Yes, free VPS hosting exists, but only a handful of offers are real. Oracle Cloud’s Always Free tier is the biggest (2 Arm cores and 12 GB RAM since June 2026). Google Cloud gives one small e2-micro forever. AWS and Azure give credits and time-limited VMs. Every one of them asks for a card. Random “free VPS” sites are a risk.
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Need a server tonight and don’t want to fight quota limits? Show me a $4.99 Hostwinds VPS.
Need free VPS hosting because the real plans are out of your budget? We hear you. Word of caution, though, nothing in life is truly free. And that applies to these VPS providers. You pay with a card on file, with your time, or with the upsell that comes later.
Utilizing a virtual private server (VPS) is a case where you can often get a lot of bang for your buck. It’s understandable, though, why folks may look for free VPS hosting even though most of the web hosting solutions in this sector are already quite cost-effective. You’ll frequently see free shared hosting options, and you may simply wonder just how high companies are willing to up the ante.
In reality, only a few offers qualify as a truly free VPS, and all of them come from giant clouds. You can easily find a VPS free trial, however, and there are also many nearly-free hosting services that get pretty close to providing a free experience. Let’s take a look at the options that are actually free, the ones that only feel free, and the potential pros and cons of going this route.
Key takeaways
- Oracle is still the best free VPS, but it shrank. On June 15, 2026 Oracle halved the Always Free Arm allowance to 2 OCPUs and 12 GB of RAM, with no announcement.
- Google’s e2-micro is free forever, but tiny. 1 GB of RAM, US regions only.
- AWS is no longer “12 months free” for new accounts. Since July 15, 2025 you get up to $200 in credits and a 6-month free plan.
- Azure gives 12 months of small VMs plus $200 of credit that expires in 30 days.
- All of them need a card or a student email. None is anonymous.
- If you need uptime you can count on, pay about $5 a month. Free tiers can be reclaimed, capped or suspended.
The huge warning (still true in 2026)
This page used to carry a “huge warning” in its title. The warning stands. It just needs updating.
The real free VPS offers come from four giant clouds, and they are making a pretty simple bet. They assume your project is going to grow at some point. At some point, you’re going to need a second server or a bigger database. Maybe you’ll just need more RAM, processor cores, bandwidth or storage space. What they’re hoping you’ll do is to buy into the upsell in your own time. That is a fair trade, and you can use it, even if the business model is sort of a trap for growing websites.
The other kind is the random site promising a “free VPS, no card, instant root”. Skip those. You have no idea who runs the host, who else can see your disk, or what happens to your data when the site vanishes. That is our editorial judgment, not a measured statistic, but the logic is simple: a server someone gives away with no business model has to pay for itself somehow. Never put a password, an API key or customer data on one.
One word of advice to follow is to keep an eye out for folks offering free plans without any obvious declarations of what the catch is. Phishing scams do utilize the “free hosting” keyword all the time, and it’s wise to refrain from giving your credit card information out to any company that no one’s ever heard of.
Even the legitimate offers have traps. Oracle can reclaim idle machines. AWS closes the account when the free plan ends unless you upgrade. Google charges you if you pick the wrong region. Read the catch before you build.
Free VPS offers compared
| Provider | What’s free | CPU / RAM | How long | Card needed? | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oracle Cloud Always Free | Ampere A1 Arm VMs + 2 AMD micro VMs, 200 GB block storage | A1: 2 OCPUs, 12 GB total. AMD micro: 1/8 OCPU, 1 GB each | No end date | Yes (verification) | Halved in June 2026; idle VMs can be reclaimed; popular regions often out of capacity |
| Google Cloud Free Tier | 1 e2-micro VM, 30 GB standard disk, 1 GB egress/mo | 2 shared vCPUs (25% sustained), 1 GB | No end date | Yes (billing account) | Only us-west1, us-central1, us-east1; other regions bill you |
| AWS Free Tier (accounts from July 15, 2025) | $100 credit + up to $100 more for onboarding tasks | t3.micro up to m7i-flex.large (2 vCPU, 8 GB) | 6 months or until credits run out | Yes | Account closes when the free plan ends unless you upgrade; data kept 90 days |
| Microsoft Azure free account | 750 hrs/mo of B1s, B2pts v2 or B2ats v2 VMs + $200 credit | B1s: 1 vCPU, 1 GB | VMs 12 months; credit 30 days | Yes (verification hold) | $200 credit vanishes after 30 days; VM hours stop after 12 months |
| Azure for Students | $100 credit + free services | Whatever $100 buys | 12 months, renewable while a student | No | Full-time students 18+ only; credit does not roll over |
| DigitalOcean signup credit | $5 credit | Whatever $5 buys | 90 days | Yes | Pay-as-you-go afterward; the old $200/60-day promo is no longer the standard offer |
| Akamai Cloud (Linode) trial | $100 credit | Most shared and dedicated plans | 60 days | Yes | Converts to pay-as-you-go; delete servers to avoid charges |
Sources for every row are listed at the end of the page, checked September 24, 2026.
