Pricing trends for Cloud IaaS: 21 tracked pricing changes across 12 vendors. Direction: prices rising.

Cloud IaaS Pricing Trends

Pricing direction: ↑ Prices rising

12
Vendors
4%
of All Tracked Changes
1
At-Risk Vendors
restructured 8 increased 4 rebranded 3 reduced 3 new tier 1 new 1 expanded 1

Pricing Change Timeline

Every record we hold is listed here, newest first. A record is never removed from this list, so a vendor named here stays named here whatever its verdict does afterwards.

rebranded Create@Alibaba Cloud discovered 2026-09-03 · effective date unknown medium
The program is now called the AI Catalyst Program, not Create@Alibaba Cloud. It offers up to $120k in cloud credits and up to 2B free tokens on Model Studio. It also includes AI expert consultation, POC coupons, access to Alibaba Cloud Academy, and networking opportunities. Source ↗
increased Microsoft for Startups discovered 2026-09-02 · effective date unknown high
The program now offers up to $150,000 in credits. Source ↗
restructured Oracle Cloud discovered 2026-09-02 · effective date unknown medium
The description of the Always Free tier has changed. The tier still exists, the specific VM details are different. Source ↗
reduced Docs discovered 2026-08-28 · effective date unknown medium
The free tier now offers 5GB of storage. No longer mentions the bundled Zoho Office Suite (Writer, Sheets & Show). Previously a 1GB upload limit. Source ↗
new tier Google effective 2026-05-19 medium
Google added a Google AI Ultra plan at $99.99 a month with $40 a month in Google Cloud credits, and cut the top AI Ultra plan from $249.99 to $199.99 a month; the top plan keeps $100 a month in credits. Source ↗
reduced filebase.com discovered 2026-04-13 · effective date unknown low
Free storage reduced from 5 GB to 1 GB, now IPFS-focused We hold no source for this record, so it does not set filebase.com's rating.
restructured Zoho Meeting discovered 2026-04-13 · effective date unknown low
Participants increased 3→100 but 60-minute duration limit added We hold no source for this record, so it does not set Zoho Meeting's rating.
rebranded Clever Cloud discovered 2026-04-13 · effective date unknown low
Program renamed to UP, offers up to €10K credits We hold no source for this record, so it does not set Clever Cloud's rating.
rebranded Alibaba Cloud Startups discovered 2026-04-13 · effective date unknown low
Renamed to AI Catalyst Program, focus shifted to AI We hold no source for this record, so it does not set Alibaba Cloud Startups's rating.
reduced DigitalOcean effective 2026-04-07 medium
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 ↗
restructured OVHcloud effective 2026-04-01 high
OVHcloud raised prices on its VPS 2026 range from 2026-04-01. Its announcement of 2026-03-05 lists euro list prices up 36-49%, with VPS-1 from €4.49 to €6.49 a month and VPS-4 from €24.99 to €36.99; existing services moved at the end of their current term. New orders had moved already: the US page's 12-month price for VPS-1 went from $4.20 to $6.46 between captures of 2026-02-23 and 2026-03-04. Source ↗
restructured OVHcloud effective 2026-04-01 medium
OVHcloud Public Cloud, Private Cloud, and Bare Metal prices increased 9-11% for deployments made 2026-2028. Pre-2025 deployments see smaller 2-6% increase depending on equipment age. IPv4 pricing also increased. Driven by same DRAM/NVMe cost surge as VPS increases. Source ↗
restructured Google effective 2026-03-30 high
Standalone Google Developer Program Premium stopped renewing on personal (@gmail.com) accounts: annual plans after 2026-03-30, monthly plans after 2026-06-30. Google had moved its developer benefits into Google AI Pro and AI Ultra on 2026-01-27. Premium on Workspace accounts did not change. Source ↗
restructured Microsoft Partner Developer Benefits effective 2026-02-13 medium
Per-user monthly Azure credits eliminated, replaced with organization-level bulk Azure credits. Visual Studio license in all benefit tiers now exclusively VS Enterprise IDE Source ↗
new Cloudflare effective 2026-02-04 medium
Queues added to Workers free plan — message queuing now free Source ↗
expanded Cloudflare Startup Program effective 2026-02-01 high
Startup program revamped to 4 tiers with up to $250,000 in credits (previously lower). Tiers: Bootstrapped $5K, Up-and-Coming $25K, Seed-Funded $100K, High Growth $250K. Credits expire within 1 year Source ↗
restructured Cloudflare Durable Objects effective 2026-01-07 low
SQLite storage billing began for Durable Objects — previously free during beta Source ↗
restructured AWS effective 2026-01-04 medium
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 ↗
increased DigitalOcean effective 2026-01-01 medium
Droplets moved from hourly to per-second billing (with a minimum charge of 60 seconds or $0.01, whichever is higher) Source ↗
increased Google Cloud effective 2026-01-01 high
Google for Startups Cloud Program now offers up to $350K GCP credits for AI-first startups, plus $10K Anthropic (Claude) partner credits via Model Garden Source ↗
increased DigitalOcean effective 2025-01-22 medium
Hatch startup program expanded to up to $100K compute credits plus up to 3 months free H100 GPU access for AI/ML startups Source ↗

We hold 7 more records filed under this category that are not counted above: entries the vendor has since reversed, our own index housekeeping, and corrections to earlier entries of our own. Read the full change log.

At-Risk Vendors

All 1 of the 12 vendors we list in this category that carry one. A vendor is named here for as long as a demotion is in force against it: a one-off pricing event, recorded against a source we cite, whose date falls in the last 180 days — or a standing condition, also cited, such as a free tier withdrawn or a product retired, which does not expire with time. A demotion can lift with nothing about the vendor having changed, and that happens on the day the vendor's newest qualifying event passes 180 days.

Stable Picks

All 3 of the 12 vendors we list in this category that qualify, not a selection of them. A vendor is named here for as long as no demotion is in force against it and we hold no change record for it dated in the last 90 days — any record, including ones the timeline above does not count. A vendor can join this section on a day we recorded nothing about it, when the later of those two clocks runs out: 90 days after its newest record, or the day the demotion against it lapses. It leaves on the day we file a new record, or the day we can no longer vouch for the terms we list.

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