--- title: "Free compute worth claiming in June 2026" date: 2026-06-28 description: "A June 2026 field guide to free VPS, edge, database, email, observability, auth, storage, and AI compute for side projects." tags: - "self-hosting" - "free-tier" - "side-projects" - "cloud-infrastructure" - "ai-tools" --- 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](https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/FreeTier/freetier_topic-Always_Free_Resources.htm): claim this first if you want the closest thing to an actual free VPS. The useful bundle is [Ampere A1](https://www.oracle.com/cloud/compute/arm/) 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](https://developers.cloudflare.com/): put it in front of everything. The useful free shape is [DNS](https://developers.cloudflare.com/dns/), [CDN](https://www.cloudflare.com/application-services/products/cdn/), [Workers](https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/platform/limits/), [Pages](https://developers.cloudflare.com/pages/platform/limits/), [R2](https://developers.cloudflare.com/r2/pricing/), [D1](https://developers.cloudflare.com/d1/platform/pricing/), [KV](https://developers.cloudflare.com/kv/platform/pricing/), [Queues](https://developers.cloudflare.com/queues/platform/pricing/), [Durable Objects](https://developers.cloudflare.com/durable-objects/platform/pricing/), [Turnstile](https://www.cloudflare.com/application-services/products/turnstile/), and [Workers AI](https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers-ai/platform/pricing/). - [Neon](https://neon.com/pricing): use this as the default free Postgres pick unless you specifically want [Supabase](https://supabase.com/pricing) as a full app platform. - [Aiven](https://aiven.io/pricing): keep this in the shortlist for small managed PostgreSQL, MySQL, Kafka, OpenSearch, and Valkey without a lot of product hype. - [Turso](https://turso.tech/pricing): use this for distributed SQLite and edge-friendly apps. - [Upstash](https://upstash.com/pricing): use this for Redis, QStash, Vector, Search, workflow glue, locks, rate limits, and small product plumbing. - [Resend](https://resend.com/pricing), [Brevo](https://www.brevo.com/pricing/), [Mailgun](https://www.mailgun.com/pricing/), and [OCI Email Delivery](https://www.oracle.com/uk/cloud/networking/email-delivery/): use one of these before paying for transactional email. - [Grafana Cloud](https://grafana.com/pricing/), [Better Stack](https://betterstack.com/pricing), and [Sentry](https://sentry.io/pricing/): enough observability for serious prototypes if you wire them in early. ## Hyperscaler free tiers - [Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Free Tier](https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free/): best shot at real persistent free compute. The linked entry includes [Ampere A1](https://www.oracle.com/cloud/compute/arm/) at 3,000 OCPU-hours and 18,000 GB-hours/month, equivalent in the notes to up to 4 OCPUs and 24 GB RAM; up to two AMD E2.1.Micro VMs; 200 GB boot/block volume storage; 10 TB/month outbound transfer; [Load Balancer](https://www.oracle.com/cloud/networking/load-balancer/) free tier; [Autonomous Database](https://www.oracle.com/autonomous-database/) options; [Oracle NoSQL](https://www.oracle.com/database/nosql/); [MySQL HeatWave](https://www.oracle.com/mysql/); and [Email Delivery](https://www.oracle.com/uk/cloud/networking/email-delivery/) with 3,000 emails/month. Use it for real VPS workloads, [WireGuard](https://www.wireguard.com/) or [Tailscale](https://tailscale.com/) ingress boxes, crawlers, self-hosted apps, low-volume queues, background workers, and cheap [Kubernetes](https://kubernetes.io/) experiments. Watch idle reclamation and regional capacity. - [Google Cloud Free Program](https://cloud.google.com/free): broad free coverage after the trial. Google's entry includes a $300 trial for 90 days, plus ongoing allocations for [Compute Engine](https://cloud.google.com/compute) with one e2-micro VM/month in selected US regions, 30 GB standard persistent disk, and 1 GB outbound; [Cloud Run](https://cloud.google.com/run) with 2M requests/month, 360k GB-seconds memory, and 180k vCPU-seconds; [Cloud Functions](https://cloud.google.com/functions) with 2M invocations/month plus compute/network allowances; [App Engine](https://cloud.google.com/appengine) with 28 F1 instance-hours/day and 9 B1 instance-hours/day; [Firestore](https://cloud.google.com/firestore) with 1 GiB storage, 50k reads/day, 20k writes/day, and 20k