Is a free cloud instance a real VPS?
In the strictest sense, every free offer on this page is a cloud-based instance, not a slice of one physical box. For the vast majority of folks interested in VPS hosting, this distinction won’t even be noticeable. That’s because once a physical server’s resources are portioned out to create a VPS in the cloud, there’s nothing about using the resulting virtualized server that differs from a VPS based on a single machine.
At the end of the equation, you’ll still have access to:
- A control panel (the provider’s web console)
- Disk space
- Operating-system-level features, including root
In other words, you can log in through the web interface or use a remote shell to access it via SSH just like any other server hosting setup. Not a big deal for the average user, but it can be a sticking point if you think too hard about the relatively minor distinction between VPS hosting services running directly on a single machine and running them across many machines providing cloud-based instances.
Oracle Cloud Always Free: still the biggest free VPS
Best for: a personal server, a small self-hosted app, or learning Linux on Arm.
What you get: Oracle’s docs say every tenancy gets the first 1,500 OCPU hours and 9,000 GB hours a month on the Ampere A1 shape. That works out to 2 OCPUs and 12 GB of memory running all month. You also get two AMD micro VMs (1/8 OCPU, 1 GB each) and 200 GB of block storage shared across them. New accounts also get a US$300 trial credit for up to 30 days. That would be a great set of features from a typical VPS host plan you pay for.
What changed: until June 15, 2026 the A1 allowance was 3,000 OCPU hours and 18,000 GB hours, or 4 cores and 24 GB. Oracle cut it in half by editing its documentation. No blog post, no customer email. Any guide still promising “4 cores and 24 GB free” is out of date.
Watch-outs:
– Oracle may reclaim a VM it deems idle. Its rule: over 7 days, 95th-percentile CPU, network and (on A1) memory use all under 20%.
– A card is required at sign-up for identity checks.
– Popular regions often run out of free A1 capacity, so you may wait to launch.
Verdict: as hosting plans go, it’s hard to complain about getting a proper VPS experience for free. Just be prepared to do some technically-savvy work to keep it running, because it is an unmanaged VPS. It is still the most generous free VPS you can get. It is also the clearest proof that “always free” means “free until the vendor changes the page”. Keep backups off the box.
Google Cloud e2-micro: small, stable, US only
Best for: a tiny bot, a cron job, a personal VPN or a static site with light traffic.
What you get: one e2-micro instance per month in us-west1 (Oregon), us-central1 (Iowa) or us-east1 (South Carolina), 30 GB of standard persistent disk and 1 GB of outbound traffic from North America. An e2-micro has 2 shared vCPUs that can burst but together sustain about a quarter of one vCPU, plus 1 GB of RAM. New customers also get $300 of credit for 90 days.
Watch-outs:
– Pick any other region and you pay normal rates.
– 1 GB of egress is small. A few busy days of image traffic can pass it.
– You need a billing account with a card.
When using Google’s free tier, you’re kind of getting a VPS in a cloud instance for free, but it’s an incredibly feature-restricted solution. Not surprisingly, you get a decidedly wimpy amount of RAM, just 1 GB. If you’re 100% sure your site will never outgrow the initial 30 GB of disk, though, it’s a good deal.
Verdict: the free VPS least likely to disappear under you. Also the least useful for anything with a database and real visitors.
AWS Free Tier: credits now, not “12 months free”
Best for: learning AWS itself, or a short project with an end date.
What you get: AWS changed the Free Tier on July 15, 2025. New accounts get $100 in credits at sign-up and can earn up to $100 more by completing onboarding tasks. The free plan ends after 6 months or when credits run out, whichever comes first. Free-plan accounts can launch t3.micro, t3.small, t4g.micro, t4g.small, c7i-flex.large and m7i-flex.large instances.
Accounts opened before that date keep the old 12-month model.
Watch-outs:
– When the free plan ends, AWS closes the account unless you upgrade to a paid plan. It keeps your data for 90 days, then deletes it.
