They’re worth $300 in spend across eligible OCI services for up to 365 days, plus unlimited-duration Always Free resources. In real use, that usually means you can prototype with paid compute/storage when you need extra capacity, then keep a smaller baseline on Always Free. The credits also apply to services like Kubernetes (OKE), machine learning notebooks, analytics/integration services, and OCI Generative AI (Cohere and Meta models), as long as the service is eligible for credit spend. When the credits end, paid resources created with them can be reclaimed unless you upgrade.

No. Oracle recognizes Oracle Academy members during signup and skips credit card verification for provisioned student accounts.

In this Oracle Academy program, the $300 lasts 365 days, while Always Free resources have no expiration.

Yes. If you have Oracle credits you won’t use before they expire, you can list them on AI Credit Mart and sell them at up to 70% of face value. Companies regularly list surplus credits from startup programs and enterprise agreements.

AI Credit Mart has discounted Oracle credits available from companies with surplus allocations. Prices are typically 30-70% below retail.

Credits expire after 365 days or when you spend the $300. Paid resources provisioned with those credits are reclaimed unless you upgrade to a paid account. Always Free services continue indefinitely, assuming you stay within Always Free limits and the account isn’t left completely idle for a long time.

No. An educator at an Oracle Academy member institution must set it up and provision your account.

No, your home region is permanent, and Always Free services only run there.

There’s no single dollar value because Always Free is usage-limited infrastructure you can keep indefinitely, plus a separate $300 trial credit bucket for 30 days. The “worth” depends on what you run, but the standout value is the 4 ARM OCPUs with 24 GB RAM total, 2 Autonomous AI Databases, and 10 TB/month egress. That combination can replace a few small paid servers and a managed DB for many side projects. If you use the Autonomous AI Database features (vector search, hybrid search, APEX), the managed-service value is often higher than the raw VM value.

Yes, Oracle requires a credit/debit card for identity verification, and they state there’s no charge.

The Always Free resources have no time limit, and the $300 trial credits last 30 days.

Yes. If you have Oracle credits you won’t use before they expire, you can list them on AI Credit Mart and sell them at up to 70% of face value. Companies regularly list surplus credits from startup programs and enterprise agreements.

AI Credit Mart has discounted Oracle credits available from companies with surplus allocations. Prices are typically 30-70% below retail.

When the 30-day $300 trial credits expire, you lose the trial balance, but Always Free resources can remain available indefinitely if you stay within the free limits. Oracle states you won’t be charged unless you explicitly upgrade and exceed those limits. Practically, that means your free-tier services can keep running, but anything relying on paid trial usage needs to be resized or shut down.

It’s a region capacity issue: popular home regions often have exhausted free-tier ARM capacity. Oracle recommends selecting a less popular home region (such as Chicago, Montreal, or Frankfurt) to reduce the odds of hitting that wall.

Yes. Oracle may reclaim idle Always Free compute instances, and “idle” is defined over a 7-day window where CPU, network, and (for A1) memory utilization stay very low. They email you about 7 days before reclamation, and the instance is stopped, not deleted. You can restart it later if capacity is available in your region. If you want to avoid this policy entirely, Oracle recommends upgrading to Pay As You Go while still staying within Always Free limits so you pay nothing unless you exceed them.

They’re worth $300 in promotional credit you can spend on eligible OCI services for 30 days, including Compute, OCI Generative AI, Autonomous Database, storage, and networking. In practical terms, that can cover a real prototype: a couple of VMs, a database, and enough managed LLM calls to evaluate latency, quality, and basic RAG workflows. The trick is to treat the 30 days like a deadline, because it is. After that, you either upgrade to Pay As You Go or fall back to Always Free resources only.

Yes for most users; Oracle uses it for identity verification and says you won’t be charged unless you manually upgrade.

The $300 free-trial credits last 30 days, and the timer starts at signup (not first use).

Yes. If you have Oracle credits you won’t use before they expire, you can list them on AI Credit Mart and sell them at up to 70% of face value. Companies regularly list surplus credits from startup programs and enterprise agreements.

AI Credit Mart has discounted Oracle credits available from companies with surplus allocations. Prices are typically 30-70% below retail.

Your account stays active and transitions to Always Free, but paid (non-free-tier) resources enter a 30-day grace period and are then reclaimed (deleted) if you don’t upgrade.

No. Your home region selection is permanent, and Always Free resources can only be provisioned in that region.

Always Free includes AMD Compute VMs (2 VMs, each 1/8 OCPU and 1 GB RAM), Arm Ampere A1 capacity (4 OCPUs and 24 GB RAM total), plus storage (200 GB boot volume and 200 GB block volume). You also get two Autonomous Databases (each 1 OCPU and 20 GB), networking basics (VCN/subnets/security lists), a Load Balancer instance (10 Mbps), and generous outbound transfer (10 TB/month). There are also “ops” essentials like Monitoring & Notifications, Logging (10 GB/month), and Vault (secret/key limits). Availability can be capacity-limited in popular regions, so you may need to retry provisioning later.