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Free compute worth claiming in June 2026

A June 2026 field guide to free VPS, edge, database, email, observability, auth, storage, and AI compute for side projects.

  • Claim durable free primitives such as OCI Always Free and Cloudflare before relying on short-lived trial credits.
  • Free databases, email, queues, auth, storage, and observability can carry serious side-project prototypes.
  • AI compute freebies are useful for demos, evals, and burst jobs, not permanent production promises.
  • Every free-tier decision should carry a snapshot date because quotas and eligibility rules move.

This is a 10 June 2026 snapshot of free infrastructure worth claiming for side projects. Free compute exists, but the safe assumption is that every quota, region rule, idle policy, and credit offer can move. Check the linked provider page before you build around an exact number.

I pulled this together because I wanted cheap places to deploy side projects that do not fit neatly on my local server. AI projects make that harder: public model demos, eval tools, and agent jobs tend to need public URLs, queues, object storage, logs, email, and sometimes bursty hosted inference.

The highest-signal claims

  • Oracle Cloud Always Free: claim this first if you want the closest thing to an actual free VPS. The useful bundle is Ampere A1 monthly VM capacity, up to two AMD micro VMs, 200 GB block storage, 10 TB/month outbound transfer, free load balancing, free database options, and 3,000 emails/month.

  • Cloudflare: put it in front of everything. The useful free shape is DNS, CDN, Workers, Pages, R2, D1, KV, Queues, Durable Objects, Turnstile, and Workers AI.

  • Neon: use this as the default free Postgres pick unless you specifically want Supabase as a full app platform.

  • Aiven: keep this in the shortlist for small managed PostgreSQL, MySQL, Kafka, OpenSearch, and Valkey without a lot of product hype.

  • Turso: use this for distributed SQLite and edge-friendly apps.

  • Upstash: use this for Redis, QStash, Vector, Search, workflow glue, locks, rate limits, and small product plumbing.

  • Resend, Brevo, Mailgun, and OCI Email Delivery: use one of these before paying for transactional email.

  • Grafana Cloud, Better Stack, and Sentry: enough observability for serious prototypes if you wire them in early.

Hyperscaler free tiers

Edge, PaaS, and serverless compute

  • Cloudflare Workers: 100k requests/day, 10 ms CPU/invocation, and 128 MB memory on the free plan. Use it for APIs, webhooks, auth callbacks, redirects, and glue code.

  • Cloudflare Pages: unlimited static requests/bandwidth in the notes, 500 builds/month, 100 custom domains/project, preview deploys, and *.pages.dev subdomains. Use it for frontend apps, docs, demos, and marketing pages.

  • Cloudflare R2: 10 GB-month storage, 1M Class A operations, 10M Class B operations, and no egress fees in the notes. Use it for app blobs and public assets.

  • Cloudflare D1: 10 databases, 5 GB account storage, and 500 MB max DB size in the notes. Use it when the app is already on Workers.

  • Cloudflare KV: 1 GB storage, 100k reads/day, and low write/list/delete allowances in the notes. Use it for config, flags, and low-write metadata.

  • Cloudflare Queues: 10k operations/day on Workers Free in the notes. Use it for Workers-native async jobs.

  • Cloudflare Durable Objects: free allocation for stateful edge objects. Use it for coordination, multiplayer, websocket state, and per-object consistency.

  • Cloudflare Workers AI: 10,000 Neurons/day free allocation. Use it for low-friction edge inference and small AI features.

  • Vercel: free Hobby plan for personal/non-commercial use, with CDN, WAF, CI/CD, previews, serverless functions, and edge functions. Use it for Next.js apps and demos. Watch commercial-use rules and quotas around active CPU, provisioned memory, function duration, edge requests, ISR reads, projects, and build minutes.

  • Netlify: always-free plan with hard monthly limits. The notes call out 300 credits/month and project pause behaviour when credits are exhausted. Use it for static sites, forms, previews, Astro, Eleventy, and Hugo projects.

  • Deno Deploy: free plan in the notes has 1M requests/month with bounded CPU and egress. Use it for TypeScript-first edge functions, Fresh apps, and lightweight APIs.

  • Koyeb: one free web service in selected regions, 512 MB RAM, 0.1 vCPU, 2 GB SSD, and small free Postgres allowance in the notes. Use it for small containers, bots, and demo APIs.

  • Render: free tier for web services, static sites, key-value, and test database-style resources, positioned as non-production. Use it for public demo apps and portfolio tools. Expect spin-downs and lifecycle limits.

  • Railway: free entry is credit-based. The notes describe a 30-day free trial with $5 credits, then a small recurring credit shape. Use it to evaluate Railway, not as permanent zero-cost hosting.

