# Oracle Cloud

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/hosting/oracle-cloud/

Oracle's public cloud (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure): virtual machine and bare metal compute, block and object storage, networking, managed databases and Kubernetes in regions worldwide.

## Who it suits

A VPS that stays free: Always Free covers two AMD micro instances, Arm A1 capacity equal to 2 OCPUs and 12 GB, 200 GB of block storage and 10 TB of outbound transfer a month. Paid compute is billed per second, from $0.01 per Arm OCPU-hour, and egress past 10 TB is $0.0085 per GB in North America and Europe.

Consider something else if You need a free server you can rely on: Always Free instances run in your home region only, may be reclaimed when idle, can hit out-of-capacity errors, and get no Oracle Support; signup needs a card. Paid compute has no fixed plans, so a monthly cost has to be worked out from per-OCPU and per-GB rates.

## iScore

66 / 100 (80% interval 59–74), rank 1 of 16 in hosting — interval overlaps the next rank, so this is an ordering, not a finding.

inetGeek's own reading, computed from sourced facts against category peers by disclosed rules. Not a provider claim. Intervals are 80%; a provider with few documented facts is pulled toward the category middle rather than scored on what little is known.
Method: https://inetgeek.com/iscore/. Full output with every criterion's basis: https://inetgeek.com/scores.json. Every hosting peer ranked: https://inetgeek.com/hosting/oracle-cloud/alternatives/

- Price: 60 (43–78), weight 29%, 4 of 5 criteria scored; scored for peers, not here — undocumented or stated without a number or a yes/limited/no: minimum_paid_price
- Capacity and limits: 59 (47–71), weight 29%, 2 of 6 criteria scored; scored for peers, not here — undocumented or stated without a number or a yes/limited/no: backup_retention, entry_plan_memory, entry_plan_storage, file_count_limit
- Capabilities: 79 (73–85), weight 10%, 5 of 11 criteria scored; scored for peers, not here — undocumented or stated without a number or a yes/limited/no: connection_pooling, edge_network, git_deploy, persistent_processes, scale_to_zero, scheduled_jobs
- Trust and compliance: 77 (68–87), weight 14%, 0 of 13 criteria scored; scored for peers, not here — undocumented or stated without a number or a yes/limited/no: customer_managed_keys, dedicated_infrastructure, encryption_at_rest, gdpr_data_residency, hipaa_eligible, iso27001, pci_dss, private_networking, rbac, soc2, support_included, support_response_time, uptime_sla
- Evidence: 89 (89–89), weight 10%, 4 of 4 criteria scored
- Adoption: 51 (9–94), weight 10%, 0 of 2 criteria scored

## What the documentation says

### Pricing

- Free tier: Yes — Always Free resources, in the home region, for the life of the account; separate from the 30-day trial credit. ([source](https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/FreeTier/freetier_topic-Always_Free_Resources.htm), read 2026-09-25)
- Kind of free offer: Always free ([source](https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/FreeTier/freetier.htm), read 2026-09-25)
- What the free plan includes: Always Free compute: up to two AMD VM.Standard.E2.1.Micro instances, plus the first 1,500 OCPU hours and 9,000 GB hours a month of Arm VM.Standard.A1.Flex (equivalent to 2 OCPUs and 12 GB for Always Free tenancies), with 200 GB of block volume storage shared by boot and data volumes. ([source](https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/FreeTier/freetier_topic-Always_Free_Resources.htm), read 2026-09-25)
- Credit card to start: Yes — Oracle says most users need a card and a mobile number; the card is not charged unless the account is upgraded. ([source](https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/FreeTier/freetier.htm), read 2026-09-25)
- When the free offer ends: Never for the Always Free resources. The separate Free Trial is $300 of credit valid for up to 30 days; when it ends the account stays active and Always Free resources continue. ([source](https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/FreeTier/freetier.htm), read 2026-09-25)
- Entry paid plan: No plan fee; compute is pay-as-you-go. The lowest published per-OCPU rate is the Arm Ampere A1 shape (VM.Standard.A1.Flex): $0.01 per OCPU-hour plus $0.0015 per GB of memory per hour. The price list prices the first 3,000 OCPU-hours and 18,000 GB-hours a month at $0; Oracle's Always Free docs state 1,500 and 9,000. The price list notes that on Arm shapes an OCPU equates to a vCPU. ([source](https://apexapps.oracle.com/pls/apex/cetools/api/v1/products/?currencyCode=USD), read 2026-09-25)
- Pricing model: Usage-based and billed per second: Compute instances are billed per second of usage, with a one-minute minimum for VMs and a one-hour minimum for bare metal. ([source](https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/releasenotes/changes/20facdce-34bf-4648-a0a7-de5db73657ce/), read 2026-09-25)
- Egress over allowance: $0.0085 per GB for outbound transfer originating in North America, Europe and UK beyond the first 10,240 GB a month; $0.025 per GB from APAC, Japan and South America; $0.05 per GB from Middle East and Africa. ([source](https://apexapps.oracle.com/pls/apex/cetools/api/v1/products/?currencyCode=USD), read 2026-09-25)
- When you exceed a cap: Billed per GB: the price list prices the first 10,240 GB of outbound transfer a month at $0 and each GB beyond it at the origin region's rate ($0.0085 from North America, Europe and UK). ([source](https://apexapps.oracle.com/pls/apex/cetools/api/v1/products/?currencyCode=USD), read 2026-09-25)

