Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Pricing — OCI Compute, OCI Object Storage, OCI Database Service & Egress Costs (2026)
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is the challenger that behaves like a hyperscaler on capability and like a developer cloud on price. The structural difference is egress: every tenancy ships a standing free monthly transfer allowance, which is the single largest lever in this comparison for content-heavy workloads. Every figure below is computed from OCI list rates by the same engine as the live estimator.
- Always Free tier + 10 TB/month egress free makes OCI the cheapest hyperscaler for content-heavy workloads.
- Ampere Arm-based compute offers the deepest price/performance of any major cloud.
What a Oracle architecture costs
Four reference architectures, priced for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure alone by the same engine that powers the live estimator — list prices in USD, us-east-1 baseline, on-demand unless noted.
SaaS Starter MVP
Ideal for early-stage startups and production web apps with up to 25k monthly active users.
- Virtual Machines / Compute
- $55.48/mo
- Object & Block Storage
- $12.85/mo
- Managed Relational Database
- $40.77/mo
- Networking & Data Egress
- $10.44/mo
High-Traffic E-Commerce
Engineered for high concurrent checkouts, product catalogs, and intensive flash sales.
- Virtual Machines / Compute
- $302.22/mo
- Object & Block Storage
- $51.61/mo
- Managed Relational Database
- $279.92/mo
- Networking & Data Egress
- $20.88/mo
Enterprise Microservices (K8s)
Multi-service containerized architecture with managed Kubernetes clusters and service mesh.
- Object & Block Storage
- $128.79/mo
- Managed Relational Database
- $559.85/mo
- Networking & Data Egress
- $46.28/mo
- Managed Kubernetes
- $537.28/mo
AI / ML Inference & Pipeline
Compute and memory-optimized instances designed for low-latency LLM serving and vector retrieval.
- Virtual Machines / Compute
- $665.76/mo
- Object & Block Storage
- $206.11/mo
- Managed Relational Database
- $474.85/mo
- Networking & Data Egress
- $61.34/mo
OCI Compute instance pricing
Every published shape in the catalog, priced at 730 hours/month in USD list rates.
| Instance | Shape | On-demand | 1-year reserved | 3-year reserved | Spot / preemptible |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
VM.Standard.E5.Flex-2x4 General Purpose (E5.Flex) | 2 vCPU / 4 GB | $27.74/mo | $20.80/mo | $18.61/mo | $13.87/mo |
VM.Standard.E5.Flex-2x8 General Purpose (E5.Flex) | 2 vCPU / 8 GB | $33.58/mo | $25.19/mo | $22.48/mo | $16.79/mo |
VM.Standard.E5.Flex-4x16 General Purpose (E5.Flex) | 4 vCPU / 16 GB | $67.16/mo | $50.37/mo | $44.97/mo | $33.58/mo |
VM.Standard.E5.Flex-8x32 General Purpose (E5.Flex) | 8 vCPU / 32 GB | $134.32/mo | $100.74/mo | $90.01/mo | $67.16/mo |
VM.Standard.E5.Flex-16x32 General Purpose (E5.Flex) | 16 vCPU / 32 GB | $221.92/mo | $166.44/mo | $148.70/mo | $110.96/mo |
VM.Standard.E5.Flex-16x128 General Purpose (E5.Flex) | 16 vCPU / 128 GB | $362.08/mo | $271.56/mo | $242.58/mo | $181.04/mo |
VM.Standard.E5.Flex-32x128 General Purpose (E5.Flex) | 32 vCPU / 128 GB | $537.28/mo | $402.96/mo | $359.96/mo | $268.64/mo |
OCI Object Storage storage tiers
| Hot / standard | $0.0255/GB-mo $25.50 per TB-month · $0.0034/10k reads · $0.0034/10k writes |
|---|---|
| Cool / infrequent | $0.0100/GB-mo $10.00 per TB-month · $0.0034/10k reads · $0.0034/10k writes |
| Cold | Not offered OCI does not publish a distinct Cold tier — Infrequent Access and Archive cover that range. |
| Archive | $0.0026/GB-mo $2.60 per TB-month · $0.0034/10k reads · $0.0034/10k writes |
OCI Database Service pricing
| db.standard.e4.2x4 (2 vCPU / 4 GB) | PostgreSQL $32.27/mo · MySQL $32.27/mo · SQL Server Not offered Storage $0.0850/GB-mo · multi-AZ multiplies the instance rate by 2× |
|---|---|
| db.standard.e4.4x16 (4 vCPU / 16 GB) | PostgreSQL $149.94/mo · MySQL $149.94/mo · SQL Server Not offered Storage $0.0850/GB-mo · multi-AZ multiplies the instance rate by 2× |
