Cloud credits for a zero-spend node pilot
Decision as of November 4, 2026. This plan assumes eligibility for Google Cloud and no remaining AWS promotional credit. Start with one Google VM and consider up to four light rehearsal VMs after checking the actual billing-account expiry, balance, per-region quotas and core accounting. The cash ceiling is $0. Keep the account on the unupgraded Free Trial. No cloud accounts, regions, instances or credits were activated or independently inspected for this comparison. Google trial rules · Compute quotas
Here a node is an independently allocated Linux VM. A region is a separate geographic deployment location. Four VMs may reside in one region. This hub release manages replicas on one local Docker host per installation. A VM fleet would require separate installations or a future multi-host scheduler. An edge function, static site or container sharing a host does not increase the VM count.
Offers in the 90-day to six-month window
| Provider and offer | Amount and expiry | Eligibility, billing boundary and value for this pilot |
|---|---|---|
| Google Cloud Free Trial | $300 for 90 days, ending sooner if the credit runs out. | New eligible customers, identity/payment verification. The unupgraded trial closes automatically and stops resources. Paid billing requires an explicit upgrade. Trial Compute Engine is limited to eight concurrent cores. Quota increases, GPUs and certain products are unavailable. The e2-micro monthly allowance covers one VM's worth of hours combined across Oregon, Iowa and South Carolina, 30 GB-months of standard persistent disk, and 1 GB of eligible outbound transfer. External IPv4 is priced separately. Use this offer if the operator's Billing page confirms Free Trial status. Free program · Supplemental terms · VPC pricing |
| AWS Free account plan | $100 on signup, plus up to $100 earned through eligible activities. The Free plan closes at depletion or after six months, whichever comes first. | New AWS customers only. A previous AWS account can disqualify the customer. Activities including creating or joining AWS Organizations, setting up Control Tower or joining the Partner Network can automatically switch an account to Paid. Avoid all listed upgrade triggers. For scale, a Linux Lightsail bundle with 1 GB RAM, 40 GB disk, public IPv4 and 2 TB nominal transfer starts at $7/month in applicable regions. Excess transfer, detached IPs or backups can consume more credit. The old new-customer Lightsail trial is retired. Excluded for this operator. Free plan and triggers · Eligibility · Linux bundles · Lightsail billing |
| Microsoft for Startups, standard benefits | The current English program FAQ specifies $200 for 90 days for Azure newcomers, followed by an additional $4,800 after business verification. The $5,000 milestone is available for up to 180 days. | Intended for qualifying startups building scalable products. This is an application and verification process. A card is required and uncovered services can be billed. Membership can convert to pay-as-you-go when requirements or time limits are reached. Sponsored VM, disk, public IP and transfer consumption depends on the subscription and region. Exclude from an unconditional $0 deployment. Standard program, exact milestones and billing transition |
| Scaleway Early Stage | Up to €1,500 per month for six months, €9,000 total. Monthly vouchers are distinct from a single freely transferable grant. | For an approved pre-seed/seed company coming out of its proof of concept, under five years old, fewer than 50 employees, new to Scaleway or progressing from Founders. The program specifies a €500/month minimum cloud consumption threshold. Compute in a supported European zone, public IPs, volumes and external traffic must be costed on the selected SKU. No hard zero-invoice boundary was established. Exclude. Startup program · Early Stage requirements |
| DigitalOcean standard signup | $5 for 90 days on the first team. | Valid payment method required before creating a Droplet. The standard $5 offer applies across eligible products and cannot transfer to another team. A Basic x86 VM with 512 MiB and 10 GiB SSD is $4/month; the 1 GiB and 25 GiB option is $6/month. The signup credit cannot fund even one $4 VM for three months. Continued use is billable. Exclude. Current signup credit · Droplet prices and transfer |
| Alibaba Cloud ECS product trial | The ECS documentation advertises up to three months for eligible new ECS users. Regional campaign pages have listed $90 for three months. The current international trial rules defer quota, term and SKU to the actual product card. | First use of the product, supported payment method, and one eligible identity across linked accounts. Individual and enterprise editions have separate criteria. A voucher is separate from any chargeable ECS, disk or network configuration; regional inventory and the account's checkout terms control. The $90 amount and a hard stop for all line items were not confirmed for this operator. Exclude. Current ECS trial reference · Product trial rules · Regional campaign |
Six calendar months is the provider's term, not a promise of exactly 180 days. Check the actual timestamp in the billing console. Keep one legitimate account per eligible person or business as required by each provider. Conditional signup, startup, investor, referral and student benefits contribute zero to this operator's balance until the relevant provider confirms eligibility and assigns the credit.
