How infrastructure developers can review free cloud service terms at a glance
When starting a new project, you may want to build infrastructure without cost. This list organizes the free tier conditions for SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS services that are practically useful for system administrators and DevOps engineers. It covers only free plans provided as services, not self-hosted setups, and includes only items verified from a security perspective.
Selection criteria and scope for free tiers
This list is not a simple enumeration of free services but a curated resource from an infrastructure developer's perspective. The target is service-based offerings (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS) rather than self-hosted software, and it requires a continuous free tier rather than a free trial period. If there is a time limit, only plans lasting at least one year are included. Additionally, services that restrict TLS to paid tiers are excluded, while SSO support is allowed. These criteria involve subjective judgment, so the intent is not to include every free service.
Free limits for major cloud providers
Specific free limits for major providers such as Google Cloud, AWS, Azure, Oracle Cloud, IBM Cloud, Cloudflare, and Zoho are documented in detail. For example, Google Cloud specifies daily instance hours for App Engine, Cloud Storage capacity, and BigQuery query limits. AWS presents monthly egress capacity for CloudFront, Lambda request counts, and DynamoDB storage space. Azure allows you to check limits for various services, including CPU minutes for App Service, Functions request counts, and Cosmos DB storage capacity. Since these figures vary by service, you must always check the provider's latest free tier page before actual use.
Service composition by category
The list is classified into more than 50 categories, including cloud management solutions, source code repositories, API and data, CI/CD, monitoring, DNS, and email. Each category includes representative free services in that field, with brief descriptions of the main features or limits provided alongside the service name. For instance, the source code repository category includes GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, and Codeberg, showing the number of repositories or collaborators allowed in their respective free plans. This structure allows you to quickly find the type of tool you need.
Maintenance method for the list
This list is the result of additions and modifications made by more than 1,600 contributors via Pull Requests. Continuous updates are required to reflect changes or terminations in service free tiers. Users can send Pull Requests to add new services or correct information for existing ones. However, since the scope of the list is limited to services useful for infrastructure developers, not all contributions of free services are accepted. This community-based maintenance method plays an important role in keeping the list up to date.
Items to verify before use
This list is for reference only, and actual free limits of services may change frequently according to provider policies. Therefore, you must always check the latest free tier conditions in the official documentation of the specific service before adopting it. In particular, detailed conditions such as regional restrictions, traffic limits, and API call counts may differ from what is stated in the list. Additionally, this list does not guarantee the performance or stability of specific services, and details of security policies should follow the provider's official guidance. Architecture design considering the limitations of free tiers is necessary when configuring infrastructure.