### Limits

- Included bandwidth: 10 TB of outbound data transfer per month, as an Always Free resource for every tenancy. ([source](https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/FreeTier/freetier_topic-Always_Free_Resources.htm), read 2026-09-25)

### Deployment

- Docker deployment: Supported ([source](https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/container-instances/overview-of-container-instances.htm), read 2026-09-25)
- Containers: Supported ([source](https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/container-instances/overview-of-container-instances.htm), read 2026-09-25)

### Infrastructure

- Persistent storage: Supported ([source](https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/Block/Concepts/overview.htm), read 2026-09-25)
- Managed databases: Supported ([source](https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/mysql-database/doc/overview-mysql-database-service.html), read 2026-09-25)
- Autoscaling: Supported — Instance pools, metric-based or schedule-based. ([source](https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/Compute/Tasks/autoscalinginstancepools.htm), read 2026-09-25)
- Regions: 45 regions in the commercial-realm table of Oracle's Regions and Availability Domains page on 2026-09-25: 44 in realm OC1 plus Serbia Central (Jovanovac) in OC20. Government, sovereign and dedicated realms are listed separately. ([source](https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/General/Concepts/regions.htm), read 2026-09-25)

### Data

- Backup retention: Block Volume backup policies: Oracle-defined Bronze (monthly, kept twelve months; yearly, kept five years), Silver (adds weekly, kept four weeks) and Gold (adds daily, kept seven days), or user-defined policies with configurable retention. ([source](https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/Block/Tasks/schedulingvolumebackups.htm), read 2026-09-25)

### Support

- Support on entry paid plan: Support requests are for paid accounts only; Always Free and Free Tier accounts are not eligible for Oracle Support and are pointed to Support Chat and Cloud Customer Connect. ([source](https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/GSG/Tasks/contactingsupport.htm), read 2026-09-25)

### Compliance

- SOC 2: Stated in passing: an Oracle security-architecture page says OCI services are compliant with SOC 1/2/3, without naming the report type or scope. ([source](https://docs.oracle.com/en/solutions/oci-security-checklist/index.html), read 2026-09-25)
- ISO 27001: Stated for Kubernetes Engine (OKE) only: Oracle's docs say OKE is itself ISO-compliant (ISO-IEC 27001, 27017, 27018). No statement for Compute on the pages this checker can read. ([source](https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/ContEng/Concepts/contengclustersnodes.htm), read 2026-09-25)
- HIPAA: Stated in passing: an Oracle security-architecture page lists HIPAA among the standards OCI services are compliant with; it names no BAA or in-scope service list. ([source](https://docs.oracle.com/en/solutions/oci-security-checklist/index.html), read 2026-09-25)
- GDPR / data residency: Oracle EU Sovereign Cloud: a separate realm with regions located only within the EU, run by EU legal entities separate from Oracle's global entities, with support and operations staff restricted to EU residents. ([source](https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/sovereign-cloud/eu-sovereign-cloud.htm), read 2026-09-25)
- PCI DSS: Stated in passing: the same Oracle security-architecture page lists PCI DSS among the standards OCI services are compliant with; no scope or level given there. ([source](https://docs.oracle.com/en/solutions/oci-security-checklist/index.html), read 2026-09-25)
- Encryption at rest: All block volumes and boot volumes are encrypted at rest by the Block Volume service. ([source](https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/Block/Concepts/overview.htm), read 2026-09-25)
- Customer-managed keys: OCI Key Management keys can be created in OCI, imported (BYOK) or held in external key management (HYOK), and integrate with OCI storage and database services; FIPS 140-2 Level 3 HSMs are supported. ([source](https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/KeyManagement/Concepts/keyoverview.htm), read 2026-09-25)
- Role-based access control: Policy-based IAM: written policies give a group a specific type of access within a compartment or across the tenancy; a built-in Administrators group has access to everything. ([source](https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/Identity/Concepts/overview.htm), read 2026-09-25)
- Private networking / VPC: Virtual Cloud Networks (VCNs): private software-defined networks in Oracle data centers, one region each, with firewall rules and optional gateways. ([source](https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/Network/Concepts/overview.htm), read 2026-09-25)
- Dedicated infrastructure: Dedicated virtual machine hosts run Compute VMs on single-tenant servers not shared with other customers. ([source](https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/Compute/Concepts/dedicatedvmhosts.htm), read 2026-09-25)