Different durations and infrastructure types
| Provider | Verified offer | Treatment under the $0 ceiling |
|---|---|---|
| Oracle Cloud Infrastructure | Unupgraded Free Tier retains eligible Always Free resources in one home region. Current A1 ARM64 allowance is 1,500 OCPU-hours and 9,000 GB-hours/month, equivalent to 2 OCPUs and 12 GB, divisible into two 1-OCPU/6-GB VMs. AMD x86 micro allowance is up to two 1-GB VMs with a fraction of an OCPU. Minimum boot volume is 47 GB; 200 GB block storage is shared. The separate $300 trial lasts up to 30 days. | One free account per person, verified contact/payment details, possible temporary card hold. Provisioning can fail for lack of capacity. Idle instances can be reclaimed. Four 47-GB boots would use 188 GB, but no four-VM allocation is assumed. Oracle's online trial agreement limits trial use to internal evaluation. Confirm the applicable agreement before any commercial deployment. No OCI account or capacity was confirmed here. Compute and storage allowances · Account and card policy · Trial agreement |
| Azure free account, general offer | $200 for 30 days for an eligible new customer. Azure also advertises monthly VM-hour allowances on selected burstable x86/Arm sizes during the first 12 months. | Without upgrade, the trial stops when the initial credit/time expires. To continue receiving 12-month benefits, the customer must move to pay-as-you-go within 30 days. Public IP, managed disks, egress, regional SKU availability and subscription limits matter. The 12-month allowances do not establish 12 months of no-bill accounts. Free account · Free-services conditions |
| Akamai Cloud / Linode | $100 for 60 days for a qualifying new member on the published offer. A Shared CPU VM starts at 1 vCPU, 1 GB and 25 GB SSD in core compute regions. | Offer validity and eligibility are separate from a paid account's normal billing. Remaining services can accrue charges. No 90-day grant or universal hard stop established. Exclude. Official new-customer offer · Shared CPU availability |
| Vultr | Selected official partner campaigns advertise $300 for the first 30 days. The ordinary signup documentation promises only conditional promotional credits of up to 30 days. | One qualifying promo, verified payment method, region/plan subject to stock. Check the offered compute SKU, IP family, bundled transfer and backup costs. The promotional amount is campaign-specific and does not establish a hard charge stop. Exclude. Provider-hosted campaign · Coupon eligibility |
| OVHcloud Public Cloud | The worldwide first-project offer advertises US$200 for one month. | Requires a first Public Cloud project, even for an existing account. Voucher applies to the activated project and eligible services. Charges beyond it remain the customer's responsibility. Check region, instance, IP, volume and network costs before use. Exclude. Official first-project terms |
| IBM Cloud | The provider advertises $200 for 30 days on eligible new accounts. Permanent Lite plans apply to selected managed services. | No enduring full Linux worker VM with its disk and network was established from the Lite offer. Product-specific Db2 credits are unsuitable for Docker hosts. Exclude. IBM trial and Lite scope |
| Cloudflare Workers Free | Up to 100,000 requests/day, with per-invocation CPU and memory limits. Its edge presence can host a lightweight route or front end. | Workers are isolates, with no customer-controlled Linux VM or local Docker socket. A single deployment replicated across edge locations adds zero worker hosts to Daedro. Workers limits |
Google-only 90-day arithmetic
For a reproducible upper estimate before free allowances, use Iowa on-demand Linux pricing as a reference. An x86 e2-micro has 1 GiB RAM and two guest-visible vCPUs sharing a fractional CPU entitlement. Assume 2,160 running hours, one standard external IPv4, and a 10 GB standard persistent disk per VM. Using $0.008376428/hour for compute, $0.005/hour for IPv4 and $0.04/GB-month for disk, each VM uses approximately $30.09 of credit over 90 days. Regional prices differ. Cross-region or internet egress, retained snapshots, load balancers, NAT gateways and backups are additional. Small disks and 1-GiB hosts are for light test workloads; the full managed worker image and workload must fit before accepting traffic. Compute rates · IP pricing · Disk pricing · E2 architecture
| VMs | 90-day gross credit use | Interpretation |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | $30.09 | First test node. Confirm its actual size, quota debit and daily cost before adding another. |
| 4 | $120.37 | Candidate short-lived pilot. At two guest-visible vCPUs per VM this fits a conservative eight-core planning envelope. |
| 10 | $300.93 | Above the entire grant on gross list pricing before additional services. The shared free allowance might lower this cost, but 20 guest-visible vCPUs need independent quota confirmation. |
| 30 | $902.79 | Approximately three times the grant and 60 guest-visible vCPUs. Unsupported by the available account. |
Google's published trial agreement caps concurrent Compute Engine use at eight cores. Actual shared-core quota accounting, project-wide CPU limits, regional CPU/IP quotas and physical capacity decide what can launch. Trial customers cannot request quota increases. The four-VM figure is a planning bound, not an observed account limit. A geographically split pilot must reprice each region and the traffic between them. After the earlier of actual credit exhaustion or the 90-day deadline, plan for zero Google nodes. The free e2-micro allowance on a paid billing account falls outside the zero-charge rule. Trial concurrency limit · Compute quota policy · End-of-trial behavior
Admission before launch
- Verify in the owner's Billing console that the account is still Free Trial, with remaining credit and an expiry date. If the billing account is already paid, stop. No signup, plan conversion, payment, DNS change or provisioning is implied by this plan.
- Record the provider, region, zone, machine architecture, actual CPU/IP quotas, disk type, IP mode and all line items. Confirm that the workload is permitted under the accepted trial terms. Use synthetic payloads for the evaluation.
- Start one node only after those checks succeed. Compare measured idle cost, remaining credit and capacity headroom before authorizing the remaining nodes. Rehearse shutdown and export essential configuration while the account is active.
- Treat credits as per-provider balances with separate expiry dates. Spend alerts and budget notifications do not enforce a hard stop. A provider offer requiring automatic overage billing, pay-as-you-go or user-funded minimum spend stays outside this plan.