Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) provides free, unlimited access to Oracle Cloud and Oracle Autonomous Database, enabling students and developers to build, test and deploy applications with ease. As part of this update, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) offers a unified Free Tier that combines Always Free services such as the Oracle Autonomous Database along with a 30-day Free Trial that includes $300 in cloud credits, available globally.
How to Sign Up
Getting started with Free Tier, which includes Always Free services and the Free Trial, is easy via a single streamlined sign up. Recognized Oracle users who sign up for Free Tier will see an accelerated onboarding flow with fewer verification steps and no requirement to enter a credit card. For example, students and educators in Oracle Academy, attendees at Oracle CloudWorld and prospective customers engaged with Oracle Sales all can sign up without a credit card. Other new users must provide a credit card during sign up for identification purposes only.You will not be charged unless you upgrade your Free Tier or Free Trial account to a Paid account. For more information, refer here
You can sign up and get started with Always Free services in less than 5 minutes. Simply open the Free Tier webpage and click on the “Start for free” button for signing up. Note while you are signing up, the second step asks you to select a “Home Region”. This is important because Always Free services run only in your home region, and you cannot change it after the account is created. Make sure to click the displayed Country/Territory dropdown, review global data centers where your desired Always Free services are available, and select the Country/Territory that works best.
Always Free Services – What’s Included
The Always Free services that are part of Free Tier cover essential IaaS and PaaS technologies, providing generous resources for free as long as they are used. A summary of Always Free service shapes and specifications is below. Not only do these Always Free services run on Oracle’s high-performance mission critical cloud infrastructure, they also incorporate Oracle’s premier cloud database: Oracle Autonomous Database.
Figure 1: Always Free services offerings
Oracle Autonomous Database
Always Free Oracle Autonomous Database delivers a comprehensive database experience, plus built-in tools for developers, administrators, and data scientists – now entirely free. It is a multi-model database for virtually any type of data (including relational, JSON, spatial, graph, multimedia, XML, files, and more) and any interface (full SQL, REST data access, and drivers for popular programming languages). The service supports Data Warehousing, Transaction Processing, JSON-centric Applications, and Oracle APEX Low Code Development workload types.
It includes development tools depending on specific workload types as below.
- Oracle APEX environment, developers can quickly design and deploy modern low-code applications optimized for both desktop and mobile platforms.
- SQL Developer Web for SQL and PL/SQL scripting
- ORDS for developing and deploying RESTful services
- Graph studio which enables you to create graphs and analyze your data based on connections and relationships between data entities
- Data transforms which enables you to design graphical data transformations for data integration
- MongoDB API to connect to Oracle Autonomous Database using MongoDB language drivers and tools
- SODA Drivers which provides APIs for access to JSON data stored in the database.
- An included SQL notebook assists with creating Machine Learning models for data scientists
Refer Autonomous Database Workload Types for more information.
Figure 2: Oracle Autonomous database workload types
Oracle Database 23ai is available within Oracle’s Autonomous Database service, bringing its new features and enhancements to the fully managed, cloud-based environment. This includes AI Vector Search, JSON Relational Duality, and other advancements, allowing developers to leverage the latest Oracle Database capabilities within the convenience and automation of Autonomous Database.
The integrated AI capabilities of Oracle Database 23ai, combined with APEX’s ease of use and rapid development features, empower developers to quickly and efficiently build sophisticated, next-generation data-driven applications with AI capabilities. This combination enables them to leverage advanced technologies such as semantic search and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) using just basic SQL and APEX skills.
Note: Always Free Autonomous Database with Oracle Database 23ai is available in all commercial public cloud regions except the following regions: Colombia Central: Bogota (BOG), Saudi Arabia Central (RUH), Singapore West: Singapore (XSP)
See Provision an Autonomous Database Instance for more information.
Always Free Oracle APEX Application Development
With Always Free Oracle APEX Application Development (also known as APEX Service), citizen and professional developers can rapidly build and deploy low-code apps in Oracle Cloud free of charge for as long as they need. Oracle APEX empowers developers to create modern data-driven applications up to 38x faster than coding. Developers can get the most from data assets by building converged applications that integrate relational, JSON, spatial, and graph data. They can pull data from the included Oracle Autonomous Database or virtually any REST endpoint. In addition, developers optionally can extend applications by incorporating Oracle and third-party APEX plugins or by adding custom JavaScript, SQL, and PL/SQL logic.
Free APEX Service delivers Oracle APEX running in Oracle Cloud as an all-inclusive and fully managed service with up to 2 ECPU (shared) and 20 GB of storage. It is suitable for diverse low-code applications including bespoke apps, dashboards, Business process apps, Mobile Responsive apps and more. Free APEX Service can support approximately 3-6 users accessing the service simultaneously and maximum of 30 simultaneous database sessions plus an unlimited number of applications, developer accounts, and end-user accounts. If applications outgrow these constraints, it is easy to upgrade to Paid APEX Service with a single click and then provision additional ECPUs and storage. To create an APEX instance follow the below steps.
From the Cloud Dashboard, click on the hamburger menu on the upper-left corner. From the navigation menu, select Developer Services and then APEX Application Development or APEX Instances.
Figure 3: APEX Services Instance navigation
At the top of the APEX Instances page, click the Create APEX Service.
Figure 4: Create APEX Service
Select the Always Free option, enter the ADMIN password, then click Create APEX service.
Figure 5: APEX Service configuration
What you can do with Always Free Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Services
Always Free Oracle Cloud Infrastructure services include a virtual machine instance, an Oracle Autonomous Database, and the networking, load balancing, and storage resources needed to support the application you build. You also get an allocation of free outbound data transfer, monitoring, and notifications. Together with Always Free Oracle Autonomous Database, users can leverage this bundle of free services to develop and deploy applications in diverse languages and frameworks, and to test-drive enterprise infrastructure capabilities such as load balancing and storage cloning.
Summary
Oracle Cloud’s Free Tier is a great way for developers, students, and small businesses to get started with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) at no cost. It includes powerful tools like the Autonomous Database and Oracle APEX, which make it easy to build and deploy modern web applications. With built-in features like auto-scaling and self-tuning, the Always Free offerings provide an easy way to get started while encouraging users to focus on learning, building, and exploring without worrying about costs.
Notes:
Paid versions of Oracle APEX Application Development and Oracle Autonomous JSON Database start at US$238.46 per month for 2 ECPU and 1 TB of storage (running continuously for a 31-day month). To estimate the cost for OCI services refer to Cost Estimator webpage
Across all of the Always Free services that are based on Oracle Autonomous Database (including Free APEX Service and Free JSON Database) developers can run a total of two Always Free instances per Oracle Cloud tenancy.
Other Always Free services that are not based on Oracle Autonomous Database have service-specific limitations, but generally provide a generous amount of free cloud resources.
For more information:
To learn what is included in Oracle Cloud Free Tier, visit Oracle Cloud Free Tier
To learn about Oracle APEX Application Development, explore training, certifications, and other resources APEX Application Development
Strengthen your APEX skills and gain hands on experience by completing these Hands on Labs.