freeshell.de
freeshell.de · Compute · 1 record · JSON
freeshell.de Compute
caveatemailno cardDwrite-gated
| Free tier | Quoted: 'SSH to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS server with many tools and apps.' and 'Quota: 42 GB', 'Network: IPv4 + IPv6', 'Private TCP/UDP port: yes — on request'. The shell account is free and non-profit, online since 2002. unit GiB; metered on stored-bytes |
|---|---|
| Price | none stated |
| Per-object cap | ulimit values per account: 'nofile=unlimited', 'nproc=150', 'fsize=unlimited', 'mem=4 GB' |
| Retention | Not stated on the pages read: no inactivity deletion rule is published. Backups run daily with 30 days retention, which is the only retention number on the page. |
| Egress | not published: no traffic allowance or port speed is stated. 'Liberal fair-use limits' is the only qualifier. |
| Identity | email no card, no phone, no document, no national ID. The signup form asks for a desired login and an existing email address only; a token arrives by email and is then written on a postcard and mailed to a German address before the account is enabled. The identity cost is a postal address, not a payment instrument. |
| Limits | |
| Binding | write-gated The postcard is the gate: nothing is provisioned until a piece of physical mail reaches Germany, which is a delay of days and a cost of one stamp, and no digital route exists. |
| Interface | ssh, sftp, webdav SSH to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, a ShellInABox browser terminal, rsync/scp, WebDAV through ownCloud, MySQL over the CLI and phpMyAdmin, and a private TCP/UDP port on request. Podman is available for containers. |
| Tooling | any SSH client; Podman for containers; rsync/scp for transfer |
| Composes with | A shared shell with 4 GB of memory, 42 GB of disk, a real IPv4 and a private port on request, for no money and no card: the closest thing to a free always-on host, at the cost of a physical postcard and a shared kernel. |
| Reliability | No reliability event observed. It is a non-profit club, not a company, so continuity rests on volunteers; the page states it has been online since 2002. |
| Notes | The best free always-on shape found that takes no card: 4 GB of memory, 42 GB of disk and an inbound port. Three caveats. First, activation is by physical postcard to Germany, which is days of latency and a stamp, and it is the only route. Second, it is a shared host, not a VM: no root, a shared kernel, and Podman rather than Docker daemon access. Third, no vCPU count and no egress allowance are published, so the compute and bandwidth sides of the shape are unverified. Not previously in the corpus. A third-party aggregator states 20 GB and 1 Gbps for this service; both disagree with the vendor's own 42 GB, and the vendor page is the one recorded. |
| Evidence rung | documented Quota, memory, nproc, the IPv4+IPv6 pair, the private port and the postcard activation are all quoted from freeshell.de's own services and get-started pages read today. Egress allowance, vCPU count and the inactivity rule are not published on any page read. |
| Checked | 2026-10-25 (live); stale on 2026-11-24 |
| Parsed numbers |
|
Evidence (8)
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-24 | freeshell.de/services/ | quoted: 'SSH to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS server with many tools and apps.', 'Quota: 42 GB', 'Network: IPv4 + IPv6', 'Private TCP/UDP port: yes - on request' |
| 2026-10-24 | freeshell.de/services/ | quoted: 'Default limits (ulimit): nofile=unlimited nproc=150 fsize=unlimited mem=4 GB'; 'Background processes: yes · screen/tmux: yes · personal crontab: yes'; 'Backups: daily, 30 days retention' |
| 2026-10-24 | freeshell.de/services/ | quoted: 'Podman (Docker-compatible). Find, run, build, share and deploy apps in your own environment here.' and 'Storage: images/volumes live under ~/.local/share/containers/ (counts to your quota)' |
| 2026-10-24 | freeshell.de/get-started/ | quoted: 'Free Linux shell account. Activated by postcard.' and 'Grab a postcard: write your token on it, then mail it (physically) to the address in the email.' and 'once the postcard arrives, we enable your account' |
| 2026-10-24 | freeshell.de/ | quoted: 'Your non-profit free shell provider since 2002' and 'Generous resources, rich environment, friendly by design' |
| 2026-10-24 | freeshell.de/services/ | quoted: 'Quota: additional 42 GB (separate from shell quota)' for ownCloud, and 'MySQL 8.0 databases ... Quota: technically none - fair-use' |
| 2026-10-24 | freeshell.de/services/ | quoted: 'SSH to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS server with many tools and apps.', 'Quota: 42 GB', 'Network: IPv4 + IPv6', 'Private TCP/UDP port: yes — on request' |
| 2026-10-24 | freeshell.de/services/ | quoted: 'Quota: additional 42 GB (separate from shell quota)' for ownCloud, and 'MySQL 8.0 databases ... Quota: technically none – fair-use' |
More fields (14)
{
"shape": {
"vcpu": null,
"ram_gib": 4,
"disk_gib": 42,
"gpu_class": null,
"gpu_count": null,
"note": "mem=4 GB is a ulimit, not an allocation; vCPU is not published, only nproc=150"
},
"billing_model": "free",
"term": "indefinite while the account is active; no term is published",
"m10h_usd": 0,
"m24h_usd": 0,
"price_arithmetic": "no charge, no card, no billing relationship; the cost is one postcard",
"free_tier_kind": "always-free",
"network_out": {
"allow_outbound": true,
"allow_inbound_listen": true,
"ports": "a private TCP/UDP port on request; IPv4 and IPv6 both assigned",
"static_ip": true,
"ipv6": true,
"per_session_bytes": null
},
"session_cap": {
"wall_clock_min": null,
"idle_reap_s": null,
"restart_required": false,
"note": "none published; background processes, screen/tmux and personal crontab are all permitted"
},
"signup_url": "https://freeshell.de/get-started/",
"credit_usd": null,
"credit_hours_at_shape": null,
"card_hold_usd": null,
"payment_methods": "none; donations accepted, no billing system"
}Unknown or withheld values (1)
$.egress.meteredegress-unknown