflow overview" width="800" class="center" >}} ## What You Get Oracle's free tier is called **Always Free**. Not a trial, not a limited-time promo. The core resource is an ARM virtual machine: | Resource | Spec | |------|------| | CPU | 4 cores (Ampere A1) | | Memory | 24 GB | | Storage | 200 GB | | Monthly egress | 10 TB | | Price | **$0, forever** | Oracle meters by hours: 3,000 OCPU hours + 18,000 GB memory-hours per month, exactly enough to allocate one 4-core 24 GB machine. It also comes with 2 small AMD x86 machines (about 1 core / 1 GB each) to use as spares or for light tasks. {{< image src="/pictures/posts/oracle-free-vps-comparison.svg" caption="Oracle Always Free vs the monthly cost of the same specs on AWS" alt="Oracle free VPS vs AWS price comparison" title="Price comparison" width="800" class="center" >}} ## Three Things to Prepare Before Signing Up **A physical credit card**: Visa or Mastercard logo — China Merchants Bank, ICBC, Bank of China, and SPDB all work. Virtual and prepaid cards are not accepted. About $1 is charged for verification when you bind the card and refunded within a few days. **An email address and phone number**: a mainland +86 number works as-is. **Proxy off, switch to your phone's hotspot**: Oracle checks whether your IP's origin matches your credit card's issuing country. A proxy turns your IP into another country's, and verification fails outright. ## A Checklist for Signup Failures A red exclamation mark after submitting most likely means the IP origin, the card's issuing country, and the billing address don't line up. The rules when registering with a Chinese credit card: - IP from China (phone hotspot, no proxy) - A Visa/Mastercard issued in China - A Chinese billing address When the exclamation mark appears, check item by item: - Is the VPN/proxy fully off? - Are you on a phone hotspot rather than WiFi? - Is the card physical (not virtual, not prepaid)? - Is the billing address in China? - Tried the same card more than twice? Stop — switch cards or wait 2–3 days This is the community's reverse-engineered risk-control pattern; Oracle has never said anything officially. But working through this checklist does raise the success rate considerably. ## The Region Can't Be Changed Later — Stop and Think It Through During signup you pick a "Home Region", and **it cannot be changed afterward**. Popular regions have brutal competition for ARM instances; free accounts rarely grab one. | Region | Advice | |------|------| | Phoenix (US) | First choice, low competition | | Mumbai (India) | Backup option | | Jakarta (Indonesia) | Backup option | | Tokyo / Seoul / Singapore | Hard to grab ARM; only if you have hard latency requirements in Asia | Running a server isn't gaming — latency isn't the top priority; actually getting the machine is. Phoenix recommended. ## The Signup Process Once you're ready, open a private browser window. 1. **Open the signup page**: go to [oracle.com/cloud/free](https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free/) and click the start-for-free button 2. **Fill in basic info**: country China, name in pinyin, your email, then verify via the confirmation link 3. **Set password and account type**: 8+ characters with upper/lowercase, digits, and special characters; Customer type: Individual 4. **Pick the home region**: choose US West (Phoenix) from the dropdown 5. **Fill in the address**: the English address matching your credit card billing ```text Street: 123 Renmin Road City: Beijing State/Province: Beijing Postal Code: 100000 Country: China ``` 6. **Enter your phone number**: +86 plus your number, receive the code 7. **Bind the credit card**: enter card details and submit. A $1 pre-auth, refunded within a few days Landing on the welcome page means success. A red exclamation mark means work through the checklist above. ## Creating the ARM Instance Log in to the console and go to **Compute → Instances → Create Instance**. The key choices: - **Image**: Ubuntu 22.04, the one tagged "Always Free Eligible" - **Shape**: VM.Standard.A1.Flex, set to 4 cores / 24 GB - **Storage**: custom boot volume, 200 GB - **SSH key**: upload the `.pub` public key file No SSH key? One command in a Mac/Linux terminal: ```bash ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -f ~/.ssh/oracle_key ``` On Windows, use the `ssh-keygen` bundled with Windows Terminal, or PuTTYgen. Upload the generated `oracle_key.pub`. Click Create, wait a few minutes, and once the status turns green it's up and running. ## What If It Says Out of Capacity Seeing **"Out of Capacity"** isn't your mistake — the region's ARM pool is temporarily full. Manual refreshing has a very low success rate. The community has auto-grab scripts that retry every few dozen seconds and create an instance the moment capacity frees up: - GitHub Actions edition (runs on GitHub, no computer to leave on): [oci-free-arm-instance](https://github.com/maoucodes/oci-free-arm-instance) - Python edition: [oracle-freetier-instance-creation](https://github.com/mohankumarpaluru/oracle-freetier-instance-creation) Usually succeeds within hours to a few days. Just let the script run. ## Keep-Alive: Don't Let the Machine Get Reclaimed Oracle checks for idle instances. If CPU, memory, and network utilization stay below 20% for 7 straight days, it may reclaim the machine (per the latest official policy; the threshold has been adjusted historically). The simplest approach — a lightweight request on a cron timer: ```bash # Generate a bit of CPU and network activity every hour * */1 * * * curl -s https://www.oracle.com > /dev/null ``` The community also has scripts like [NeverIdle](https://github.com/layou233/NeverIdle), but third-party scripts can break — if Oracle updates its detection, they may stop working. Once you're running real services on the server, you won't need any of this. The ZRAM compression setup ({{< ref "posts/2026-05-16-zram-memory-optimization-linux.md" >}}) is also practical for low-memory situations and pairs well with it. ## Is It Worth the Time A free 4-core 24 GB server is plenty for personal projects and small teams. Signup itself isn't complicated — physical credit card + proxy off + phone hotspot + Phoenix region, and you'll likely pass on the first try. The only thing that takes patience is waiting for ARM capacity. Let a script keep watch instead of refreshing yourself. For how to configure the server and what to install once you have it, see the VPS scene glossary ({{< ref "posts/2026-05-16-vps-glossary-guide.md" >}}) and the self-hosted AI API pipeline ({{< ref "posts/2026-05-16-self-hosted-ai-api-pipeline.md" >}}).