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Free VPS: verified free cloud servers
The bottom line: only 2 VMs are truly free forever — Oracle Always Free and Google Cloud e2-micro — and both require a card. The other 5 are time-limited trials or credits (AWS, Azure, Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, Kamatera), 1 is students-only (Azure for Students, the only one explicitly card-free), and 1 is a free sandbox (InstaBox, a 4 vCPU / 8 GiB machine, not a traditional VPS). The four groups stay separate: trials are never written as permanent. Every entry states its card, region, reclaim, and expiry rules, with the verification date and official link in the table.
This section follows the same rule as the free credits overview: only content checked against vendor official pages — no invite links, resellers, or task-renewal hosts. Pick a group first, then open the detail page for the entry you want.
Group 1: Always free (2 entries)
No fixed end date, but both have card, region, and (for Oracle) idle-reclaim rules. Read the rules before registering.
| Vendor / offer | Free specs (official wording) | Duration | Card? | Region limits | Reclaim / expiry risk | Verified |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Always Free cloud servers (Oracle Cloud) | A1 (Arm): first 1,500 OCPU hours + 9,000 GB hours/month (equivalent to 2 OCPU / 12 GB); up to 2 E2.1.Micro (AMD); 200 GB block storage; 10 TB outbound/month; plus US$300 trial credit | No fixed end date; trial credit 30 days | Card required (identity verification) | Home region only; A1 not available in South Korea North (Chuncheon) | Idle 7 days may trigger reclaim; capacity errors common; account idle 30+ days may be treated as abandoned | 2026-11-12 · Official docs |
| Google Cloud Free Tier: e2-micro free forever + $300 trial | 1 non-preemptible e2-micro/month; 30 GB-months standard persistent disk; 1 GB outbound/month (from North America, excl. China/Australia); plus $300 welcome credit | Free Tier has no end date (30 days’ notice for changes); trial 90 days | Card required (payment verification) | Only 3 US regions: us-west1, us-central1, us-east1 | Unused limits don’t roll over; 30-day grace period after trial ends, then deletion | 2026-11-12 · Official docs |
Group 2: Trials / credits (5 entries)
Each has a clear end time or credit cap, and what happens afterwards differs (disabled, deleted, or switched to billing) — check the “Reclaim / expiry” column before starting. Kamatera is an independent vendor trial, marked separately.
| Vendor / offer | Free specs (official wording) | Duration | Card? | Region limits | Reclaim / expiry risk | Verified |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AWS Free Tier: up to $200 credits / 6 months (new accounts) | Up to $200 credits ($100 on signup + up to $100 more for exploring services); 30+ always-free services; no fixed free EC2 VM | Up to 6 months or until credits run out (cannot be extended) | Most new customers need no payment method; identity verification may be required in some cases | China (Ningxia/Beijing) and GovCloud regions unavailable | Account suspended at expiry, data kept 90 days, then permanently deleted if not upgraded; official FAQ gives both 6-month and 12-month wordings for credit expiry | 2026-11-12 · Official FAQ |
| Azure free account: $200 credit + 750 VM hours / 12 months | $200 credit; B1s, B2pts v2 (Arm), B2ats v2 (AMD) 750 hours each/month (Linux or Windows); 20+ monthly free amounts + 65+ always-free services | $200 credit 30 days; free amounts 12 months | Card required (phone + card verification) | Per-region VM availability per the official page | Must switch to pay-as-you-go within 30 days or services are disabled; after 12 months services keep running at pay-as-you-go prices | 2026-11-12 · Official page |
| Alibaba Cloud ECS free trial: ¥300 personal / ¥660 enterprise, 3-month credit model | Personal ¥300 total credits; Enterprise ¥660 total credits; credit model (total credits + hourly offset cap + validity) | 3 months | Not stated in the campaign page body — check the official page | Available regions as shown on cards after login | Over cap/exhausted/expired = pay-as-you-go; instances are not auto-released at expiry | 2026-11-12 · Official campaign page |
| Tencent Cloud Free Trial Center: Lighthouse/CVM 1 month + BF1 7 days | Lighthouse: 2C2G/4C8G/2C4G tiers; CVM: 2C2G/2C4G; BF1: 2C4G/4C8G (specs on cards) | Lighthouse/CVM 1 month; BF1 7 days | Not stated in the campaign page body — check the official page | Not stated in the campaign page body — check the official page | Product new users only; daily limited, first come first served; card specs change | 2026-11-12 · Official campaign page |
| Kamatera 30-day trial: 1 server, up to $100 configuration (credit card required) | 1 server, configuration up to $100; 1 TB free traffic (inbound + outbound); no fixed specs | 30 days | Card required (valid credit card) | Data center list per the official page | Billing starts if not cancelled (server terminated) at expiry | 2026-11-12 · Official FAQ |
Group 3: Students only (1 entry)
| Vendor / offer | Free specs (official wording) | Duration | Card? | Region limits | Reclaim / expiry risk | Verified |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Azure for Students: $100 credit / 12 months, no credit card | $100 Azure credit + some free services (content may change) | 12 months | No credit card needed | Not stated on the official offer details page — check the official page | Subscription disabled when credits run out; full-time students only, school email verification required | 2026-11-12 · Official offer page |
Group 4: Free sandbox / cloud computer (1 entry)
Not a traditional VPS: a sandbox machine for AI agents, with pause and single-run limits. The free tier has no fixed end date, but the product is still in beta.
