How much does Cheaploy cost?

Cheaploy charges a monthly platform fee for the managed DevOps automation. Your cloud bill stays $0 because deployments run on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure's Always Free tier — 2 ARM Ampere CPUs, 12GB RAM, 200GB block storage, a load balancer and 10TB egress per month, perpetually free with no credit-card charges.

What's the catch with Oracle Cloud's Always Free tier?

Oracle's free tier is genuinely free, but new accounts sometimes see capacity errors in popular regions when launching ARM instances. Cheaploy auto-retries across regions and availability domains until provisioning succeeds.

Do I need DevOps experience?

No. Cheaploy detects your stack (React, Node, Python, Go, Java, etc.), generates an optimized multi-stage Dockerfile, provisions a VCN, ARM compute, load balancer, and SSL certificate, then deploys — all from a single 'Deploy' click.

Can I deploy a Lovable, Bolt, v0, or Cursor app?

Yes. Cheaploy was built for vibe coders shipping AI-generated apps. Upload a ZIP from Lovable, paste a GitHub URL from Cursor or v0, or connect Bolt — Cheaploy handles the rest and gives you a URL on your own cloud.

How is this different from Vercel, Render, or Fly.io?

Vercel, Render, and Fly.io rent you their infrastructure with generous free tiers that get expensive at scale. Cheaploy deploys to your own Oracle Cloud account, so the infrastructure is yours — and Oracle's free tier never expires.

How many players can a free Oracle Cloud Minecraft server handle?

With Paper and 12 GB of RAM allocated to the JVM, 15-25 concurrent players is comfortable for vanilla-style gameplay. Heavy modpacks (RLCraft, All The Mods) support fewer — plan for 5-8.

Is Java or Bedrock better on Oracle Cloud ARM?

Java (via Paper or Fabric) is the mature path — ARM-native OpenJDK 21 is fast and stable. Bedrock server binaries are x86-only, so you'd need emulation and take a big performance hit.

Will Oracle shut down my server for being 'idle' or 'not production'?

Oracle reclaims Always Free instances only after ~7 days of very low CPU and network. A live Minecraft server, even with 0 players, generates enough activity to stay running indefinitely.

How do I keep the world backed up?

Add a nightly cron job that tars /opt/minecraft/world and uploads to Oracle Object Storage (10 GB always free). One-line rclone or oci-cli command.

Host a Minecraft server free on Oracle Cloud (2026)

Oracle Cloud's Always Free tier gives you 2 ARM Ampere cores and 12 GB of RAM — more than enough to run a smooth Paper or Fabric Minecraft server for 20+ friends, forever, at $0/month. Here's the full setup.

Why Oracle Cloud beats every other free host for Minecraft

2 ARM Ampere cores + 12 GB RAM — free forever. Aternos gives you 1 GB and queues you.
200 GB block storage — plenty for large worlds and backups.
10 TB/month egress — bandwidth is never the bottleneck.
Your own IP and full root access — install any mod, any plugin, any Java version.

Step 1 — Provision the ARM instance

Sign up for Oracle Cloud (signup guide), then launch an Ampere A1.Flex shape with 2 OCPUs and 12 GB RAM. Pick Ubuntu 22.04 as the image. Hitting "Out of host capacity"? Use our retry script.

Step 2 — Open the Minecraft port

Two places to open TCP 25565: the VCN Security List in the Oracle Cloud console, and the instance's local iptables:

sudo iptables -I INPUT 6 -m state --state NEW -p tcp --dport 25565 -j ACCEPT
sudo netfilter-persistent save

Step 3 — Install Java 21 (ARM-native)

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y openjdk-21-jre-headless screen
java -version   # confirm aarch64 build

Step 4 — Install Paper

Paper is a high-performance Spigot fork. Grab the latest 1.21.x build:

mkdir -p /opt/minecraft && cd /opt/minecraft
curl -o paper.jar https://api.papermc.io/v2/projects/paper/versions/1.21.4/builds/latest/downloads/paper-1.21.4-latest.jar
echo "eula=true" > eula.txt

Step 5 — Launch with tuned JVM flags

Allocate 16 GB to the heap (leave headroom for the OS) and use Aikar's flags for smoother GC on Ampere:

screen -S mc
java -Xms16G -Xmx16G \
  -XX:+UseG1GC -XX:+ParallelRefProcEnabled -XX:MaxGCPauseMillis=200 \
  -XX:+UnlockExperimentalVMOptions -XX:+DisableExplicitGC \
  -XX:G1NewSizePercent=30 -XX:G1MaxNewSizePercent=40 \
  -jar paper.jar nogui

Detach with Ctrl-A D. Connect from your Minecraft client using the instance's public IP.

Step 6 — Auto-restart with systemd

# /etc/systemd/system/minecraft.service
[Unit]
Description=Paper Minecraft
After=network.target

[Service]
WorkingDirectory=/opt/minecraft
ExecStart=/usr/bin/java -Xms16G -Xmx16G -jar paper.jar nogui
Restart=always
User=minecraft

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

sudo systemctl enable --now minecraft and you're done.

Backups to Oracle Object Storage (also free)

Add a nightly cron: tar czf /tmp/world.tgz /opt/minecraft/world && oci os object put --bucket-name mc-backups --file /tmp/world.tgz. Object Storage gives you 10 GB always free — plenty for weekly snapshots.

Prefer to skip the Linux chores?

Cheaploy automates the whole Oracle provisioning + Docker + systemd step for web apps. Minecraft itself still needs a manual server jar, but the underlying compute setup is the same — and if you use Cheaploy for your web dashboard on the same tenancy, you'll never touch a VCN by hand again.

Host a Minecraft server for free on Oracle Cloud