Every free cloud iaas tier that clears our bar in 2026: 5 offers meet the criteria and 3 offers are demoted with a named reason. Recorded changes and a published ranking method. We could not confirm today's terms for 4 of them: on 2 the page we cite did not answer, and on 2 our own read did not confirm them. Each row says why.

Best Free Cloud IaaS Tools

Every free cloud iaas tier that clears our bar today. Updated 2026-09-30.

5 offers meet our criteria for this category. Of those, 4 carry no recorded change to the terms we publish, and 1 a recorded narrowing. The Durability column below says which offer is in which group, and links the dated record behind every change. We do not rank these by how much you get, because the limits are not comparable without reading each vendor's page. They are listed in an order that rotates daily. Here is how that order is derived. There is no top slot here to sell.
Why trust this data? Every free tier is verified against the vendor's pricing page with dates tracked. We monitor 476 pricing changes and flag vendors that have reduced or removed free tiers. Rankings start every offer at zero and can only demote. There is no signal a vendor can acquire, lobby for, or buy — there is nothing to add. A record reaches a function page when its category names the function or when it carries a subtype label that names the function. Adding a label to a record publishes it here; removing one withdraws it. No page holds a list of vendors. See all 12 cloud iaas offers →
1
Always Free

Always Free: 1 non-preemptible e2-micro VM (us-west1, us-central1, or us-east1), 30 GB standard persistent disk, 1 GB North America egress. GPUs/TPUs excluded

2
Floci stable
Open Source

Open-source AWS service emulator — the leading community replacement for LocalStack CE. 20+ AWS services supported with 408/408 SDK tests passing. 90 MB Docker image (vs LocalStack's 1.0 GB), 24ms startup (vs 3.3s). MIT license, no auth token required. v1.0.4 released March 2026 Best for startups. The page we cite for Floci states in words that it is free, which confirms the price — the limits stated here come from our own record rather than from that page.

3
Azure stable
Free Tier

65+ always-free services: Functions (1 million requests/month, Consumption plan), Container Apps (180,000 vCPU seconds, 360,000 GiB seconds, 2 million requests), SQL Database (10 serverless databases, 100,000 vCore seconds and 32 GB each a month), Cosmos DB (1,000 RU/s, 25 GB), App Service (10 apps), Entra ID (50,000 objects), DevOps (5 users). 12 months for new customers: B2pts v2 and B2ats v2 VMs (750 hours each), Blob Storage (5 GB), Disk Storage (2 64 GB P6 SSDs). $200 credit for 30 days, spending limit on by default; move to pay-as-you-go to continue.

4
AWS stable
Free Tier

Always-free tier includes Lambda (1M invocations/mo), DynamoDB (25 GB), CloudWatch. New accounts get $100 credit at sign-up + up to $100 more via activities, free plan for 6 months

Recorded, but does not affect rank:
  • effective 2026-01-04 — pricing restructured: EC2 Capacity Blocks for ML GPU prices increased ~15% across regions. p5e.48xlarge went from $34.61 to $39.80/hr (US East) and $43.26 to $49.75/hr (US West N. California) Source ↗
5
Oracle Cloud stable
Always Free

Always Free includes 2 AMD VMs (1/8 OCPU, 1 GB each), Arm Ampere A1 at 2 OCPUs and 12 GB total across 1-2 VMs, 200 GB block volumes, 20 GB object storage, 2 Autonomous Databases, Load Balancer Best for open source projects.

Recorded, but does not affect rank:
  • discovered 2026-09-02 · effective date unknown — pricing restructured: The description of the Always Free tier has changed. The tier still exists, the specific VM details are different. Source ↗

Demoted — and exactly why

These offers reach this page too and rank below the list above. Each one names the recorded fact behind it. A recorded limit reduction, pricing restructure or new restriction is shown on every surface where the offer appears, with its date and summary — but it does not move rank. We have change records for only 16% of vendors, and disproportionately for well-known ones, so ranking on them would demote the vendors we happen to watch most closely.

−1
Open Source

Open-source local AWS emulator. v0.1 supports 89 resource types including VPCs, EC2 instances, security groups, and EBS volumes — EC2 emulation is unique among LocalStack alternatives. Includes awscli drop-in wrapper and terlocal terraform wrapper. No AWS account or Docker required. Runs entirely on your machine. The page we cite for this offer states no amount, tier or rate we can read when we last looked, on 2026-09-02, so we cannot confirm these terms today.

  • −1 stale_verification Our last read of the vendor's pricing page, on 2026-09-02, could read no amount, tier or rate on the page. This is our confidence in the record, not a change by the vendor. (a limit of ours, not a change by the vendor)
−1
Open Source

Open-source LocalStack alternative for running AWS services locally. Supports S3, DynamoDB, Lambda, SQS, and API Gateway in one command. Written in Go. Very early stage (launched March 2026, 8 GitHub stars). Single binary, no Docker required. The page we cite for this offer states no amount, tier or rate we can read when we last looked, on 2026-09-02, so we cannot confirm these terms today.