deletes/day; [BigQuery](https://cloud.google.com/bigquery) with 1 TiB queries/month and 10 GiB storage; [Cloud Storage](https://cloud.google.com/storage) with 5 GB-month in US regions; [Cloud Build](https://cloud.google.com/build) with 2,500 build-minutes/month; [Cloud Shell](https://cloud.google.com/shell) with 5 GB persistent disk; [Pub/Sub](https://cloud.google.com/pubsub) with 10 GiB messages/month; and [Secret Manager](https://cloud.google.com/security/products/secret-manager) with 6 active secret versions and 10k operations/month. Use it for serverless APIs, [Firebase](https://firebase.google.com/) projects, [BigQuery](https://cloud.google.com/bigquery) experiments, and event-driven products. - [Azure free services](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/free-services): strong serverless and data freebies, weaker as permanent VPS hosting. Azure's entry includes [App Service](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/app-service/) with up to 10 web/API apps, 1 GB storage, and 1 hour/day compute; [Azure Functions](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/functions/) with 1M requests/month; [Static Web Apps](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/app-service/static/) with 100 GB bandwidth/subscription, 2 custom domains, and 0.5 GB storage/app; [Container Apps](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/container-apps/) with 180k vCPU-seconds, 360k GiB-seconds, and 2M requests; [Azure Virtual Machines](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/virtual-machines/) with 750 hours/month of selected B-series VMs for 12 months; [Cosmos DB](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/cosmos-db/) with 1,000 RU/s and 25 GB always free; [Azure SQL Database](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/azure-sql/database/) with up to 10 serverless databases, 100k vCore-seconds, and 32 GB storage each; [Azure Database for MySQL Flexible Server](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/mysql) and [Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/postgresql/) with B1MS, 750 hours/month, and 32 GB storage for 12 months; [Azure DevOps](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/devops/) for five users; [API Management](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/api-management/) with 1M API calls/month; [Event Grid](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/event-grid/) with 100k operations/month; and 100 GB/month outbound bandwidth. Use it for [C#/.NET](https://dotnet.microsoft.com/) products, B2B prototypes, [Microsoft Entra](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/business/microsoft-entra) identity-heavy apps, and serverless APIs. - [AWS Free Tier](https://aws.amazon.com/free/): useful, but more credit-shaped than it used to be. The AWS entry includes up to $200 credits for new free-tier customers, [Lambda](https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/) with 1M requests/month and 400k GB-seconds/month, [DynamoDB](https://aws.amazon.com/dynamodb/) with 25 GB storage and 25 WCU/25 RCU, [EC2 T4g](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/t4/) t4g.small promotional hours until 31 December 2026, and [SES](https://aws.amazon.com/ses/) with 3,000 message charges/month free for the first 12 months after starting SES. Use it for [Lambda](https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/) and [DynamoDB](https://aws.amazon.com/dynamodb/) prototypes, [EventBridge](https://aws.amazon.com/eventbridge/), [SQS](https://aws.amazon.com/sqs/), [SNS](https://aws.amazon.com/sns/) designs, and learning [IAM](https://aws.amazon.com/iam/). - [IBM Cloud Free Tier](https://www.ibm.com/cloud/free): underrated Lite plans. IBM's Lite entry includes [Code Engine](https://www.ibm.com/products/code-engine) with 100,000 vCPU-seconds/month, [IBM Cloud Functions](https://www.ibm.com/cloud/functions) with 5M executions/month, [Cloudant](https://www.ibm.com/products/cloudant) 1 GB Lite, [Db2](https://www.ibm.com/products/db2) SaaS 200 MB Lite, [Cloud Object Storage](https://www.ibm.com/products/cloud-object-storage) with an always-free listing to verify in-console, and [Watson Speech to Text](https://www.ibm.com/products/speech-to-text) / [Watson Text to Speech](https://www.ibm.com/products/text-to-speech) Lite quotas. Use it for low-volume serverless jobs, [Cloudant](https://www.ibm.com/products/cloudant) experiments, and enterprise-adjacent prototypes. ## Edge, PaaS, and serverless compute - [Cloudflare Workers](https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/platform/limits/): 