Oracle vs AWS Free Tier: Which One Actually Wins?
If you're trying to run something online for free, these two come up constantly. AWS is the name everyone knows. Oracle is the one people stumble on and think "wait, this can't be right." So which one is actually worth your time?
Short answer: it depends on what you're building. Here's the real comparison.
What AWS Gives You for Free
AWS's free tier has three buckets, and mixing them up is how people end up with surprise bills.
The stuff that's free forever (Always Free) is pretty limited. You get a Lambda function allowance, some DynamoDB storage, and a few other odds and ends. None of it adds up to a real server you can actually run something on.
The stuff that's free for 12 months is more useful. That's where the t2.micro or t3.micro instance lives — 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM, 750 hours per month. That's enough to host a basic site or API. The catch is it expires. After a year, you're paying.
So AWS gives you a decent trial, not a permanent free server.
What Oracle Gives You for Free
Oracle's Always Free tier is a different animal. It doesn't expire.
You get two AMD Micro instances — 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM each. Modest, but they're yours forever. Then there's the Arm A1 allocation: up to 4 cores and 24 GB RAM total that you can slice up however you want. That's a lot of free compute. Way more than AWS offers permanently.
On top of that you get 20 GB of object storage, a free load balancer, and a free database. All permanent.
The trade-off is Oracle's interface is clunky and their account verification process can be a pain. Some people get approved in an hour, some wait days.
Head to Head
| AWS | Oracle | |
|---|---|---|
| Free compute | t3.micro for 12 months | AMD Micro x2 + 4 cores/24 GB Arm, forever |
| Expires? | Yes, 1 year | No |
| Free database | RDS for 12 months | Autonomous DB, forever |
| Free storage | 5 GB S3 for 12 months | 20 GB object storage, forever |
| Interface | Polished but complex | Clunky but functional |
So Which One Should You Pick?
Pick AWS if you're learning and want the best documentation, the most tutorials online, and the widest support community. Almost every cloud question you Google will have an AWS answer. The 12-month free tier is also plenty of time to build something and figure out if you need to pay.
Pick Oracle if you want to run something long-term without a bill. The Arm A1 allocation is genuinely hard to beat for free hosting. I know people running full production side projects on it that have been live for years, cost zero.
Honestly, there's no rule against using both. AWS for learning, Oracle for running.
Check out our full comparison chart to see where everything else stacks up.