  • Fly.io: useful platform, but not the old generous free-tier shape for new users. The notes describe current free access as trial-like: limited VM hours or 7 days, with machines auto-stopping during the trial. Use it to evaluate Fly Machines and deployment ergonomics.

  • Northflank: small free sandbox tier with compute-style resources, services, cron jobs, and database allowances in the notes. Use it for container platforms and cron-driven prototypes.

Credit-only VPS providers

  • Akamai Cloud/Linode: useful trial/referral credit, commonly around $100 in the notes. Use it to test the platform, not as permanent free infrastructure.

  • OVHcloud Public Cloud: trial credits, commonly advertised around $200 or GBP 175 in the notes. Use it for provider evaluation and regional tests.

  • Vultr: promotional free credit offers, often around $200 for new users in the notes. Use it for short trials.

  • Scaleway: useful free/trial pieces, including managed Kubernetes control-plane and object-storage trial capacity in the notes. Use it for European provider evaluation.

  • DigitalOcean: primarily credits, trials, startup programmes, and OSS programmes rather than permanent free compute. Use it when the product fit matters more than zero-cost permanence.

Relational and SQL databases

  • Neon: free, no time limit, no credit card, 100 projects, 100 CU-hours/month/project, 0.5 GB storage/project, branching, read replicas, and auth allowance in the notes. Use it as the default free Postgres for product experiments.

  • Supabase: two free projects in the notes. Use it when you want Postgres plus auth, storage, realtime, edge functions, and a product dashboard.

  • Aiven: always-free managed PostgreSQL, MySQL, Kafka, OpenSearch, and Valkey in the notes, with no credit card or time limit. Use it for small, boring managed infrastructure.

  • CockroachDB Basic: $0 start, 50M request units/month, 10 GiB storage/month, and scale-to-zero in the notes. Use it for globally distributed SQL experiments.

  • Azure SQL Database: serverless free shape in the notes: up to 10 databases, 100k vCore-seconds, and 32 GB storage each. Use it when Azure is the target.

  • Google Cloud SQL, AlloyDB, and Cloud Spanner: mostly trials rather than permanent free relational DB in the notes. Use them for evaluation.

  • PlanetScale: no free plan in the notes. Useful product, but not a free-tier target.

NoSQL, SQLite, Redis, queues, vector, and search

  • MongoDB Atlas: M0 free cluster, 512 MB storage, shared RAM/vCPU in the notes. Use it for small document demos and prototypes.

  • Azure Cosmos DB: 1,000 RU/s and 25 GB storage always free in the notes. Use it for Azure-native NoSQL.

  • Google Firestore: 1 GiB storage, 50k reads/day, 20k writes/day, and 20k deletes/day in the notes. Use it for small Firebase-style apps.

  • AWS DynamoDB: 25 GB storage, 25 WCU, and 25 RCU in the notes. Use it if you are happy designing around DynamoDB.

  • IBM Cloudant: 1 GB Lite plan in the notes. Use it for CouchDB-style experiments.

  • Oracle NoSQL: Always Free allowance with monthly read/write limits and free tables/storage in the notes. Use it when the project is already in OCI.

  • Turso: 100 databases, 5 GB storage, 500M rows read/month, 10M rows written/month, and 3 GB sync/month in the notes. Use it for distributed SQLite and edge apps.

  • Cloudflare D1: 10 databases, 500 MB max database, and 5 GB account storage in the notes. Use it when the app lives on Workers.

  • Upstash Redis: 256 MB data and 500k commands/month in the notes. Use it for rate limits, sessions, queues, and locks.

  • Upstash QStash: 1,000 messages/day and 50 GB bandwidth in the notes. Use it for HTTP-native task dispatch.

  • Upstash Vector: free vector DB allowance with 1 GB total data and daily query limits in the notes. Use it for RAG prototypes.

  • Upstash Search: free monthly query and record allowance in the notes. Use it for lightweight hosted search.

  • Redis Cloud: 30 MB free Essentials database in the notes. Tiny, but enough for demos.

Storage, CDN, DNS, and domains

  • Cloudflare R2: 10 GB storage, 1M Class A operations, 10M Class B operations, and no egress fees in the notes. Use it as the default free-ish S3-compatible storage.

  • Tigris: 5 GB storage/month, request allowances, and zero egress in the notes. Use it for global S3-compatible object storage experiments.

  • Backblaze B2: free egress up to 3 times average monthly storage and unlimited free egress through partner CDNs in the notes. Use it with Cloudflare, Fastly, or Bunny for cheap public assets.

  • Google Cloud Storage: 5 GB-month regional storage in US regions in the notes. Use it when the app is already on Google Cloud.

  • Azure Blob Storage: 5 GB LRS hot block blob for 12 months in the notes. Time-limited.

  • IBM Cloud Object Storage: IBM advertises always-free Cloud Object Storage, but the notes say to verify the exact allowance in-console.