– Bigger instances burn credits faster. An m7i-flex.large is not “free for 6 months” if you run it flat out.
Yes, it’s free to get started, but once you need to move up, you pay normal AWS rates. The folks at AWS are pretty upfront about their sales pitch.
Verdict: a generous sandbox. A poor home for anything you want running next year.
Microsoft Azure free account: 12 months of a small VM
Best for: Windows or .NET tinkering, or anyone already inside Microsoft’s tools.
What you get: $200 of credit for the first 30 days, then 12 months of free services. That includes up to 750 hours a month of B1s, B2pts v2 (Arm) or B2ats v2 (AMD) burstable VMs. 750 hours covers one VM running all month.
Watch-outs:
– The standard free account needs a credit or debit card plus phone verification, with a temporary verification hold.
– The $200 credit expires after 30 days even if you never touch it.
– The free VM hours stop at month 12.
For fans of Microsoft and its .NET platform, this is an especially appealing choice. Many hosting providers are happy to offer Linux-based solutions, but they’re not always the first folks who care to install an operating system like Windows. Azure is about as close as you’re going to get to a free VPS server that employs Windows, and each VM supports remote access over RDP or SSH. If you have to have a Windows environment or .NET compatibility, Azure is the free option to try first.
Verdict: solid for a year of learning. Plan your exit before month 12.
Free VPS for students: is there one without a credit card?
Yes. Azure for Students gives students who sign up with a school email a $100 credit to use within 12 months, with no card, and you can renew each year while you are a student. It is the only no-card option on this list. You can take advantage of the free credit without having to provide a credit card. If you’re not satisfied with the experience, you can simply let the account expire without renewing.
One student deal is gone. DigitalOcean left the GitHub Student Developer Pack: the last day to redeem its $200 credit was July 31, 2026, and every Pack credit expired August 1, 2026, even ones pitched as good for a year. If an old tutorial sent you there, that route is closed. Our hosting for students guide covers cheaper paid options.
Trial credits: DigitalOcean and Akamai (Linode)
These are not free VPS plans. They are prepaid trials that turn into bills.
- DigitalOcean: a $5 signup credit that expires after 90 days. You must add a payment method before you can create a Droplet. Older guides quote $200 for 60 days; DigitalOcean’s billing docs now list $5.
- Akamai Cloud (formerly Linode): $100 of credit for 60 days, payment method required, standard rates afterward.
Use them to test a stack. Put a calendar reminder a few days before the credit expires.
Which free VPS should you pick?
- You want a server that stays free: Oracle Always Free if you need RAM, Google e2-micro if you need predictability.
- You want to learn a cloud for a job: AWS or Azure, whichever your employer uses.
- You are a student with no card: Azure for Students.
- You are hosting a client site or a store: none of them. Pay for a VPS. Show me Hostwinds’ VPS plans
Cheap paid VPS if free won’t cut it
Free tiers break in boring ways: a reclaimed VM, a suspended account, a surprise egress bill. For anything other people depend on, a few dollars a month buys a plain contract and a support desk. Prices below were checked on September 24, 2026; confirm them at checkout because promotions change.
| Host | Entry VPS price | Entry specs | Renewal note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hostwinds | From $4.99/mo (unmanaged Linux) | 1 CPU, 1 GB RAM, 30 GB storage, 1 TB bandwidth | Check the live price |
| InterServer | Check the live price | Not confirmed (site blocked our tools) | Not confirmed |
| InMotion Hosting | Check the live price (managed VPS) | Varies by plan | Check the renewal rate |
InterServer is the third paid option. Its site blocked our fetcher on September 24 and again on October 24, 2026, so we are not quoting its price, plan sizes or renewal terms. Read all three at checkout. Show me InterServer’s VPS plans.
Hostwinds is the cheapest entry point we confirmed on a live pricing page, for people comfortable running Linux without a control panel. Impressively, the entry setup still includes one GB of RAM, a single CPU core and 30 GB of storage space. It might not be a free VPS server, but it’s still very good value for a few bucks a month. Just be prepared to do some technically-savvy work to keep it running because it is an unmanaged VPS. Show me today’s Hostwinds VPS price.
InMotion sells managed VPS plans, which cost more than unmanaged ones but put the server work on them, which matters if you do not want to patch a kernel on a Sunday. On a managed plan, they’ll handle the management of patches and updates to keep your system stable and secure. Show me InMotion’s managed VPS plans.