| db.standard.e4.8x32 (8 vCPU / 32 GB) | PostgreSQL $299.88/mo · MySQL $299.88/mo · SQL Server Not offered Storage $0.0850/GB-mo · multi-AZ multiplies the instance rate by 2× |
| db.standard.e4.8x64 (8 vCPU / 64 GB) | PostgreSQL $402.38/mo · MySQL $402.38/mo · SQL Server Not offered Storage $0.0850/GB-mo · multi-AZ multiplies the instance rate by 2× |
Networking & egress
| Internet egress | $0.0085/GB (first 10 TB) Then $0.0085/GB up to 40 TB. First 10,240 GB each month free. |
|---|---|
| Load balancer | $8.25/mo |
| Static IPv4 address | $2.19/mo |
| Egress policy detail | The first 10 TB of outbound data transfer is free every month on every OCI tenancy. |
OCI OKE
| Control plane (first cluster) | Free Billed at $0.000/hr; the first cluster is waived. |
|---|
Where Oracle ranks
- Entry-level compute: #6 of 10 ($27.74/mo (VM.Standard.E5.Flex-2x4))
- Egress at 20 TB/month: #4 of 10 ($87.04/mo)
Full ranked tables live in the cost guides.
Lowering a Oracle bill
Oracle Always-Free Egress
OCI bundles 10 TB of outbound data transfer free every month — for egress-heavy workloads that alone can beat every other hyperscaler’s bill.
Pair with Ampere Arm compute for the best price/performance ratio in the catalog.
- OKE Basic clusters never bill for the control plane — only the underlying compute.
- The first 10 TB/month of egress is free on every OCI tenancy — size workloads to stay under it.
Compare Oracle with other providers
Cost guides featuring Oracle
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Oracle Cloud Infrastructure pricing — frequently asked questions
Is Oracle Cloud cheaper than AWS, Azure or Google Cloud?
On compute it is generally the cheapest of the four hyperscalers in this catalog, and Ampere arm64 shapes widen that lead on price/performance. On egress it is not close: Oracle includes a large free monthly transfer allowance on every tenancy where the others meter from the first gigabyte. The workload totals below let you see both effects on the same architecture rather than arguing from rate cards.
What is the cheapest way to run a workload on Oracle Cloud?
Size workloads to stay inside the free monthly egress allowance — for content delivery, APIs with large responses, and backup replication it is often the dominant line item, and it costs nothing to design around. On compute, prefer Ampere arm64 shapes where your software stack supports them, and remember that the Always Free tier is open-ended rather than a twelve-month trial. OKE Basic clusters never bill for the control plane.
Who is Oracle Cloud the right choice for?
Egress-heavy workloads first: media delivery, public APIs with large payloads, and anything that ships data out to customers. Second, teams that want hyperscaler-grade infrastructure without hyperscaler list prices, and organizations with existing Oracle database estates. It is the least widely adopted of the four hyperscalers here, so weigh ecosystem and hiring alongside the bill.
What does the cheapest comparable instance cost on Oracle?
For a 4 vCPU / 16 GB Linux instance at 730 hours a month on demand, the engine matches OCI Compute to VM.Standard.E5.Flex-4x16 at $67.16/month. Instance shapes differ between providers, so the matched shape matters as much as the price — the compute table below lists every published shape with its reserved and spot rates.
How does Oracle charge for data transfer?
The first 10,240 GB of outbound internet transfer each month is free; beyond that it is metered. Load balancers bill at $8.25/month and static IPv4 addresses at $2.19/month in this catalog, both metered hourly.
What storage tiers and managed database engines does Oracle offer?
Object storage is available in 3 tiers (hot, cool, archive) — see the storage table for per-GB rates. Managed databases cover POSTGRES, MYSQL (SQL Server is not offered as a managed service). The managed Kubernetes control plane is free on the first cluster.
Provenance for every figure on this page is listed on the methodology page.