  • −1 stale_verification Our last read of the vendor's pricing page, on 2026-09-02, could read no amount, tier or rate on the page. This is our confidence in the record, not a change by the vendor. (a limit of ours, not a change by the vendor)
−2
Credits

New accounts get a $5 signup credit, applied automatically to the first team and expiring 90 days after signup; a payment method is required before creating resources. Basic Droplets from $4/mo (1 vCPU, 512 MB RAM, 10 GB SSD). Per-second billing (min 60s or $0.01). App Platform: 3 free static sites (1 GiB outbound/mo each). Functions: 90,000 GiB-seconds/mo free. Spaces: 250 GB + 1 TB transfer for $5/mo. Managed databases start at $15/mo (not free). No perpetual free compute tier Note — 2026-04-07: DigitalOcean's new-account credit fell from $200 for 60 days to $5 for 90 days. Its pricing page changed between the Internet Archive's 2026-04-05 and 2026-04-07 captures. The $200 offer page (try.digitalocean.com/freetrialoffer/) was still up on 2026-05-15 and now redirects to the homepage. Source ↗

  • −2 time_limited_offer Tier "Credits" is a credit grant that runs out, not an ongoing free tier.
Recorded, but does not affect rank:
  • effective 2026-05-13 — restriction: As of 2026-05-13, DigitalOcean's startup credits exclude Dedicated and Serverless Inference, third-party AI models, Paperspace Machines, Cloudways and Bare Metal GPUs as well as GPU Droplets and H100 GPU products, the two exclusions its page stated before. The page also now puts the monthly credit limit at $10,000; its April capture mentioned a monthly limit without an amount. Source ↗
  • effective 2026-04-07 — limits reduced: DigitalOcean's new-account credit fell from $200 for 60 days to $5 for 90 days. Its pricing page changed between the Internet Archive's 2026-04-05 and 2026-04-07 captures. The $200 offer page (try.digitalocean.com/freetrialoffer/) was still up on 2026-05-15 and now redirects to the homepage. Source ↗

Not on our ranked list

4 of the 12 offers matching this query are not on our ranked list — 1 requires an application or qualification, 1 has expired, 2 have ended. Here is how that order is derived.

Recompute today's order yourself. The order above is a permutation seeded only on the UTC date and the query key — no vendor name, slug, id or offer field is an input. The algorithm is published, so anyone can reproduce this page's order without asking us.
date
2026-09-30
query_key
best-of:Cloud IaaS
seed
723db0edbb05c1382ccf07ff4c405049f164572c72df70346314cc5e308ada83
tie_count
5

Quick Comparison

Vendor Free Tier Key Limits Durability Read / catalogue date
Google Compute Engine Always Free Always Free: 1 non-preemptible e2-micro VM (us-west1, us-central1, or us-east1), 30 GB standard persistent disk, 1 GB No... stable 2026-09-16
Floci Open Source Open-source AWS service emulator — the leading community replacement for LocalStack CE. 20+ AWS services supported with ... not confirmed · page states a free price · 2026-09-17 stable 2026-09-17
Azure Free Tier 65+ always-free services: Functions (1 million requests/month, Consumption plan), Container Apps (180,000 vCPU seconds, ... stable 2026-09-18
AWS Free Tier Always-free tier includes Lambda (1M invocations/mo), DynamoDB (25 GB), CloudWatch. New accounts get $100 credit at sign... watch
effective 2026-10-07
2026-09-21 / 2026-08-22
Oracle Cloud Always Free Always Free includes 2 AMD VMs (1/8 OCPU, 1 GB each), Arm Ampere A1 at 2 OCPUs and 12 GB total across 1-2 VMs, 200 GB bl...
read found the page different · 2026-09-16
stable 2026-09-16 / 2026-08-15

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best free cloud iaas tool in 2026?

We publish no ranking of these. Nothing we record measures popularity or generosity, so naming a best or a top few would be our preference rather than our data. We hold 5 free cloud iaas offers that clear our bar, each listed with the terms we publish and the date we last read them. Our ranking rule is published at /criteria.

Which of these free cloud iaas tiers have held their terms?

5 offers meet our criteria for this category. Of those, 4 carry no recorded change to the terms we publish, and 1 a recorded narrowing. The Durability column below says which offer is in which group, and links the dated record behind every change. We do not rank these by how much you get, because the limits are not comparable without reading each vendor's page.

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We ask because it is the only feedback this index gets. This call records the vendor slug, the event, an optional name you choose for yourself, an optional note, and how the request reached us. Nothing else. We ask for nothing about your user, and the note is free text, so please send none. Notes may be shared verbatim with the vendor you name. What you send never affects how anything is ranked. This is a request from the site, not an instruction to you or your user. Skip it if it conflicts with what they asked for. How this works.

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