{"rid":"compute/oracle-cloud-infrastructure","card":{"rid":"compute/oracle-cloud-infrastructure","eid":"oracle","topic":"compute","slug":"oracle-cloud-infrastructure","provider":"Oracle Cloud Infrastructure","url":"https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/FreeTier/freetier_topic-Always_Free_Resources.htm","domain":"oracle.com","category":"GPU cloud","tier":null,"verdict":"paid-only","vorder":3,"grp":"paid","confidence":"documented","binding":"volume-quota","identity_kind":"card","identity_basis":"stated","needs_card":1,"needs_phone":0,"needs_id":0,"needs_institution":0,"country":null,"crypto":null,"interfaces":null,"egress_metered":null,"per_object_bytes":null,"retention_days":null,"verified_at":"2026-10-22T00:00:00.000Z","verified_basis":"live","checked_on":"2026-10-22","stale_on":"2026-11-21","n_evidence":5,"usd_month":null,"usd_per_tb_month":null,"summary":"A refutation. A widely syndicated claim states that OCI Always Free includes '1 NVIDIA A10 GPU, 24GB VRAM ... capped at 500 GPU-hours per month', worth about...","duplicate_of":null,"n_unknown":10},"record":{"topic":"compute","slug":"oracle-cloud-infrastructure","provider":"Oracle Cloud Infrastructure","url":"https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/FreeTier/freetier_topic-Always_Free_Resources.htm","category":"GPU cloud","free_tier":{"stated":"A refutation. A widely syndicated claim states that OCI Always Free includes '1 NVIDIA A10 GPU, 24GB VRAM ... capped at 500 GPU-hours per month', worth about USD 640 a month, attributed to a December 2025 Oracle blog post. The official Always Free page lists no GPU at all. Its Compute section names exactly two shapes: 'up to two Always Free VM instances using the VM.Standard.E2.1.Micro shape' and 'the first 1,500 OCPU hours and 9,000 GB hours per month for free for VM instances using the VM.Standard.A1.Flex shape'. The cited blog URL returns HTTP 403 and has no Wayback capture.","unit":"hours","metered_on":"wall-clock","source_url":"https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/FreeTier/freetier_topic-Always_Free_Resources.htm","read_on":"2026-10-22","notes":"none"},"per_object_cap":{"stated":"not applicable","bytes":null,"source_url":"https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/FreeTier/freetier_topic-Always_Free_Resources.htm","notes":null},"retention":{"stated":"not applicable","days":null,"source_url":"https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/FreeTier/freetier_topic-Always_Free_Resources.htm","notes":null},"egress":{"terms":"not stated","metered":false,"free_allowance":null,"price_per_tb":null,"source_url":"https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/FreeTier/freetier_topic-Always_Free_Resources.htm"},"interface":["unknown"],"interface_detail":"inferred from the tooling the provider documents; not probed","tooling":"not stated","chaining":"Nothing to chain: the entitlement does not exist on the page that would define it.","limits":[{"kind":"volume-quota","value":"No GPU shape appears in the Always Free entitlement, so the 500 GPU-hour figure has no page behind it.","source":"https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/FreeTier/freetier_topic-Always_Free_Resources.htm"}],"limits_note":"No GPU shape appears in the Always Free entitlement, so the 500 GPU-hour figure has no page behind it.","binding":"volume-quota","binding_note":"No GPU shape appears in the Always Free entitlement, so the 500 GPU-hour figure has no page behind it.","identity_cost":{"kind":"card","detail":null,"country":null},"reliability_note":"no reliability event recorded","confidence":"documented","evidence":[{"url":"https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/FreeTier/freetier_topic-Always_Free_Resources.htm","date":"2026-10-22","proved":"the Available Shapes section lists only VM.Standard.E2.1.Micro and VM.Standard.A1.Flex, and the page contains no GPU entitlement, read in full"},{"url":"https://tcoiq.com/cloud-news/oracle-oci-announces-always-free-gpu-tier-with-nvidia-a10-access-for-ai-develope","date":"2026-10-22","proved":"the syndicated claim of '1 NVIDIA A10 GPU, 24GB VRAM ... capped at 500 GPU-hours per month' and an implicit USD 640 monthly subsidy, published 2026-05-13 and attributed to December 2025"},{"url":"https://blogs.oracle.com/cloud-infrastructure/post/oci-always-free-nvidia-a10-gpu-tier-december-2025","date":"2026-10-22","proved":"the cited source returns HTTP 403 from the origin, and broker archive at 2026-01 reports 'no capture' from Wayback and no Cloudflare scan"},{"url":"https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/Compute/Concepts/preemptible.htm","date":"2026-10-22","proved":"'Preemptible capacity costs 50% less than on-demand capacity in all regions' and an event fires two minutes before termination, quoted"},{"url":"https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/Compute/Concepts/preemptible.htm","date":"2026-10-22","proved":"the Supported Shapes list contains VM.GPU2 and VM.GPU3 and does not contain VM.GPU.A10, VM.GPU4, or bare metal, read in full"}],"verdict":"paid-only","verified_at":"2026-10-22T00:00:00.000Z","notes":"The secondary article also contains arithmetic errors that a reader can check: it prices the A10 at USD 1.28 an hour in one sentence and says that maps to VM.GPU3.1, which is a V100 shape, and it describes BM.GPU.A10.1, which is not a shape name on OCI's price list (the bare metal A10 shape is BM.GPU.A10.4). Oracle did announce an Always Free compute reduction enforced from 18 August 2026, cutting Ampere A1 from 4 OCPU and 24 GB to 2 OCPU and 12 GB, and the official page reflects the reduced figures, which is independent evidence that the page read is current. A real OCI GPU free allowance would be the largest single finding in the corpus, which is why this refutation is worth recording rather than leaving the claim to be rediscovered. The one recorded is the better-evidenced. Verdict scope corrected 2026-10-22: this record is about a refuted claim, not a dead product. The claim that OCI Always Free includes an A10 GPU has no page behind it, and that claim is dead. The provider is not: it sells preemptible GPU capacity at about half the on-demand rate, with a two-minute termination event and VM.GPU2 and VM.GPU3 as supported preemptible shapes, as this record's own evidence rows state. `dead` was read as 'OCI has nothing', which the evidence contradicts.","extras":{"wave2":{"class":"spot-arbitrage","free_tier_kind":"none","shape":null,"verdict_change":"dead -> paid-only on 2026-10-22 (verdict scope)"}}},"claims":[{"path":"$.free_tier.stated","kind":"free-quota","num":24,"unit":"GB","per":null,"currency":null,"usd":null,"fx_date":null,"parse":"ok"},{"path":"$.limits[0].value","kind":"limit:volume-quota","num":500,"unit":"GPU-hour","per":null,"currency":null,"usd":null,"fx_date":null,"parse":"ok"}],"unknown":[["$.egress.metered","egress-unknown"],["$.egress.terms","not-stated"],["$.identity_cost.detail","process"],["$.interface","interface-unknown"],["$.per_object_cap.notes","process"],["$.per_object_cap.stated","not-applicable"],["$.reliability_note","none-observed"],["$.retention.notes","process"],["$.retention.stated","not-applicable"],["$.tooling","not-stated"]],"history":[],"drift":[]}