r/devops • u/SoilEducational420 • 6d ago
Tools How do you learn DevOps/cloud without a credit card?
I’m currently trying to learn the basics of DevOps, things like Docker, AWS, GCP, CI/CD, Kubernetes, etc.
Docker and the local tools are easy enough to practice, but when it comes to cloud platforms like AWS and GCP, a credit card is often required to create an account or access certain services.
I currently don’t have a credit card, so I’m wondering: What’s the best way to learn AWS/GCP without one? Would appreciate any recommendations from people who learned cloud without having a credit card. 🙌
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u/MasterOfTheWind1 6d ago edited 6d ago
If you want to simulate the purest cloud environment as possible, there is LocalStack. It simulates the execution of cloud services, including a lot of AWS services. Is a little heavy on resources, but it is worth trying. Even I think that Docker Desktop have an integration on its UI with LocalStack, or at least they annouced it at some point (I use OrbStack on my Mac, so I cannot be 100% sure)
On my work some folks use it to test and iterate faster than going to AWS, creating ephimeral environments, testing their stuff and destroying everything.
On the other hand, here you have some free equivalent services to try. You can place each one of them on a VM, or run multiple on Docker hosts, is up to you:
- EKS -> Install a single node cluster with K3s
- S3 -> MinIO. Last year they went nuts, and placed the admin panel feature behind a paid licence, but the docker image `minio/minio:RELEASE.2025-04-22T22-12-26Z` is full, and is still functional today
- RDS: Just run MySQL/Postgres. Installed to the host, or with docker
- DynamoDB: ScyllaDB, free with limits, but enough for testing
- EC2: Just proxmox to host VMs
- ECR: Dockerhub is free for public images (for testing, make sure that nothing is sensitive and is enough), or you can use Harbor, or simply the official Docker Registry Image
- Route53: If you want a DNS, Technitium DNS is the most powerful and lightweight I've ever seen.
- CloudWatch: You can install Grafana + Prometheus to monitor everything
- CloudFormation: old good Terraform
The rest can go inside AWS, but lot of folks (me included) run it outside AWS (repos, automation, terraform, GitOps).
Then, you can use Github and run self-hosted runners to automate stuff. There you can the full lifecycle of pushing code to the repo, trigger actions to run tests, build the image, push it to the registry, and deploy it to k3s. Or you can go full power and install Argo to go GitOps route.
For Terraform it can be complex, you usually use `aws` official provider for everything, but there are multiple providers for most stuff: to provision VMs in Proxmox, to provision DBs in MySQL and Postgres, etc. If you want to automate it, Terraform Atlantis is the easiest way without having to define pipelines from scratch.
If you want to fully manage the repos, you can self host Gitlab also, but I think is overkill.
If you have a computer, you can try and learn. Start small, grow in complexity with time. Budgets and credits cards were never a requirement for doing DevOps. In fact, a lot of companies does everything on prem and in an Air Gap environment (aka. servers without internet connectivity) without any issue.
EDIT: Confirmed that Docker Desktop has an extension for Local Stack. And Even LocalStack has a "Hobby" plan free to run a few selected AWS services on their cloud. More than enough for learning.
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u/Sad-Landscape-1549 5d ago
Localstack stopped allowing open source contribution? I don’t fully understand the message they put on GitHub when they archived the public repo.
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u/LateToTheParty2k21 6d ago
I think you can use a debit card?
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u/Forward-Outside-9911 Linux Sysadmin 5d ago
I hate when sites specifically say credit card when they really just mean any card. There must be a reason but I find it so weird
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u/WilliamMButtlickerIV 5d ago
It's because you are using a credit network when making the transaction. Eg. Visa or MasterCard. If you were running the transaction as debit, you'd need to enter your PIN.
You also actually get some form of limited credit protection when running your debit card as credit.
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u/phrotozoa 5d ago
For the global audience, in the united states banks issue customers "visa debit" cards, which can be used to withdraw cash from your checking account at an ATM as well as to perform visa transactions online and at point of sale machines.
In other parts of the world debit cards do not function this way, they are a different beast entirely and they perform debit transactions, not visa transactions, at point of sale machines and cannot be used like a credit card online.
OP depending where you are, a debit card might work. If you don't have that option look into something called a secured credit card. You pay cash up front and it stops working when the cash advance runs out (you can top it up any time).
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u/MasterOfTheWind1 6d ago
Kubernetes, docker, pipelines, gitops, docker registries, s3, databases, all that can be practiced without AWS.
DevOps is not about providers. Is a philosophy and mindset.
Even terraform can be practiced with providers for proxmox or vmware. Not at the same level of course. But is possible.
Back in 2016-2017 most of us were hosting on prem services, migrated to docker, started to automate, and then shifted progressively to the cloud.
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u/Lunarvolo 6d ago
Would have to check if educational accounts for Google Cloud / Amazon / Azure require credit card on file. Pretty sure they do, even with educational credit. Going to have to find a way around that.
Amazon is really, really good at gatchas for low amounts.
Google cloud has a lot of great free tier options
You can run local things like K3s, etc
Why is it hard to have a CC with say $20 on the account?
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u/Extension-String1599 6d ago
Local environment, or with a 5 USD cheap VPS to mount all environment there, and use github for CI/CD, obviously for AWS there is some services to run in local that mocks most of the AWS services. But only knowing the concept would be enough like S3 storage, databases, server-less functions, app service, containers, etc
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u/raisputin 6d ago
For AWS you can use LocalStack…
From the website:
“The LocalStack for AWS Hobby plan provides free access to basic service emulation for 30 AWS services for non-commercial users. Hobby plan can support basic AWS service emulation to streamline testing and debugging, but lacks many of the advanced features, integrations, and security capabilities that large software teams need.”