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](https://developers.cloudflare.com/pages/platform/limits/): 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](https://developers.cloudflare.com/r2/pricing/): 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](https://developers.cloudflare.com/d1/platform/pricing/): 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](https://developers.cloudflare.com/kv/platform/pricing/): 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](https://developers.cloudflare.com/queues/platform/pricing/): 10k operations/day on Workers Free in the notes. Use it for Workers-native async jobs. - [Cloudflare Durable Objects](https://developers.cloudflare.com/durable-objects/platform/pricing/): free allocation for stateful edge objects. Use it for coordination, multiplayer, websocket state, and per-object consistency. - [Cloudflare Workers AI](https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers-ai/platform/pricing/): 10,000 Neurons/day free allocation. Use it for low-friction edge inference and small AI features. - [Vercel](https://vercel.com/pricing): free Hobby plan for personal/non-commercial use, with CDN, WAF, CI/CD, previews, serverless functions, and edge functions. Use it for [Next.js](https://nextjs.org/) 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](https://www.netlify.com/pricing/): 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](https://astro.build/), [Eleventy](https://www.11ty.dev/), and [Hugo](https://gohugo.io/) projects. - [Deno Deploy](https://deno.com/deploy/pricing): free plan in the notes has 1M requests/month with bounded CPU and egress. Use it for [TypeScript](https://www.typescriptlang.org/)-first edge functions, [Fresh](https://fresh.deno.dev/) apps, and lightweight APIs. - [Koyeb](https://www.koyeb.com/pricing): 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](https://render.com/pricing): 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](https://railway.com/pricing): 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](https://fly.io/docs/about/pricing/): 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](https://fly.io/docs/machines/) and deployment ergonomics. - [Northflank](https://northflank.com/pricing): 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](https://www.linode.com/pricing/): useful trial/referral credit, commonly around $100 in the notes. Use it to test the platform, not as permanent free infrastructure. - [OVHcloud Public Cloud](https://www.ovhcloud.com/en/public-cloud/): trial credits, commonly advertised around $200 or GBP 175 in the notes. Use it for provider evaluation and regional tests. - [Vultr](https://www.vultr.com/pricing/): promotional free credit offers, often around $200 for new users in the notes. Use it for short trials. - [Scaleway](https://www.scaleway.com/en/pricing/): useful free/trial pieces, including managed [Kubernetes](https://kubernetes.io/) control-plane and object-storage trial capacity in the notes. Use it for European provider evaluation. - [DigitalOcean](https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing): 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](https://neon.com/pricing): 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](https://supabase.com/pricing): two free projects in the notes. Use it when you want Postgres plus auth, storage, realtime, edge functions, and a product dashboard. - [Aiven](https://aiven.io/pricing): 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](https://www.cockroachlabs.com/pricing/): $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](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/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](https://cloud.google.com/sql/pricing), [AlloyDB](https://cloud.google.com/alloydb/pricing), and [Cloud Spanner](https://cloud.google.com/spanner/pricing): mostly trials rather than permanent free relational DB in the notes. Use them for evaluation. - [PlanetScale](https://planetscale.com/pricing): no free plan in the notes. Useful product, but not a free-tier target. ## NoSQL, SQLite, Redis, queues, vector, and search - [MongoDB Atlas](https://www.mongodb.com/pricing): M0 free cluster, 512 MB storage, shared RAM/vCPU in the notes. Use it for small document demos and prototypes. - [Azure Cosmos DB](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/cosmos-db/autoscale-provisioned/): 1,000 RU/s and 25 GB storage always free in the notes. Use it for Azure-native NoSQL. - [Google