Free Trials and Promotional Credits Across Cloud Providers: What Is Actually Included
A side-by-side look at the free tiers, trial credits and promotional offers of twelve cloud providers, what each is designed for, and the rules that apply to all of them.
Nearly every cloud provider will let you try the platform without paying, but the offers differ in kind as much as in amount. Some give an ongoing free tier with usage limits. Some give a one-time credit that expires. Some give both, and Oracle gives resources that never expire at all. This guide compares the offers as documented at the time of writing and explains the rules that apply to all of them. Amounts and durations change often, so confirm the current terms on each provider’s official page before planning around a number.
Free tier versus trial credit #
- A free tier is ongoing usage at no charge within fixed limits: so many hours of a small instance, so many gigabytes of storage, so many requests. Some free tiers last twelve months from sign-up; others are permanent.
- A trial credit is a one-time balance applied to the account that pays for any eligible usage until it is spent or expires.
- Always Free (Oracle’s term) is a permanent free tier of specific resources with capacity limits.
The distinction matters because a credit can mask what your workload will cost once it runs out. Our guide to the Google Cloud free trial versus free tier works through a concrete example.
The offers compared #
| Provider | Offer (as documented at the time of writing) |
|---|---|
| AWS | A Free Tier that new accounts may qualify for, limited in scope and duration; some services have always-free allowances |
| Google Cloud | A one-time trial credit plus an ongoing Free Tier of limited usage on many common products, available to all users |
| Microsoft Azure | A credit for new users valid for 30 days, plus twelve months of free access to popular services within limits |
| DigitalOcean | A promotional credit for new accounts valid for a limited period, plus a free App Platform tier for static sites and a free Kubernetes control plane |
| Linode (Akamai Cloud) | A promotional credit for new accounts valid for a limited period; the LKE control plane is free |
| Oracle Cloud | A trial credit valid for up to 30 days, plus Always Free resources that never expire, including Arm compute, Autonomous Databases and storage |
| Hetzner | A small trial credit for new accounts; promo and referral codes have offered more. Offers change, so verify on Hetzner’s site |
| UpCloud | A 14-day free trial with credit; during the trial the firewall is locked to common web ports and port 25 is blocked |
| Alibaba Cloud | Free trial credits for new users, and a large allowance of free tokens for its Qwen AI models |
| Kamatera | A 30-day free trial including a services allowance and included traffic |
| Amazon SES | New AWS accounts may receive Free Tier credit applicable to SES; the sandbox limits apply until production access is granted |
| OVHcloud | No general trial credit; promotions vary by product and region |
What free offers are designed for #
Free tiers and credits exist so that individuals and teams can learn the platform, prototype and run small workloads before committing. They suit exactly the experimentation described in our developer use cases guide. They are not designed to run a production business at no cost, and providers tune the limits accordingly.
Rules that apply to every offer #
- One per person or organization. Trial credits are granted once to a new customer. Creating multiple accounts to collect repeated credits violates every provider’s terms and is detected by payment and identity checks.
- Verification is required. Providers verify new accounts with a payment method and, in some cases, identity documents. The card is for verification and for usage beyond the free allowance.
- Credits are not transferable. A credit belongs to the account it was granted to. It cannot be moved to another account, and accounts cannot be sold or handed over with their credit; providers close accounts used that way.
- Credits expire. Track the expiry date and know what the workload will cost afterwards.
- Limits still apply. New accounts have service quotas regardless of credit; GPU and email sending limits in particular start low.
- Clean-up is your job. When a trial ends, resources outside the free tier are stopped and eventually deleted unless you upgrade, so keep backups of anything you want to keep.
Making the most of a trial #
- Set a budget alert on day one, even if the balance is free, so you learn what the workload costs.
- Use the trial to test the things that are hard to judge from documentation: console usability, region latency, support responsiveness.
- Tag everything you create so clean-up at the end is one filter and one delete.
- Read the free tier page for the exact limits; the usual surprises are outbound traffic and storage snapshots.
Reading a free tier page #
Free tier pages are written in units that are easy to misread. “750 hours per month” of a small instance means one instance running continuously, not several. “Five gigabytes of storage” usually excludes snapshots and outbound transfer. “First twelve months” starts at sign-up, not first use. And an always-free allowance is typically per account, not per region or project, so spreading usage across projects does not multiply it. When in doubt, create the resource, wait a day and look at the cost report.
Official references #
Each provider maintains an official free tier or trial page: AWS Free Tier, Google Cloud Free Program, Azure free account, DigitalOcean and Linode promotions, Oracle Cloud Free Tier, Hetzner, UpCloud, Alibaba Cloud and Kamatera trial pages. Treat those pages as the source of truth for current amounts.
Frequently asked questions #
Which provider has the most generous free offer?
Oracle Cloud’s Always Free tier is unusual for including permanent Arm compute and databases; Google Cloud’s ongoing Free Tier is broad; Azure and the developer clouds lead with time-limited credits. The best one is the one on the platform you will actually use afterwards.
Can I get a second trial credit?
No. Trials are one per new customer, and providers enforce this through payment and identity verification.
What happens when the credit runs out?
Billing switches to your payment method for usage beyond any ongoing free tier, or resources are stopped if you have not upgraded, depending on the provider.
