What trips people up is region and plan choice. Google's free VM and storage count only in us-west1, us-central1 and us-east1, and GPUs and TPUs are never included. AWS now splits new accounts into a Free plan, which caps you at up to $200 in credits and closes after 6 months, and a Paid plan that bills overages but qualifies for promotional credits. Azure's 12 month extras are for new customers only and require a non-prepaid card. Pick wrong and the free tier quietly becomes a bill.
Trial credits sit on top of the free tiers. Google gives $300 for 90 days, Azure gives $200 for 30 days, and AWS gives $100 at sign-up plus up to $100 more for exploring services. DigitalOcean offers no trial, but it does give away 3 static sites, a 500 MiB container registry and 90,000 GiB-seconds of Functions per month, with Droplets from $4 a month. Limits on this page were checked on November 2, 2026.
How to get the most from free tiers
Pin resources to the free regions
The Google Cloud free e2-micro and the 5 GB of storage only count in us-west1 (Oregon), us-central1 (Iowa) and us-east1 (South Carolina). The same VM in us-east4 bills at full price from the first hour. Set the default region in your project to one of the three before creating anything, and check the bill after the first week to confirm zero. A wrong default region is the most common way a free VM ends up costing money.
Pick the AWS plan on purpose
The AWS Free plan expires at 6 months or when the $200 in credits is gone, whichever comes first, and AWS then suspends the account and its projects. It also can’t receive promotional credits such as AWS Activate. Choose the Free plan for a learning sandbox you’ll abandon. Choose the Paid plan for anything that must survive past month six or that a startup program will fund. There’s no quiet middle option.
Upgrade Azure within 30 days
You must move to pay-as-you-go within 30 days, or when the $200 credit runs out, to keep the 12 months of free services. Miss the window and the free VM hours and database allowances disappear along with the trial. Upgrading doesn’t start charges by itself; usage inside the free amounts still costs nothing, and the card only covers overages. Upgrade on day one if you plan to keep anything running.
Watch outbound transfer, not compute
Google caps free outbound data transfer from North America at 1 GB per month on Compute Engine and Cloud Run, 5 GB on Cloud Run functions and 100 GB on Cloud Storage. A small site serving images can blow through the VM allowance in a weekend while the e2-micro itself stays free. Put static files behind the Storage allowance or a CDN rather than serving them from the VM. The 100 GB bucket is the one to lean on.
Do not expect free GPUs
GPUs and TPUs aren’t part of the Google Free Tier, and a Free Trial billing account can’t add GPUs to a VM or request a quota increase at all. Azure and AWS publish no always free accelerator either. If you need a GPU for a few hours, pay for it on a Paid plan or look at research and startup programs, where GPU spend is an eligible use of credit. Nobody gives away accelerators, so stop looking.
Treat the trial as a 90 day sprint
Google ends the $300 trial at 90 days or when the credit is spent, then disables billing, stops resources and deletes them after a 30 day grace period unless you upgrade. Upgrading keeps the unused credit, but it still has to be consumed within the original 90 days. Decide in week one what you’re testing, and upgrade before day 90 if anything you built needs to keep running. The grace period is for recovery, not planning.
is google cloud always free really free
Yes, within the published limits and only in the listed regions. You get one e2-micro VM per month, 30 GB of standard persistent disk, 5 GB of regional Cloud Storage, 1 TiB of BigQuery queries, 2 million Cloud Run requests and more, per billing account. Usage above a limit bills at normal rates, unused allowance doesn’t roll over, and Google reserves the right to change the offer with 30 days notice.
does the aws free tier still last 12 months
Not in the old form. The current Free plan gives $100 in credits immediately and up to $100 more for exploring key services, with the account closing after 6 months or when credits run out. Separately, 30+ services are always free within monthly limits on both the Free plan and the Paid plan. The Free plan can’t be extended beyond 6 months, so plan the upgrade early.
do i need a credit card for a cloud free tier
It depends on the provider. AWS doesn’t require a payment method to sign up for the Free plan for most new customers. Google requires a credit card or other valid payment method for the $300 trial and places a temporary authorization hold, not a charge. Azure needs a phone number and a non-prepaid credit or debit card, with a temporary one dollar verification. Azure for Students is the exception on Azure, with no card at all.
what happens when the google cloud free trial ends
If you haven’t upgraded by day 90 or when the $300 is spent, Google disables billing, stops every resource you created and starts a 30 day grace period. Resources are permanently deleted at the end of it unless you upgrade. If you click Activate before then, your resources keep running, the remaining credit stays available inside the original 90 days, and the card is charged only for usage above the credit and the Always Free limits.
does digitalocean have a free tier
Partly. DigitalOcean gives away 3 static sites on App Platform, a container registry with 1 repository and 500 MiB, 90,000 GiB-seconds per month of Functions, one uptime check, cloud firewalls, DNS and reserved IPs attached to a Droplet. There’s no always free virtual machine; the smallest Droplet is $4 per month. Promotional credits for new users appear from time to time and expire after their stated period.
Google Cloud