Top 5 Platforms Offering Free Cloud Servers for Development & Learning

Hey there, if you are a developer and at some point you have a great idea that you want to develop and showcase to other people, but lack a place where you can host your application.

In this article, I will share some resources/providers where you can get free servers with RAM ranging from 1 GB to 24 GB to showcase your creations to the world.

So without any more bullshit, lets begin.

How to use this list

Each platform’s free tier changes often. Check current limits (CPU hours, always-on rules, and card verification) on the official site before you depend on a workflow.

AWS (Amazon Web Service)

The great old sage of cloud computing, AWS, offers a free 1 GB server for a year. It's not much, but it's sufficient to run your applications. I have used this personally to host my projects during the development period.

Here are the specifications of the server -

| Compute | Value | | --- | --- | | vCPUs | 1 | | Memory (GiB) | 1.0 | | Memory per vCPU (GiB) | 1.0 | | Physical Processor | Intel Xeon Family | | Clock Speed (GHz) | 3.3 | | CPU Architecture | i386 | | GPU | 0 | | GPU Architecture | none | | Video Memory (GiB) | 0 | | GPU Compute Capability | 0 | | FPGA | 0 |

For more specification-related details check the reference site -

Also, here's the link to AWS Free Tier -

Azure

To be honest, I have not used Azure much; I have used it only a small number of times. But you can get the same capacity of server from Azure as well, which is 1 GB of RAM for 1 Year.

Here's the specification of the server -

| Compute | Value | | --- | --- | | vCPUs | 1 | | Memory (GiB) | 1.0 | | Memory per vCPU (GiB) | 1.0 | | CPU Architecture | x64 | | GPU | 0 | | Capacity Support | True | | VM Generations Supported | V1,V2 | | Low Priority | False | | vCPUs per Physical Core | 1 | | VM Deployment Method | IaaS |

For more specification-related details check the reference site -

Also, here's the link to Azure Free Tier -

GCP (Google Cloud Platform)

Again, I have not used much GCP; I am an AWS boy. However, it also offers the same capacity as the other two mentioned before 1 GB of RAM for 1 Year. As of writing this article, it offers that free server for LifeTime. So, this might be what you wanted for your small project.

Here's the specification of the server -

| Property | Value | | --- | --- | | Instance Type | e2-micro | | Details | Cost optimized with burstable capabilities. Low-traffic web servers, Small databases, Development and test environments.

e – Economic general purpose with burstable capabilities
2 – Generation
micro – 0.5x RAM/CPU ratio | | Instance Family | Cost optimized | | Description | Efficient Instance, 2 vCPU (1/8 shared physical core) and 1 GB RAM | | vCPUs | 2 | | Memory | 1 GiB | | CPU Architecture | x86_64 | | Processor | Intel Skylake, Broadwell, and Haswell, AMD EPYC Rome and EPYC Milan | | Shared CPU | yes | | GPU | no | | Sustained Discounts (SUDs) | no |

For more specification-related details check the reference site -

Also here's the link to GCP Free Tier -

Alibaba Cloud

I have hardly used it once, about 2-3 years ago. You can give it a try. It also offers a 1GB RAM server for about 12 months.

Here's the specification of the server -

| Property | Value | | --- | --- | | vCPUs | 2 | | Memory | 1 GiB | | CPU Architecture | x86_64 | | Processor | Intel Skylake, Broadwell, and Haswell, AMD EPYC Rome and EPYC Milan | | Shared CPU | yes | | GPU | no | | Sustained Discounts (SUDs) | no |

For more specification-related details check the reference site -

Also here's the link to Alibaba Free Tier -

⚠️

As Alibaba is a China-based company, security concerns may arise due to local laws. Consider this if you plan to use it for sensitive matters.

Oracle Cloud

Oracle provides an exceptional free tier that I highly recommend. I've been using it since I discovered it. They offer two AMD-based servers with 1GB of RAM each, or Arm-based servers with up to 24GB. You can choose to use them as one or up to four separate servers—it's a fantastic deal.

You can see more details about it here -

https://www.oracle.com/in/cloud/free/

Also If you don't believe me just see it yourself -

As promised, I've shared the Top 5 Free Server Providers. If you have any side or small projects to showcase, go ahead and share the link in the comment section.