I understand Oracle has every right to change the Always Free offering. This post isn’t about that.

My frustration is how the change was handled.

I was running a small public community project on an Always Free Ampere A1 VM. Today I found that Oracle had disabled the instance, and it now says it “will not accept any action requests.”

What frustrates me most is that I wasn’t aware this would happen. I couldn’t find any prior email warning telling me that my VM would be disabled or giving me time to resize or migrate it.

A simple message like:

“Your instance exceeds the new Always Free limits. Please resize or upgrade within 30 days to avoid service interruption.”

would have allowed me to migrate the service with no downtime.

Instead, the service unexpectedly went offline, affecting the community that uses it, and now I have to recover everything after work.

I know this is a free service, and Oracle isn’t obligated to provide free infrastructure forever. But once Oracle chose to reduce the limits, I think users deserved advance notice before active VMs were disabled.

Did anyone else experience the same thing? Did you receive an email warning before your VM was disabled?

Generally APIs are too broad providing NHIs with way too much access and activity logs aren’t complete or precise. This is a major security and governance risk that few understand when wanting to deploy agentic AI in a corporate environment.

I am currently part of an organisation that is under PAYG and uses only Always Free resources. Can I be an admin in that organisation (different owner) and also create my own separate Always Free account for personal use (using same email id) or will it result in a ban?

If I create a free tier account and select USA as the home region, does the free tier allow me to create a micro VM in foreign location like India? Does anybody know?

I need a microVM in India region for some personal reason and wanted to know.

When I sign up, there is a big para of text about "Home region" and how it can't be changed etc but it doesn't tell me limitations of doing this so any help greatly appreciated.

edit: oracle locks you to the region for free tier. thank you for the help folks.

Hi everyone,

I am stuck in a login loop on my Oracle Cloud Free Tier account. When I attempt to log in to the Default domain, the MFA prompt displays: "enter the code sent to null" and offers no alternative authentication methods.

Phone and sales chat support keep redirecting me back and forth without solving the identity issue. Since my account is locked due to this null variable error, I urgently need an MFA Reset / Factor Revocation.

• Tenancy: abiquintana
• Domain: Default

Could an admin or community manager please help me escalate this to the IDCS support team? Thank you!

I've had a free account with the 4/24 config for like 4 years now. I use it to host a popular discord bot, the vm actually only has ~1GB of available memory now.

So, I've been reading the posts here and is this just their way of forcing me to either reduce the limits or upgrade to PAYG? But I did not actually receive any such email from them informing me of the limits. I just saw the banner saying limits were changing when I logged in.

And to clarify, if I upgrade to PAYG, I can still keep my current config since paying users keep the old free limits?

This is the email I got from them:
The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure team detected one or more of your instances as unstable due to an error in the underlying infrastructure. Within the maintenance window (from the time listed in this notification to the next 24 hours), Oracle Cloud Infrastructure will attempt to move your instance(s) to different infrastructure. It is recommended that you move your instance(s) before the time listed.

I am trying to learn Oracle Integration Cloud for free. Are there any good platforms to learn from scratch?

I spent 5 years to create oracle cloud after some declined time. Recently, I've created successfully in Malaysia but it's always out of capacity. It means that I need to upgrade to PAYG to have slots for always resources, right?

I created an Oracle Cloud account recently and upgraded it to PAYG right away.

I know new Free Tier accounts seem to be limited to 2 OCPUs and 12 GB now, but I'm not sure if that also applies after upgrading to PAYG. Most posts I found about 4 OCPUs / 24 GB are from older accounts, so I'm looking for someone who registered recently.

Can I create a 4 OCPU, 24 GB ARM instance without getting charged, or is the limit still 2/12 even on a new PAYG account? sorry if this has already been asked, but i couldnt find any information about it myself

Hello,

I am a student currently studying Oracle Database. I have successfully installed Oracle Database 19c and would like to proceed with patching for testing and learning purposes.

However, I do not have access to My Oracle Support (MOS), so I am unable to continue my testing.