What to expect from a free or nearly-free VPS
Even on the free cloud tiers and the cheapest paid plans, you can expect to have a fully unmanaged experience.
While there might be some patching and updating performed, that’s just the hosting company protecting itself from messes on its hardware. If you install a PHP script and it wrecks your website, you’re not likely to get free managed support fixing whatever might have gone wrong. As you might expect in the free price range, you’re not going to get any real degree of support.
For this reason, the free approach isn’t one recommended to anyone who doesn’t have some technical chops. If you go for a super cheap plan and don’t know much about remoting into servers, make sure you find one that includes some degree of managed support. Even then, though, you’ll want to look for managed hosting if you’re not familiar with scary admin concepts like “root access” and “SSH.”
For people who have reasonably solid technical chops, there is something to be said for trying out a free solution or one that comes darn close to being no-cost. Even Google’s tiny e2-micro gives you a real Linux environment for deploying web pages and web apps. Maybe it won’t stay 100% free forever, but you also won’t suffer from existential dread every month when the server bill comes due.
Whether it’s a VPS free trial, some form of free with an asterisk or just a very low-cost solution, there are plenty of ways to get really, really close to not paying. In some cases, such as with AWS credits, you’ll have to closely monitor your consumption of resources. Other cases, such as Google’s e2-micro, cost nothing as long as you stay in the right region.
How we chose
WhatsTheHost did not run fresh hands-on tests for this update. Every limit and price above comes from the provider’s own free-tier page, docs or pricing page, checked September 24, 2026, plus dated news coverage for Oracle’s June 2026 cut. We dropped any 2021 entry we could not confirm on the vendor’s own site today. See our methodology for how we score hosts.
FAQ
Is there a truly free VPS with no credit card?
Only for students. Azure for Students gives $100 of credit to use within 12 months without a card. Oracle, Google, AWS, Azure’s standard account, DigitalOcean and Akamai all require a card or payment method at sign-up.
Is Oracle Cloud’s free tier still 4 cores and 24 GB RAM?
No. Since June 15, 2026 the Always Free Ampere A1 allowance is 1,500 OCPU hours and 9,000 GB hours a month, equal to 2 OCPUs and 12 GB of RAM running continuously.
Does AWS still give 12 months free?
Not for accounts created on or after July 15, 2025. Those get up to $200 in credits and a free plan that lasts 6 months or until the credits are used. Older accounts keep the legacy 12-month offer.
Can I host a WordPress site on a free VPS?
You can, on Oracle’s A1 allowance or an Azure B1s. On Google’s 1 GB e2-micro, WordPress plus MySQL will be tight. For a site that earns money, use paid hosting with backups and support.
Are free VPS sites safe?
The big-cloud offers are as safe as your configuration. Unknown “free VPS” sites are not worth the risk: you cannot verify who controls the hardware or your data.
Sources
- Oracle Cloud Infrastructure: Always Free Resources (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- heise online: Oracle halves free cloud resources (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- InfoQ: Oracle Quietly Halves Free Tier Ampere A1 Compute Limits (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Oracle: FAQ on Oracle’s Cloud Free Tier (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Google Cloud: Free Google Cloud features and trial offer (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Google Cloud: Free Trial and Free Tier (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Google Cloud: General-purpose machine family (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- AWS What’s New: $200 in credits and 6-month free plan (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- AWS Free Tier FAQs (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- AWS Billing docs: AWS Free Tier (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Amazon EC2 docs: Track your Free Tier usage (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Microsoft Learn: Create services included with Azure free account (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Microsoft Q&A: Using Azure free tier without credit card (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Microsoft Azure: Azure for Students (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- DigitalOcean Docs: Signup Credit (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- GitHub Community: DigitalOcean leaving the Student Developer Pack (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Akamai: $100 free credit offer (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Hostwinds: Unmanaged Linux VPS (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- InterServer: VPS hosting (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- InMotion Hosting: VPS hosting (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Microsoft Azure: Azure free account (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Microsoft Learn: B-series sizes (retrieved 2026-09-24)
- AWS: Amazon EC2 M7i instances (retrieved 2026-09-24)
Related
- Self-hosting AI models for beginners
- Web hosting for students
- Best website monitoring services
- InterServer hosting review
- Kinsta review
Update log
- : Rewrote and fact-checked the page: the first full update since 2021. Kept Joe’s original writing where it still holds.
- : Prices and facts checked against the cited sources, read September 24, 2026 to October 24, 2026.