  • Scaleway Object Storage: trial-style free object storage capacity for 90 days in the notes. Use it for evaluation.

  • Cloudflare DNS and Cloudflare CDN: free DNS, CDN, TLS, and DDoS protection in the notes. Use this for personal and product domains.

  • GitHub Pages: free static hosting for public repositories, with one user/org site and project sites in the notes.

  • Cloudflare Pages: free *.pages.dev subdomain, custom domains, static hosting, and build quota in the notes.

  • Vercel subdomains, Netlify subdomains, and Render subdomains: useful free project URLs for demos.

  • EU.org: long-running free subdomain registration project. Use for non-critical projects only.

  • is-a.dev: free developer-focused subdomains for personal websites. Use for demos and personal pages.

Product plumbing

  • Resend: 3,000 emails/month and 100/day on the free plan in the notes. Good developer experience for transactional email.

  • Brevo: 300 email sends/day and large contact storage in the notes. Better fit for marketing-ish email.

  • Mailgun: 100 messages/day, one custom domain, and no credit card in the notes. Useful dev/test transactional tier.

  • AWS SES: 3,000 message charges/month free for the first 12 months after starting SES in the notes. Production-grade, but not always-free.

  • OCI Email Delivery: 3,000 emails/month on Always Free in the notes. Good match with OCI-hosted services.

  • Clerk: first 50,000 monthly retained users and 100 monthly retained organisations free in the notes. Good for B2C/B2B SaaS prototypes.

  • Auth0: free plan up to 25,000 MAU in the notes, with social/passwordless features and feature gates. Mature auth, but watch limits.

  • Kinde: 10,500 free MAU included across plans in the notes. Useful SaaS auth alternative.

  • WorkOS AuthKit: free up to 1 million users for AuthKit in the notes. SSO, directory, and audit products are separately priced.

  • Azure Entra and Azure AD B2C: useful if you are building Microsoft-heavy B2B.

  • Pusher Channels: sandbox tier with 200k messages/day and 100 concurrent connections in the notes. Good for quick realtime demos.

  • Ably: free package with no credit card and no time limit in the notes. Exact limits vary, so check the page.

  • Google Pub/Sub: 10 GiB messages/month in the notes. Proper cloud messaging primitive.

  • Azure Event Grid: 100k operations/month in the notes. Useful event routing.

Observability, CI, and dev environments

  • Grafana Cloud: free forever in the notes, commonly including metrics, logs, traces, three active users, and 14-day retention. Use it for a serious free observability bundle.

  • Better Stack: 10 monitors, 10 heartbeats, status page, and 3-minute checks in the notes. Use it for uptime, heartbeats, and status pages.

  • Sentry: free developer plan in the notes. Use it for error tracking and tracing.

  • Axiom: free tier for log/event analytics in the notes. Check current ingest and retention.

  • GitHub Actions: free for public repos, and 2,000 minutes/month plus 500 MB artifact storage for private repos on GitHub Free in the notes. Default CI.

  • GitHub Codespaces: 15 GB-month storage and 120 hours/month compute allocation for personal accounts in the notes. Useful cloud dev box.

  • GitLab Free: 5 users, 10 GiB storage, and 400 compute minutes/month in the notes.

  • Azure DevOps: 5 users and unlimited private Git repos in the notes.

AI, GPU, and model APIs

  • Hugging Face Spaces ZeroGPU: free shared GPU access for Spaces demos via ZeroGPU in the notes. Good for public AI demos, not reliable production compute.

  • Modal: $30/month free compute in the notes. Good for bursty GPU/CPU jobs, evals, scheduled jobs, and prototypes.

  • Google Colab: free compute with dynamic limits in the notes. GPU access is limited and not guaranteed. Good notebooks, not app infrastructure.

  • Kaggle Notebooks: free GPU/TPU availability with weekly limits in the notes, including TPU docs that state up to 20 hours/week. Useful for experiments.

  • Cloudflare Workers AI: 10,000 Neurons/day free allocation. Useful for edge AI calls.

  • GitHub Models: rate-limited free access to supported models for prototyping in the notes. Useful for evals and model switching.

  • Gemini Developer API and Google AI Studio: free tier with limited access and free tokens in the notes. Paid tier changes data-use terms and limits, so check before production use.

  • GroqCloud: free plan for API build/test use in the notes. Useful for low-latency inference experiments.

Startup, OSS, and credit programmes

These are not forever free, but they can beat normal free tiers if you qualify.

Stacks I would actually use

The rule

Claim the durable pieces first: OCI, Cloudflare, Neon, Aiven, Turso, and Upstash. Then add email, observability, auth, and AI only when the project needs them.

Write the snapshot date next to every infrastructure decision. Add budget alerts anywhere a card is attached. Re-check the linked provider page before a demo becomes a dependency.