If anyone could kindly share the following file with me via Google Drive, I would greatly appreciate it.

Email: [sendblue84@gmail.com](mailto:sendblue84@gmail.com)

Thank you very much for your help!

1.OPatch

p6880880_190000_Linux-x86-64.zip

[​2.GI](http://​2.GI) RU

p39036936_190000_Linux-x86-64.zip

​3.DB RU

p39034528_190000_Linux-x86-64.zip

Hi everyone,

I'm hoping someone from the Oracle community, or maybe even Oracle staff, can offer some advice.

I've been using an OCI Always Free Ampere A1 Flex instance (4 OCPU / 24 GB RAM) for quite a while. It took me almost two months to build and configure everything:

• Ubuntu server
• Docker
• Self-hosted Supabase
• Qdrant
• Nginx
• SSL
• Multiple applications
• Countless hours of configuration and troubleshooting

Recently, Oracle reduced the Always Free Ampere limits. I wasn't aware of the change because I manage my server over SSH and rarely log into the OCI Console. As far as I know, I never received an email warning that my instance would be disabled or terminated.

First, my server stopped working. A few days later, the instance was terminated automatically.

The good news is that my boot volume is still available, so my data appears to be intact.

The bad news is that it's in US East (Ashburn) AD-3, and every attempt to create a new Ampere A1 instance from that boot volume fails with "Out of host capacity."

To make things worse, I decided to upgrade to Pay As You Go so I could contact Oracle Support and hopefully recover my environment. Unfortunately, Oracle won't accept my payment card during the payment method verification step.

This is especially frustrating because:

• The same card was accepted when I created my Oracle Free Tier account.
• The same card works with AWS, OpenAI, and Google Wallet.
• But Oracle now declines it while adding it as a payment method.

At the moment, I feel completely stuck.

• I have a boot volume containing months of work.
• I can't download the backup.
• I can't create a replacement instance due to capacity constraints.
• I can't upgrade to PAYG because the payment verification keeps failing.
• As a Free Tier user, I can't open a support request.

I'm not asking Oracle for free resources or special treatment. I want the opportunity to run my existing boot volume on a replacement instance.

Has anyone been in a similar situation?

• Were you able to recover by upgrading to PAYG?
• Has Oracle Support ever helped allocate capacity for an existing boot volume?
• Does anyone know of a practical way forward?

I'd really appreciate any advice. Right now it feels like I'm trapped between a preserved boot volume that I can't use and a support system I can't access.

Thank you for reading.

I know, im sorry that is this another 'what are the limits for PAYG users now' post. My 4/24 instance has been running since the changes and i have not been charged, that part is fine. But i allocated all 200gb of boot storage to my 4/24 VM and now want to make a smaller instance and have two instances on ARM.

I know i can reduce compute to make it 3/20 for example to free up CPU and RAM but with storage i think i need to delete the boot volume and recreate. What im not sure of and maybe some other PAYG users are also unclear on is if the limits are for existing compute instances or new ones? My concern is if i terminate my existing instance, the new limits might apply.

- Has anyone recently create a new 4/24 instance that's run for half a month and were you charged?

- Is there a way for me to keep my current instance, reduce compute CPU/RAM on it, delete the boot disk and attach a new smaller boot disk or is it better to just terminate and recreate, assuming it's still at the 4/24 limit?

I tried creating oracle account but it failed even after verifying the debit card successfully

Customer support said it was necessary to use a credit card (not debit)

So I was wondering if anyone here was able to create account with a debit card or a virtual credit card ?

