Cloud Free Tier Comparison (2026)
Compare free tier offerings across 8 cloud providers. Find always-free services and trial credits.
AWS$0 credit
No initial credit (free tier items only)
4
Always Free
9
12-Month
14
Total Free
Azure$200 credit
30 days
7
Always Free
7
12-Month
14
Total Free
GCP$300 credit
90 days
9
Always Free
0
12-Month
9
Total Free
DO$200 credit
60 days
6
Always Free
0
12-Month
6
Total Free
Linode$100 credit
60 days
4
Always Free
0
12-Month
4
Total Free
OCI$300 credit
30 days + Always Free tier
12
Always Free
0
12-Month
12
Total Free
Free Tier Comparison Table
| Service | AWS | Azure | GCP | DO | Linode | OCI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Compute | ||||||
| EC2 | 750 hrs/mo 12 months | - | - | - | - | - |
| Lightsail | 750 hrs/mo (smallest) 12 months | - | - | - | - | - |
| Virtual Machines | - | 750 hrs/mo 12 months | - | - | - | - |
| Compute Engine | - | - | 1 instance in us-west1/us-central1/us-east1 Always free | - | - | - |
| Storage | ||||||
| S3 | 5 GB 12 months | - | - | - | - | - |
| EBS | 30 GB 12 months | - | - | - | - | - |
| EFS | 5 GB 12 months | - | - | - | - | - |
| Blob Storage | - | 5 GB 12 months | - | - | - | - |
| Managed Disks | - | 2x 64 GB disks 12 months | - | - | - | - |
| Azure Files | - | 100 GB 12 months | - | - | - | - |
| Cloud Storage | - | - | 5 GB in US regions Always free | - | - | - |
| Persistent Disk | - | - | 30 GB in US regions Always free | - | - | - |
| Filestore | - | - | No free tier | - | - | - |
| Database | ||||||
| RDS | 750 hrs/mo 12 months | - | - | - | - | - |
| DynamoDB | 25 GB storage, 25 RCU/WCU Always free | - | - | - | - | - |
| ElastiCache | 750 hrs/mo 12 months | - | - | - | - | - |
| SQL Database | - | 100K vCore-sec, 32 GB 12 months | - | - | - | - |
| Cosmos DB | - | 1000 RU/s, 25 GB Always free | - | - | - | - |
| Cache for Redis | - | 250 MB, 750 hrs/mo 12 months | - | - | - | - |
| Cloud SQL | - | - | No free tier | - | - | - |
| Firestore | - | - | 50K reads, 20K writes, 1 GB/day Always free | - | - | - |
| Memorystore | - | - | No free tier | - | - | - |
| Serverless | ||||||
| Lambda | 1M requests, 400K GB-sec/mo Always free | - | - | - | - | - |
| API Gateway | 1M calls/mo 12 months | - | - | - | - | - |
| Functions | - | 1M executions/mo Always free | - | 90,000 GiB-sec/mo Always free | - | - |
| API Management | - | 1M calls/mo free Always free | - | - | - | - |
| Cloud Functions | - | - | 2M invocations, 400K GB-sec/mo Always free | - | - | - |
| Containers | ||||||
| EKS | $0 for first cluster (trial) 12 months | - | - | - | - | - |
| ECR | 500 MB/mo Always free | - | - | - | - | - |
| Container Apps | - | 180K vCPU-sec, 360K GiB-sec/mo Always free | - | - | - | - |
| AKS | - | Free (pay for nodes only) Always free | - | - | - | - |
| Container Registry | - | 10 GB storage (paid) Always free | - | 1 repo, 500 MiB storage Always free | - | - |
| Cloud Run | - | - | 2M requests, 360K vCPU-sec/mo Always free | - | - | - |
| GKE | - | - | 1 zonal cluster free (pay for nodes) Always free | - | - | - |
| Artifact Registry | - | - | 500 MB Always free | - | - | - |
| Networking | ||||||
| CloudFront | 1 TB/mo Always free | - | - | - | - | - |
| Route 53 | No free tier | - | - | - | - | - |
| Azure CDN | - | 15 GB outbound/mo 12 months | - | - | - | - |
| Cloud CDN | - | - | No free tier | - | - | - |
| Cloud DNS | - | - | No free tier | - | - | - |
| AI / ML | ||||||
| SageMaker | 250 hrs/mo (ml.t3.medium) 12 months | - | - | - | - | - |
| AI Search | - | 3 indexes, 50 MB storage Always free | - | - | - | - |
| Azure ML | - | No free tier | - | - | - | - |
| Vertex AI | - | - | No free tier | - | - | - |
| Gemini API | - | - | 15 RPM / 1M TPM (Gemini Flash) Always free | - | - | - |
Provider Free Tier Details
AWS Free Tier
Complete list of Amazon Web Services free services
Azure Free Tier
Complete list of Microsoft Azure free services
GCP Free Tier
Complete list of Google Cloud Platform free services
DO Free Tier
Complete list of DigitalOcean free services
Linode Free Tier
Complete list of Linode (Akamai) free services
OCI Free Tier
Complete list of Oracle Cloud free services