INFRA Signal 496
Oracle Just Halved Its Always Free ARM Limits
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Oracle is cutting the free ARM compute quota in half, limiting each tenancy to 2 OCPUs and 12 GB of RAM after August 18 2026.
Any Always-Free ARM instance that exceeds the new quota will be automatically terminated, potentially causing service interruption. Engineers must resize or retire excess instances before the deadline, which adds operational work even though no extra cost is incurred. The separate x86 free tier remains unchanged, so only ARM workloads are affected.
Written by elseif from the cluster below · every claim links back to a sourceThe three things worth knowing
The free ARM pool drops from 4 OCPUs/24 GB to a tenancy-wide limit of 2 OCPUs/12 GB, enforced on August 18 2026.
Excess ARM instances must be resized or terminated beforehand; stopping them does not free the quota.
The two free x86 micro instances keep their original limits and are unaffected by the change.
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