Firestore](https://cloud.google.com/firestore/pricing): 1 GiB storage, 50k reads/day, 20k writes/day, and 20k deletes/day in the notes. Use it for small [Firebase](https://firebase.google.com/)-style apps. - [AWS DynamoDB](https://aws.amazon.com/dynamodb/pricing/): 25 GB storage, 25 WCU, and 25 RCU in the notes. Use it if you are happy designing around DynamoDB. - [IBM Cloudant](https://www.ibm.com/products/cloudant/pricing): 1 GB Lite plan in the notes. Use it for [CouchDB](https://couchdb.apache.org/)-style experiments. - [Oracle NoSQL](https://www.oracle.com/database/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](https://www.oracle.com/cloud/). - [Turso](https://turso.tech/pricing): 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](https://developers.cloudflare.com/d1/platform/pricing/): 10 databases, 500 MB max database, and 5 GB account storage in the notes. Use it when the app lives on Workers. - [Upstash Redis](https://upstash.com/pricing): 256 MB data and 500k commands/month in the notes. Use it for rate limits, sessions, queues, and locks. - [Upstash QStash](https://upstash.com/pricing): 1,000 messages/day and 50 GB bandwidth in the notes. Use it for HTTP-native task dispatch. - [Upstash Vector](https://upstash.com/pricing): free vector DB allowance with 1 GB total data and daily query limits in the notes. Use it for RAG prototypes. - [Upstash Search](https://upstash.com/pricing): free monthly query and record allowance in the notes. Use it for lightweight hosted search. - [Redis Cloud](https://redis.io/pricing/): 30 MB free Essentials database in the notes. Tiny, but enough for demos. ## Storage, CDN, DNS, and domains - [Cloudflare R2](https://developers.cloudflare.com/r2/pricing/): 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](https://aws.amazon.com/s3/) storage. - [Tigris](https://www.tigrisdata.com/pricing/): 5 GB storage/month, request allowances, and zero egress in the notes. Use it for global [S3-compatible](https://aws.amazon.com/s3/) object storage experiments. - [Backblaze B2](https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-storage/pricing): free egress up to 3 times average monthly storage and unlimited free egress through partner CDNs in the notes. Use it with [Cloudflare](https://www.cloudflare.com/), [Fastly](https://www.fastly.com/), or [Bunny](https://bunny.net/) for cheap public assets. - [Google Cloud Storage](https://cloud.google.com/storage/pricing): 5 GB-month regional storage in US regions in the notes. Use it when the app is already on Google Cloud. - [Azure Blob Storage](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/storage/blobs/): 5 GB LRS hot block blob for 12 months in the notes. Time-limited. - [IBM Cloud Object Storage](https://www.ibm.com/products/cloud-object-storage/pricing): IBM advertises always-free Cloud Object Storage, but the notes say to verify the exact allowance in-console. - [Scaleway Object Storage](https://www.scaleway.com/en/object-storage/): trial-style free object storage capacity for 90 days in the notes. Use it for evaluation. - [Cloudflare DNS](https://developers.cloudflare.com/dns/) and [Cloudflare CDN](https://www.cloudflare.com/application-services/products/cdn/): free DNS, CDN, TLS, and DDoS protection in the notes. Use this for personal and product domains. - [GitHub Pages](https://pages.github.com/): free static hosting for public repositories, with one user/org site and project sites in the notes. - [Cloudflare Pages](https://developers.cloudflare.com/pages/): free `*.pages.dev` subdomain, custom domains, static hosting, and build quota in the notes. - [Vercel](https://vercel.com/docs/domains) subdomains, [Netlify](https://docs.netlify.com/domains-https/netlify-subdomains/) subdomains, and [Render](https://render.com/docs/custom-domains) subdomains: useful free project URLs for demos. - [EU.org](https://nic.eu.org/): long-running free subdomain registration project. Use for non-critical projects only. - [is-a.dev](https://www.is-a.dev/): free developer-focused subdomains for personal websites. Use for demos and personal pages. ## Product plumbing - [Resend](https://resend.com/pricing): 3,000 emails/month and 100/day on the free plan in the notes. Good developer experience for transactional email. - [Brevo](https://www.brevo.com/pricing/): 300 email sends/day and large contact storage in the notes. Better fit for marketing-ish email. - [Mailgun](https://www.mailgun.com/pricing/): 100 messages/day, one custom domain, and no credit card in the notes. Useful dev/test transactional