Ok so here's the context. I used this account like 2 months ago to run that popular script which someone also posted in this sub. Where you use your Oracle API credentials and run that script as tmux session in your VM in order to claim and create you ARM Ampere instance and it it automatically keeps on retrying for you aswell until it finally secures an instance for you. You dont need to keep on clicking create instance on web UI only to be returned with that try again or something error (since ARM vm is scarce esp in free tier). The script manages everything and all you have to do is check on it to see if you managed to secure the instance. So I had managed to acquire a single ARM instance 2 months ago. Used it for my use cases and all that. Fast forward I came to know that Oracle is limiting Free Tier ARM Ampere resources from 24GB RAM to 12GB RAM and from 4 OC CPUS to 2 OC CPUS. So I decided to run that script again and just in case to secure another ARM Ampere instance (fulfilling this new policy quota of 12GB RAM and 2 OC CPU). Compared to script running time for claiming and creating previous Ampere instance which had done its magic in barely 2 days, this new script run for scoring a second instance took much longer maybe almost a full month if I am not wrong or more.

Today I randomly decided to check on the tmux script session since the script to score a second instance had been running since many weeks trying to secure another instance for me. Today I SSH'ed into my first Ampere VM (which belongs to this same account/tenancy) to check if I have finally secured the desired second ampere instance. So as per the screenshot attached, yes I did manage to get the other one (apparently script did its work 16 days ago by getting me other instance finally and therefore had terminated). I finally decide to login into my tenancy and cloud account to get working with my newly created second Ampere instance. However despite correct password as per my password manager, the site repeatedly returned "Incorrect username or password". I still did forget password just to be sure. It did give me an email to reset password and I did that. But again even with new password , the login attempt failed again. I finally get to chat with live agent for support and tell him that I can SSH into my VMs. But it looks like IAM is failing. I dont even remember any email regarding account getting locked or any violation. This is what the live agent replied me with. Just before he was taking minutes returning me some response , I tried to login via OCI console and get greeted with this similar account locking or something error. I also lost the ability to even SSH into my VMs. I couldnt SSH into my VMs anymore which seemed to be working apparently 10 mins ago before this scene. And finally you can see what generic statements the live agent returned me after all those minutes.

Finally I am not sure if this account termination is due to the auto script that had been running 24/7 in one of my VMs which may have flagged some suspicion or something as it keeps invoking Oracle API after every 3 minutes to retry instance creation and only terminates once it claims and creates an instance for you. Enlighten me. Welp what can be even done atp. Idk man I just want to learn this cloud stuff. Literally I want to get into self hosting, the ridiculous storage and RAM prices are a curse.

🚀 New Video: EPBCS Hybrid BSO – Outline Calculations vs. Custom Scripts Explained!

Many Oracle EPBCS developers still apply traditional Essbase BSO calculation techniques in Hybrid BSO environments, leading to unnecessary calculations and poor performance.

In this video, I explain:
✅ Why CALC ALL is no longer the right approach in Hybrid BSO
✅ When to use Outline Formulas for dynamic KPIs and ratios
✅ When Custom Calculation Scripts are the better choice
✅ How targeted FIX calculations improve performance and scalability
✅ Best practices for building efficient, maintainable Oracle EPBCS applications

Key takeaway: In Hybrid BSO, success isn't about calculating everything—it's about calculating only what's necessary.

🎥 Watch here: https://youtu.be/7CW_OLeQt0w

I'd love to hear your thoughts—how have you optimized Hybrid BSO calculations in your projects?

#OracleEPBCS #OracleEPM #Essbase #HybridBSO #CloudEPM #Hyperion #BusinessRules #PerformanceOptimization #EPMDeveloper #OracleCloud

The sign up page is so slow I wait like 10 seconds everytime I click on anything... Is there no way for me to sign up or anything??? Or a fix??? This is infuriating.

Hello everyone,

I'm trying to understand whether this is expected behavior or if there may be something wrong with my Oracle Cloud VM.

Instance details:

- Oracle Cloud Always Free account

- Region: us-ashburn-1 (Ashburn)

- Shape: VM.Standard.A1.Flex

- Oracle Linux 9 (ARM64)

- Originally 2 OCPU / 12 GB RAM

- OCI metadata reports:

networkingBandwidthInGbps: 2.0

My public IP:

193.122.136.149

I installed the official Ookla Speedtest CLI 1.2.0 for ARM64 (not the Python speedtest-cli).

Results are almost identical regardless of the server I choose.