| Vendor / offer | Free specs (official wording) | Duration | Card? | Region limits | Reclaim / expiry risk | Verified |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| InstaBox free tier: 1 sandbox machine with 4 vCPU / 8 GB (not a traditional VPS) | 1 machine 4 vCPU / 8 GiB (Firecracker microVM, Debian 13), 20 GiB persistent disk, 5 snapshots, 100 GiB outbound/month (inbound free) | Free tier has no fixed end date (official blog commits to keeping the free tier; pricing v1, may change); auto-pause after 30 min idle, max single run 120 min (grows to 480 min) | Not stated in the official pricing docs — check the official page | No regions stated in the official pricing docs; external access via public HTTPS links per published port; dedicated inbound IPv4 not in official docs | Beta product (launched 2026-10-14); early accounts’ 5 free sandboxes end 2026-12-01; files kept after pause, wiped only when the machine is deleted | 2026-11-13 · Official pricing docs |
Services not in the list, and why
The following vendors or claims could not be verified on an official page, are not sold by the vendor itself, or have unclear terms, so they are not shown as verified offers. The reasons are given below — not as recommendations.
- Huawei Cloud free trial: the official free page returned homepage content when checked; no current spec card was verified, status unclear.
- Vultr and DigitalOcean new-user credits: second-hand sources contradict each other on amounts and validity, no official page was verified, and most are tied to referral links (see the Deals section, where they are under deal rules).
- Cloudways: no official page verified, and it is a managed layer (reselling other clouds’ resources), which fails the vendor-direct-only rule.
- AccuWebHosting free Windows VPS: second-hand sources only, no official page verified.
- Baidu AI Cloud BCC free trial: only a 2021 article was found, no current official page — treated as ended or status unclear.
- GratisVPS, VPSWala, and other small “permanently free” hosts: no verifiable official terms or business information.
- Abeiyun, Sanfengyun, Rainyun, and other task-renewal hosts: require posting, check-ins, or points to renew, which fails the official-terms-only rule. (Sanfengyun is in the Deals section under deal rules.)
- IONOS, Hostinger, and other “money-back guarantee” offers: a refund guarantee is not a free trial.
- Ended claims: Oracle Always Free 4 OCPU / 24 GB (docs changed to 2 OCPU / 12 GB in June 2026); AWS 12-month free EC2 (new accounts moved to the credit model). Tutorials still writing these are out of date.
Added 2026-11-13: trial credits (Vultr, DigitalOcean, Akamai, Hetzner) and Sanfengyun are in the VPS Deals section under deal rules (verified on official pages, expiry dates and risks stated, marked separately from free).
Change log (per official pages and docs dates)
- 2026-06-12: Oracle official docs updated: Always Free A1 allowance changed to 1,500 OCPU hours + 9,000 GB hours per month (equivalent to 2 OCPU / 12 GB). Community reports say it took effect from August 18, 2026 (community claim, not an official announcement).
- From 2025-07-15 (date per second-hand sources): AWS new accounts moved to the $200 credit / 6-month model; the old 12-month free EC2 is no longer offered to new accounts; the official FAQ describes only the credit model.
- Sep–Oct 2026: AWS new signup flow launched; the official FAQ states most new customers do not need a payment method to register.
- From 2026-11-16: for trials registered or upgrades made on or after this date, the GCP $300 credit cannot pay for Gemini platform service fees (official docs wording); the $300 credit already could not pay for Gemini API fees in AI Studio.
- 2026-10-19: InstaBox announced pricing: free tier with 1 machine at 4 vCPU / 8 GiB (official blog).
- 2026-11-13: InstaBox free tier added (9th entry), verified against the official pricing docs.
- 2026-12-01: early accounts’ 5-free-sandbox grace period ends; after that each account can run only 1 free sandbox at a time (official pricing docs).
Machine-readable data: data/vps-en.json (9 entries, English text, facts identical to the Chinese data file).