tier. - [AWS SES](https://aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing/): 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](https://www.oracle.com/uk/cloud/networking/email-delivery/): 3,000 emails/month on Always Free in the notes. Good match with OCI-hosted services. - [Clerk](https://clerk.com/pricing): first 50,000 monthly retained users and 100 monthly retained organisations free in the notes. Good for B2C/B2B SaaS prototypes. - [Auth0](https://auth0.com/pricing): free plan up to 25,000 MAU in the notes, with social/passwordless features and feature gates. Mature auth, but watch limits. - [Kinde](https://kinde.com/pricing/): 10,500 free MAU included across plans in the notes. Useful SaaS auth alternative. - [WorkOS AuthKit](https://workos.com/pricing): free up to 1 million users for AuthKit in the notes. SSO, directory, and audit products are separately priced. - [Azure Entra](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/business/microsoft-entra-pricing) and [Azure AD B2C](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/active-directory-b2c/): useful if you are building Microsoft-heavy B2B. - [Pusher Channels](https://pusher.com/channels/pricing/): sandbox tier with 200k messages/day and 100 concurrent connections in the notes. Good for quick realtime demos. - [Ably](https://ably.com/pricing): free package with no credit card and no time limit in the notes. Exact limits vary, so check the page. - [Google Pub/Sub](https://cloud.google.com/pubsub/pricing): 10 GiB messages/month in the notes. Proper cloud messaging primitive. - [Azure Event Grid](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/event-grid/): 100k operations/month in the notes. Useful event routing. ## Observability, CI, and dev environments - [Grafana Cloud](https://grafana.com/pricing/): 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](https://betterstack.com/pricing): 10 monitors, 10 heartbeats, status page, and 3-minute checks in the notes. Use it for uptime, heartbeats, and status pages. - [Sentry](https://sentry.io/pricing/): free developer plan in the notes. Use it for error tracking and tracing. - [Axiom](https://axiom.co/pricing): free tier for log/event analytics in the notes. Check current ingest and retention. - [GitHub Actions](https://docs.github.com/en/billing/managing-billing-for-your-products/managing-billing-for-github-actions/about-billing-for-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](https://docs.github.com/en/billing/managing-billing-for-your-products/managing-billing-for-github-codespaces/about-billing-for-github-codespaces): 15 GB-month storage and 120 hours/month compute allocation for personal accounts in the notes. Useful cloud dev box. - [GitLab Free](https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/): 5 users, 10 GiB storage, and 400 compute minutes/month in the notes. - [Azure DevOps](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/devops/): 5 users and unlimited private Git repos in the notes. ## AI, GPU, and model APIs - [Hugging Face Spaces ZeroGPU](https://huggingface.co/docs/hub/spaces-zerogpu): free shared GPU access for Spaces demos via ZeroGPU in the notes. Good for public AI demos, not reliable production compute. - [Modal](https://modal.com/pricing): $30/month free compute in the notes. Good for bursty GPU/CPU jobs, evals, scheduled jobs, and prototypes. - [Google Colab](https://colab.research.google.com/signup): free compute with dynamic limits in the notes. GPU access is limited and not guaranteed. Good notebooks, not app infrastructure. - [Kaggle Notebooks](https://www.kaggle.com/docs/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](https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers-ai/platform/pricing/): 10,000 Neurons/day free allocation. Useful for edge AI calls. - [GitHub Models](https://docs.github.com/en/github-models): rate-limited free access to supported models for prototyping in the notes. Useful for evals and model switching. - [Gemini Developer API](https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/pricing) and [Google AI Studio](https://aistudio.google.com/): 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](https://groq.com/pricing/): 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. - [AWS Activate](https://aws.amazon.com/activate/): eligible startups can get from small starter credits to very large AWS credit packages. The notes cite up to $200k for some paths. - [Google for Startups Cloud Program](https://cloud.google.com/startup): up to $200k credits