Oracle halves Always Free ARM limits

Oracle has cut the Always Free Arm allocation in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to 2 OCPUs and 12 GB of RAM, down from the long-standing 4 OCPUs and 24 GB. Oracle’s documentation now lists the free allowance as 1,500 OCPU hours and 9,000 GB hours per month for VM.Standard.A1.Flex instances, and says that for Always Free tenancies this is equivalent to 2 OCPUs and 12 GB of memory. (docs.oracle.com) That matters because the old 4-vCPU/24-GB Arm box had become one of the more generous no-cost cloud options for hobbyists, students and developers. Oracle’s Free Tier docs say Ampere A1 resources are limited to the tenancy’s home region, and the updated quota means users now have to fit their total Always Free Arm footprint inside the lower ceiling. (docs.oracle.com) The practical change is not just “smaller free VM.” It changes what kinds of side projects still fit comfortably in the tier. A 2 OCPU / 12 GB machine is still enough for light CI runners, small self-hosted services, test environments, VPNs and build boxes, but it gives less headroom for parallel jobs, heavier containers, multi-service stacks and cross-compilation workloads that previously fit on the 4/24 setup. That workload framing is an inference from the new quota, not a statement Oracle makes explicitly. (docs.oracle.com) Oracle’s own guidance also makes the enforcement risk clear for users who stay over the limit. The Free Tier documentation says that if a tenancy has more Ampere A1 compute provisioned than is available for Always Free, the existing Arm instances are disabled and then deleted after 30 days unless the account is upgraded to a paid plan. The same page says users who want to keep existing Arm instances as Always Free must ensure they have no more than 2 OCPUs and 12 GB of memory in total across those instances. (docs.oracle.com) Oracle’s customer community shows the update was being discussed publicly in late July. A July 21 Oracle community post said the Always Free allocation for VM.Standard.A1.Flex had been updated to 2 OCPUs total and 12 GB total, with a monthly equivalent of 1,500 OCPU hours and 9,000 GB hours, and said users could split that flexibly across one or two instances subject to other tenancy limits. (community.oracle.com) The date that has circulated most widely for enforcement is August 18, 2026. Oracle’s public docs visible here do not themselves spell out that date on the main Free Tier pages, but Oracle community snippets surfaced in search results refer to users receiving notices saying the updated Always Free compute limits would begin on August 18, 2026. (community.oracle.com) For developers, the near-term adjustment is straightforward: resize, consolidate or move. If a project depended on the old free Arm quota for CI, test runners or self-hosted build infrastructure, the safer setup now is a smaller OCI footprint plus more work moved into local and reproducible tooling — for example containerized builds, local cross-compilers and scripts that can run on a laptop, workstation or another cloud provider if the free tier changes again. That last point is an inference from the quota change and Oracle’s enforcement language. (docs.oracle.com) One other detail in Oracle’s docs is easy to miss: the AMD-based micro instances remain part of Always Free, and the Arm cut does not appear to remove those. Oracle still lists up to two VM.Standard.E2.1.Micro instances separately from the reduced Ampere A1 allowance. (docs.oracle.com) So the story here is narrow but concrete. Oracle has reduced the free Arm budget in OCI, documented the new lower cap, and tied continued Always Free use to staying within 2 OCPUs and 12 GB total. For anyone using that free Arm capacity as a cheap lab, the next step is to check the tenancy’s total A1 allocation and bring it under the new limit before enforcement hits. (docs.oracle.com)