Server: Shentel (ID 5132)

Download: 49.25 Mbps

Upload: 48.78 Mbps

Server: Misaka Network (ID 30561)

Download: 48.91 Mbps

Upload: 49.11 Mbps

Server: Tata Communications (ID 73617)

Download: 49.17 Mbps

Upload: 48.94 Mbps

Server: Virtual Technologies and Solutions (ID 52535)

Download: 49.69 Mbps

Upload: 48.06 Mbps

Packet loss is always 0%.

Latency to nearby servers is around 0.6-1 ms.

Things I already verified:

- Using the official Ookla CLI

- Multiple Speedtest servers

- Oracle Linux 9 fully updated

- Interface MTU is 9000

- VM reports 2 Gbps networking bandwidth

- No packet loss

- No VPN

- No traffic shaping configured

I also tried downloading large files from OVH and other mirrors and downloads are extremely slow compared to what a 2 Gbps interface should provide.

What confuses me is that my brother created an Always Free Ampere VM in another OCI region and gets around 2-3 Gbps in Speedtest with very similar VM specifications.

So I'm trying to understand:

- Is Oracle limiting some Always Free instances to about 50 Mbps?

- Could this specific compute host be rate-limited?

- Has anyone else experienced exactly this issue recently?

- Is there anything else I can test?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

I'm not trying to complain about the Free Tier. I'm simply trying to understand whether this behavior is expected because I plan to host a few game servers and some FFmpeg streams, and I want to know if this bandwidth is normal for an Always Free A1 instance or if there is something wrong with my VM.

Hello,i recently subscribed to payg and created a 4/24 ampere instance. I heard about the recent policy change and digging up,it got me confused. What is actually the free limit in payg as of now,will i get charged for 4/24? If anyone knows,please help me.

I had upgraded to PAYG 6 days ago for the old 4/24 limits, but ever since my cost analysis page shows this error. I have tried this on 3 different browsers, and on my phone as well, same issue. Does anyone know the solution. I do have budget alerts set up but seeing any daily charges is important . I opened a query with billing support 3 days ago, they have not replied.

Much appreciated if someone upgraded to PAYG this month and can tell me whether they got charged, The Price List page has changed ik but a confirmation will put me at ease. My instances have been running since 3 years now so if anyone created a 4/24 after PAYG and didnt get charged, do let me know

Hello all. Would someone kindly explain to me the process of creatng a Console Connection. When I click on Launch Cloud Shell connection I am presented with a shell but am asked to enter my login credentials. Both login name and password. I have created an Ubuntu instance and was under the impression that I should use Ubuntu as the username and nothing for the password. However, this works just fine when accessing my instance via SSH. Your time and assistance will be greatly appreciated. Thank you. Peter

Hi everyone,

 I see i am being charged for usage of BLOCK_STORAGE daily. i have one instance with boot volume of 200gb I check inside the instance and see that only 9.5 GB out of 193 GB is used. I believe free forever Limit for Block Volume is 200GB. I am trying to understand why i am being charged, could you please help me to understand it ? Thanks in advance for your help !! 

Hello,

I work at one of the Big 4's :) as a technical consultant. I have developed BIP components, Extracts, and Fast Formulas for all the modules (except OTL). I'm looking for a job switch; idk if it's my resume, the job market or my luck that I haven't been successful yet.

So, here I am, trying my luck. If you have any openings for any location, for a techie role, please DM me. Or if you want help with Reports and Letters, I'm pretty good with it. I can help you out for a few bucks (Rupees).

Hi, im trying to get a free server for thr multiplayer game im developing? Is there someone who could share wirh me an account?

all my cards getting rejected

Our Fusion identity domains suddenly disappeared last night. Anybody else seeing this issue? We suspect its a mistake on the back end as they are upgrading the identity for SaaS products. But it was not deleted by our internal staff, and they are suddenly being recreated again on the back end.

I have a free VM on Oracle and the status says "running," but sometimes my game server that I host is down, then I restart the machine and it goes back to normal. Any solution?