in the notes, with higher AI-first packages in some cases. - [Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/startups): starts with smaller credits and can unlock up to $150k or more depending on eligibility and progress in the notes. - [Auth0 for Startups](https://auth0.com/startups): one year of B2B Professional-plan access for eligible early-stage companies, with up to 100k MAU in the notes. - [Modal startup and academic credits](https://modal.com/pricing): startup and academic credit programmes in the notes, including large academic credits. - [Turso Startup Program](https://turso.tech/pricing): startup credits, priority support, and early access for eligible venture-backed startups in the notes. - [DigitalOcean open-source credits](https://www.digitalocean.com/open-source): open-source credits programme in the notes. ## Stacks I would actually use - Maximum free real infra: [OCI](https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free/) for VPS, [Cloudflare](https://developers.cloudflare.com/) for edge/DNS/CDN, [Neon](https://neon.com/pricing) or [Aiven](https://aiven.io/pricing) for Postgres, [Cloudflare R2](https://developers.cloudflare.com/r2/pricing/) for object storage, [Upstash Redis/QStash](https://upstash.com/pricing) or [Cloudflare Queues](https://developers.cloudflare.com/queues/platform/pricing/) for async work, [Resend](https://resend.com/pricing) or [OCI Email Delivery](https://www.oracle.com/uk/cloud/networking/email-delivery/) for email, [Grafana Cloud](https://grafana.com/pricing/), [Better Stack](https://betterstack.com/pricing), and [Sentry](https://sentry.io/pricing/) for observability, [GitHub Actions](https://docs.github.com/en/actions) for CI, and a cheap paid domain. - No-server edge product: [Cloudflare Pages](https://developers.cloudflare.com/pages/), [Cloudflare Workers](https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/), [Cloudflare D1](https://developers.cloudflare.com/d1/), [Turso](https://turso.tech/pricing), or [Neon](https://neon.com/pricing) for data, [Cloudflare R2](https://developers.cloudflare.com/r2/), [Cloudflare Queues](https://developers.cloudflare.com/queues/), [Clerk](https://clerk.com/pricing), [WorkOS AuthKit](https://workos.com/pricing), or [Auth0](https://auth0.com/pricing) for auth, [Workers AI](https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers-ai/platform/pricing/), [GitHub Models](https://docs.github.com/en/github-models), or [Gemini](https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/pricing) for AI, plus [Better Stack](https://betterstack.com/pricing) and [Sentry](https://sentry.io/pricing/) for visibility. - Postgres-first SaaS prototype: [Vercel](https://vercel.com/pricing), [Cloudflare Pages](https://developers.cloudflare.com/pages/), or [Koyeb](https://www.koyeb.com/pricing) for app hosting, [Neon](https://neon.com/pricing) for Postgres, [Supabase](https://supabase.com/pricing) when auth/storage/realtime matter, [Upstash](https://upstash.com/pricing) for cache/search/queue, [Resend](https://resend.com/pricing) for email, [Sentry](https://sentry.io/pricing/) for errors, and [Grafana Cloud](https://grafana.com/pricing/) for metrics/logs. - AI demo or product prototype: [Cloudflare Workers](https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/), [Vercel](https://vercel.com/pricing), or [Hugging Face Spaces](https://huggingface.co/docs/hub/spaces) for the app, [Hugging Face ZeroGPU](https://huggingface.co/docs/hub/spaces-zerogpu) for GPU demos, [Modal](https://modal.com/pricing) for burst jobs, [Google Colab](https://colab.research.google.com/signup) or [Kaggle Notebooks](https://www.kaggle.com/docs/notebooks) for experiments, [GitHub Models](https://docs.github.com/en/github-models), [Gemini](https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/pricing), [GroqCloud](https://groq.com/pricing/), or [Workers AI](https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers-ai/platform/pricing/) for model APIs, [Cloudflare R2](https://developers.cloudflare.com/r2/) or [Tigris](https://www.tigrisdata.com/pricing/) for storage, and [Neon](https://neon.com/pricing) or [Turso](https://turso.tech/pricing) for data. ## The rule Claim the durable pieces first: [OCI](https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free/), [Cloudflare](https://developers.cloudflare.com/), [Neon](https://neon.com/pricing), [Aiven](https://aiven.io/pricing), [Turso](https://turso.tech/pricing), and [Upstash](https://upstash.com/pricing). 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.