🕒 AS OF October, 2026

TL;DR Link to heading

Provider Best For Key Always-Free Resource Caveat
Cloudflare Edge, CDN, Workers 100k Workers req/day + free egress R2 Strict CPU limits on Workers
Supabase Mobile/web app backends 500 MB DB + 50k MAU (2 projects) Pauses after 1 week inactivity
Firebase Mobile/web app backends Firestore + Auth + Hosting (Spark plan) Quota exceeded incurs service shuts off
Vercel Next.js / frontend apps 100 GB transfer + 1M function invocations Non-commercial / personal use only
Oracle Cloud Always-on VMs 2 OCPU + 12 GB Arm (or 2 AMD micros) Capacity shortages & idle reclaim
Google Cloud Small permanent VM + serverless 1× e2-micro (US regions only) Limited regions & Exceeding limits incurs charges
AWS Serverless stacks Lambda 1M req + DynamoDB 25 GB Exceeding limits incurs charges
Azure Functions + Cosmos DB 1M Functions + Cosmos free tier Exceeding limits incurs charges
IBM Cloud Specific managed services 40+ Lite plans Inactivity sleep/deletion

1. Cloudflare – Free Plan Link to heading

Best for:

  • Edge computing, CDN, DNS, serverless functions, and static sites.
  • Excellent for personal and hobby projects.

Key Always Free resources:

  • DNS, global CDN, Universal SSL, unmetered DDoS protection, and basic WAF.
  • Workers: 100,000 requests per day + 10 ms CPU time per request.
  • Pages (static / JAMstack hosting).
  • R2 object storage (free egress).
  • KV, D1 (SQLite), and other developer platform features with free quotas.
  • Analytics, basic bot protection, etc.

Limitations & caveats:

  • Workers CPU time is strictly limited to 10 ms per invocation.
  • Daily request caps apply (excess requests return errors).
  • Heavier commercial use may require paid plans.
  • No traditional virtual machines.

2. Supabase – Free Plan Link to heading

Best for:

  • Open-source Postgres backend alternative to Firebase (auth + database + storage).
  • Excellent for side projects and learning

Key Always Free resources:

  • 2 active projects.
  • Database: 500 MB per project (shared CPU, ~500 MB RAM).
  • Auth: 50,000 monthly active users.
  • File Storage: 1 GB.
  • Egress: 5 GB (+ 5 GB cached).
  • Edge Functions: 500,000 invocations per month.
  • Realtime: 200 concurrent connections + message limits.
  • Unlimited API requests within the other limits.

Limitations & caveats:

  • Projects pause after 1 week of inactivity (data is preserved; resume from the dashboard).
  • No automatic backups; log retention is short (typically 1 day).
  • Shared compute only; community support.
  • Built-in email sending is rate-limited (e.g., ~2 emails/hour); use custom SMTP for real users.
  • Sustained production traffic usually requires the Pro plan.

3. Firebase (Google) – Spark Plan Link to heading

Best for:

  • Mobile and web app backends (authentication, database, hosting).
  • Ideal for prototypes and smaller apps;

Key Always Free resources:

  • Authentication: Up to 50,000 monthly active users (most providers; phone/SMS more limited).
  • Cloud Firestore: 1 GiB storage; 50,000 document reads / 20,000 writes / 20,000 deletes per day; 10 GiB network egress/month.
  • Realtime Database: 1 GB storage; 10 GB downloads/month; 100 simultaneous connections.
  • Hosting: 10 GB storage; ~360 MB/day (or ~10 GB/month) data transfer; custom domain + SSL included.
  • Fully free (no billing quotas): Analytics, Crashlytics, Cloud Messaging (FCM), A/B Testing, App Check, Performance Monitoring, Remote Config, etc.

Limitations & caveats:

  • Exceeding a product’s free quota shuts that specific product off for the remainder of the month (no charges on Spark).
  • Some Cloud Storage behaviors changed in 2026 and may require the Blaze plan.
  • Production scale usually needs Blaze (pay-as-you-go while keeping free quotas).

4. Vercel – Hobby Plan Link to heading

Best for:

  • Next.js and modern frontend / full-stack web applications
  • Ideal for portfolios, side projects, learning, and non-commercial applications.

Key Always Free resources (monthly):

  • Fast Data Transfer: 100 GB.
  • Fast Origin Transfer: 10 GB.
  • CDN Requests: 1,000,000.
  • Function Invocations: 1,000,000.
  • Active CPU: 4 CPU-hours.
  • Provisioned Memory: 360 GB-hours.
  • Image Transformations: 5,000.
  • Web Analytics: 50,000 events.
  • Projects: 200.
  • Deployments: 100 per day.
  • Domains: 50 per project.
  • Function max duration: 300 seconds (5 minutes).
  • Automatic HTTPS, preview deployments, Git integrations, etc.

Limitations & important rules:

  • Restricted to non-commercial, personal use only. Commercial use (client work, ads, payments, monetized sites, business sites, etc.) requires a Pro or Enterprise plan.
  • Exceeding most limits pauses the affected feature until approximately 30 days have passed (no overage purchases on Hobby).
  • Concurrent builds: 1.
  • runtime logs: 1 hour.
  • No team collaboration features or email support.

5. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) - Always Free Tier Link to heading

Best for:

  • Permanent always-on VMs and self-hosted applications with usable specs.
  • Excellent pure free compute among major providers.

Key Always Free resources:

  • Compute: 2 × AMD-based micro VMs (1/8 OCPU + 1 GB RAM each) or Ampere A1 (Arm) capacity of 1,500 OCPU-hours + 9,000 GB-hours per month (≈ 2 OCPUs + 12 GB always-on, or split across instances).
  • Storage: 200 GB block volume storage + backups; limited object storage (10–20 GB).
  • Networking: Up to ~10 TB outbound data transfer per month; Load Balancer (10 Mbps); 2 VCNs; Site-to-Site VPN.
  • Databases: Up to 2 Autonomous Databases (ATP/ADW/JSON/APEX – 20 GB each); limited NoSQL Database and HeatWave.
  • Other: Monitoring, Logging, Notifications, APEX, Service Connector Hub, etc.

Limitations & caveats:

  • Arm capacity is frequently exhausted in popular regions (provisioning can fail for days).
  • Idle Always Free instances can be reclaimed by Oracle.
  • Some resources restricted to the account’s home region.
  • Credit card required for signup.
  • More hands-on management required.

6. Google Cloud Platform (GCP) - Always Free Tier Link to heading

Best for:

  • Small permanent VM + strong serverless and analytics free tier.

Key Always Free resources:

  • Compute Engine: 1 × e2-micro instance per month (limited to us-west1, us-central1, or us-east1) + 30 GB standard persistent disk.
  • Cloud Storage: 5 GB-months (US regions).
  • Cloud Run: 2 million requests/month + compute time allowances.
  • Cloud Functions: 2 million invocations + GB-seconds.
  • Firestore: 1 GiB storage + daily operations (50k reads / 20k writes / 20k deletes).
  • BigQuery: 1 TB queries per month.
  • GKE: 1 zonal or Autopilot cluster management (pay only for nodes).
  • Other: Artifact Registry (0.5 GB), Pub/Sub (10 GB), Secret Manager, Cloud Build, limited AI APIs, etc.

Limitations & caveats:

  • e2-micro restricted to only three US regions.
  • Very low free egress (~1 GB/month from North America).
  • Exceeding limits incurs charges (most services do not auto-shut off).

7. Amazon Web Services (AWS) - Always Free Tier Link to heading

Best for:

  • Serverless architectures (Lambda + DynamoDB).

Key Always Free resources (monthly limits):

  • AWS Lambda: 1 million requests + 400,000 GB-seconds of compute.
  • Amazon DynamoDB: 25 GB storage + 25 read/write capacity units.
  • Amazon CloudFront: 1 TB data transfer out + 10 million HTTP/HTTPS requests.
  • Amazon SNS: 1 million publishes + limited email notifications.
  • Amazon SQS: 1 million requests.
  • Amazon Cognito: Limited monthly active users.
  • Other: CloudWatch (basic metrics/alarms), CodeBuild (limited minutes), Glue Data Catalog, KMS requests, Step Functions, X-Ray, ECR (500 MB), and 30+ services total.

Limitations & caveats:

  • No permanent free EC2 instances for accounts created after the mid-2025 changes (credits replaced the old 12-month t2/t3.micro).
  • S3 always-free storage is limited or unavailable for many new accounts; egress is charged.
  • Free account plan (with credits) closes after ~6 months if not upgraded; Always Free services continue on a paid plan.
  • Exceeding limits results in charges.

8. Microsoft Azure - Always Free Tier Link to heading

Best for:

  • Serverless functions, Cosmos DB, and Microsoft ecosystem integration.

Key Always Free resources:

  • Azure Functions (Consumption): 1 million executions + 400,000 GB-seconds.
  • Azure Cosmos DB: 1,000 RU/s provisioned throughput + 25 GB storage (one free-tier account per subscription).
  • Azure App Service: F1 Free tier (shared compute, limited CPU minutes/day, 1 GB storage).
  • Azure Static Web Apps: Free tier.
  • Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS): Management plane free (pay for worker nodes).
  • Azure DevOps: Up to 5 users, unlimited private Git repos, limited pipeline minutes.
  • Other: Event Grid (operations), Key Vault (operations), various AI services (limited units), Azure Monitor (basic), and many more.

Limitations & caveats:

  • No permanent free virtual machines (B-series limited to 12 months for new customers).
  • App Service F1 has daily CPU limits and is not intended for production workloads with SLA.
  • Cosmos DB free tier is restricted to one account per subscription.
  • Exceeding limits incurs standard charges.

9. IBM Cloud – Lite Plans Link to heading

Best for:

  • Specific managed services without time limits.

Key Always Free resources:

  • 40+ Lite plans that never expire and never bill (typically one instance per service).
  • Cloud Object Storage: 25 GB/month.
  • Cloudant: 1 GB.
  • Other: Various databases, messaging services, Continuous Delivery, limited Watson services, Container Registry, and more.

Limitations & caveats:

  • Applications/services may sleep after periods of inactivity (e.g., 10 days) and can be deleted after longer inactivity (30+ days) unless reactivated.
  • Some services require periodic reactivation (every 30–45 days).
  • Resource limits are modest; only community support is available on Lite plans.
  • No broad free virtual machines — focused on individual managed services.