6 free alternatives to IBM Cloud Free Tier

Google Cloud pairs a $300 signup credit with a separate list of always-free product limits that don't draw against it: one e2-micro Compute Engine instance a month, 5 GB-months of Cloud Storage, 1 TB of BigQuery queries a month, and 2 million Cloud Run requests a month. If your workload fits on one virtual machine plus a serverless layer, that's more real compute and more analytics room than IBM's Lite plans give you anywhere. It loses to IBM on breadth: Google names roughly 20 always-free products against IBM's 40-plus, so anything outside that shorter list starts drawing on the credit right away. Choose Google Cloud if you want one solid virtual machine and a real analytics allowance, not a long tail of small services.

• Beats IBM Cloud Free Tier: A full free virtual machine, 1 TB of BigQuery queries a month, and a bigger signup credit
• Falls short: Roughly half as many named always-free products as IBM's Lite catalog
• Who should switch: Switch to Google Cloud if you want one real virtual machine and serious analytics headroom, not four dozen small Lite entitlements.

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Azure Container Apps' free grant renews every month instead of draining down: 180,000 vCPU-seconds, 360,000 GiB-seconds, and 2 million requests per subscription, with no signup credit to work through first. That suits one small always-on API or background worker better than IBM's Lite plans, which spread thin compute across many named products instead of concentrating it in one container runtime. It loses to IBM on breadth, since Azure Container Apps is a single service, so anything past its compute grant starts billing, where IBM keeps handing you Lite access to a different product for almost every job. Choose it if your workload is one containerized service that runs continuously, not a scattered stack of small tools.

• Beats IBM Cloud Free Tier: A recurring monthly compute grant that renews on its own, with no credit balance to run out
• Falls short: One service only, against IBM's 40-plus Lite-plan spread
• Who should switch: Switch to Azure Container Apps if you run one container workload continuously and want a free allowance that resets every month instead of expiring.

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Azure's free-account grant covers 750 hours a month across its B1s, B2pts v2 (Arm-based), and B2ats v2 (AMD-based) burstable sizes, for Linux or Windows, enough to run one small virtual machine around the clock. That's a real, dedicated compute instance, not a slice of a shared Lite plan. The catch is duration: the VM hours only apply for your first 12 months, where IBM's Lite plans keep running for as long as the account exists. Choose it if you want a full virtual machine right now and can plan around moving to a paid instance, or a Lite-plan alternative, once the year is up.

• Beats IBM Cloud Free Tier: 750 hours a month of a real, dedicated virtual machine across three burstable sizes
• Falls short: The VM allowance ends after 12 months, where IBM's Lite plans never expire
• Who should switch: Switch to Azure Virtual Machines if you want a full virtual machine today and don't mind planning ahead for month 13.

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Render gives you one free web service, 512 MB of RAM and 0.1 CPU, with 750 free instance hours per workspace every month, enough to keep one small app running most of the time. It spins down after 15 minutes without traffic and takes about a minute to wake back up, but there's no signup credit to track and no separate Lite plan to pick for each piece of your stack. It loses to IBM on breadth: one free web service is what you get, where IBM's Lite catalog also covers databases, CI/CD, and AI APIs as separate free products. Choose it if IBM was mostly running one small web app for you, and you don't need the rest of the Lite catalog.

• Beats IBM Cloud Free Tier: One recurring free web service with 750 instance hours a month and no credit clock running
• Falls short: Covers one small app, not the database, CI/CD, and API products IBM's Lite plans also cover
• Who should switch: Switch to Render if your whole use of IBM Cloud was running one small web app.

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DigitalOcean App Platform's free tier is static sites only: three apps, each with a 1 GiB outbound data transfer allowance, deploying straight from GitHub or GitLab with automatic HTTPS, a custom domain, a global CDN, and unlimited team members. If what you were actually doing on IBM Cloud was hosting a static frontend, this covers it cleanly, and the first paid tier only starts at $5 a month once you need containers instead of static files. It loses to IBM the moment you need any server-side compute or a database, since everything on this free tier is static, where several of IBM's Lite plans give you a real backend. Choose it if your project is a static site or a small marketing page.

• Beats IBM Cloud Free Tier: Unlimited team members and a clean $5-a-month first paid tier once you outgrow static hosting
• Falls short: Free tier is static sites only, with no server-side compute or database
• Who should switch: Switch to DigitalOcean App Platform if your project is a static site, not a backend service.

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Koyeb's free plan gives you one web service (512 MB RAM, 0.1 vCPU, in Frankfurt or Washington, D.C.) plus one free Postgres database with 5 hours of active time a month, 1 GB of storage, and 0.25 vCPU. That covers the same small-app-plus-database shape as IBM's Cloudant and compute Lite plans, in two products instead of scattered across many. It loses on the database side specifically, since Koyeb's free Postgres only stays active 5 hours a month, where Cloudant's 1 GB of storage carries no time limit. Choose it if you want a web service and a small Postgres database together, and can live with the database's limited active hours.

• Beats IBM Cloud Free Tier: One free web service plus a free Postgres database in the same plan
• Falls short: The free Postgres database is capped at 5 active hours a month
• Who should switch: Switch to Koyeb if you want a web service and a small Postgres database together, and don't need the database running all month.

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