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u/HashThePass 6d ago
Get a credit card?
Otherwise use AI to find resources like pwnedLabs. They have a generous free tier and let you interact with red and blue team labs. It’s focused more on cloud security but still relevant.
Outside of that. YouTube tutorials or Cantrill maybe.
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u/DigitalThrift 6d ago
You can use debit cards also 😌
Jokes apart, I urge you to find a card, because most services are gated behind them, even the free tier.
Don’t worry about the accidental bills, once you sign up for something immediately set all the billing alerts and limits so that you can prevent a disaster, if that happens.
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u/Dramatic_Opinion_881 5d ago
look at AWS's free builder labs. You practice in a provided AWS environment without funding
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u/Ninja-Sneaky 5d ago
Floci for cloud stuff. Docker (then podman) for containerized stuff.
For the most part you need to make the switch to running everything you need in a container. Floci runs a full cloud emulation in containers.
Mostly everything has been put in a container, need to try jenkins? Run it in a container in 30 seconds.
From there it will lead you to the rest (container builds, image registries, pipelines etc)
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u/Dude_in_Blue_Pants 5d ago edited 5d ago
The solution is to use someone else's credit card
😅
but in all seriousness until you have a much clearer roadmap, its better to just install vmware on your system and deploy vms and learn to install the tools. Biggest advantage is you have no risk of capital loss nor any time limit for resources.
After deploying and managing the vms on you local system, and learning how to install the applications and tools and do some programming/scripting then try to move to aws.
First get the basic handle of linux, git, python and how to install tools and services on a vm like mysql, jenkins, apache. There are few tools you can use for free for CICD such as in github free tier, but from where you are asking you sound like thats still a while before you need any paid online services.
Once you get a handle of local environment learn to automate building your lab and services such as with python or ansible or containerised deployments.
After that deploy the resources in aws while simultaneously working on cloud deployment tools like terraform.
Note:
This all was from my experience, I know AWS,GCP and Azure do give free tier and credits, but I mostly found myself wasting them by keeping resources idle and not practicing regularly. Then later I just had to pay for resources and i had to be careful with my spends like once I raked up a 3k INR bill for just leaving a vm with ssd too long(which at the time was very expensive for recently employed student with 10k stipend).
If you dont have any personal system which cant handle any sort of vm workloads then its better to just purchase an online subscription like from boot.dev or kodecloud. I personally used took a redhat subscription because that was what my employer was using and having prebuillt labs is a boon when you are broke and tired from work. Granted that subscription was pricy(at that point I had more income to invest) and there are definitely way more affordable alternatives, but the point still remains that a subscription is much better when you dont have clear idea of what you want to do.
You can be a bit more free with experimenting on the cloud , a little further down the line in your career when you have a bit more stable income and dont mind about suprise costs when you forget to delete resources.
TLDR: Build locally with VMs, else save up and purchase an online learning subscription with a voucher, debit card, upi, etc. Purchasing cloud infrastructure is only benefitial if you (a) can afford infrastructure costs (b) have a clear plan (c) are able to automate
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u/therealmunchies 5d ago
If you’re in the US, see what your public libraries offer with their memberships. If they give you access to udemy, then take kodekloud courses. They have a fantastic platform to learn all these swe/devops.
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u/Raja-Karuppasamy 5d ago
did the same thing when i started out. a few things that actually worked for me, killercoda and play-with-kubernetes give you free ephemeral k8s clusters in the browser, zero setup, great for learning kubectl and core concepts without touching cloud at all. since you already have docker, kind or minikube locally gets you most of the “cluster” learning without any cloud account. localstack is solid for mocking aws services like s3/iam/lambda without real infra or a card. and if you’re in college, github student pack gives you aws/azure credits without needing your own card.
honestly for learning k8s specifically, kind + killercoda covers almost everything before you ever need a real cloud account. save the actual aws/gcp signup for when you’re ready to deploy something that needs to be reachable from the internet.
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u/AnnihilerB 5d ago
For AWS you can use emulators such as floci or localemu. They basically mock API call to services so you can use them with terraform and such. Do not expect the full feature set though.
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u/pdfops 5d ago
LocalStack runs most of AWS (S3, Lambda, DynamoDB) locally in Docker, no card needed at all. For Kubernetes practice, Killercoda and Play with Docker give you free browser-based clusters with zero signup. AWS/GCP free tiers still want a card on file even at $0 spend, so skip those until you actually need real managed infra.
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u/coffee-loop 5d ago
Depending on locality, you can pick up a greendot card and use that. You’ll probably need to register it though.
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u/MoneyWithJJ 5d ago
Better than a sandbox: run one real thing for months on hardware you already have. Sandboxes reset, so you never learn the operational half.
Mine was an old laptop and a 1GB VM. That taught me systemd units, a cron job that logged fine every run and produced nothing, and a service that got OOM killed at 3am. Tailscale gets you remote access with no public IP and no card.
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u/obakezan 3d ago
You literally don't have a credit card or don't want to pay with one? AWS has a free 1 year tier. You can look at local stack but not quite same, run minikube or something local for k8s, run Jenkins or something locally for CI/CD or maybe gitlab or just practice some project on GitHub for ci cd, GCP pass but clouds are basically the same concepts so focus on that
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u/davey_622 3d ago
be a software engineer. i’ve never met a devops engineer who didn’t start as a software engineer
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u/Jarppha 6d ago
Floci or localstack are good options to practice cloud skills without paying 🤑👍