Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Services And The Costs
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is Oracle’s public cloud platform offering over 100 services spanning compute, storage, networking, databases, analytics, AI/ML, and more.
OCI is designed with a cost-effective, flexible pricing model. Resources can be consumed on a pay-as-you-go basis or via discounted Universal Credits (annual/monthly commitments).
Many services support Bring-Your-Own-License (BYOL) options for customers with existing Oracle licenses (e.g. databases, middleware) to reduce costs.
Notably, OCI maintains consistently low pricing globally and includes generous free allowances – for example, 10 TB of outbound data transfer per month at no charge (far more than most clouds).
OCI claims substantially lower prices than competitors (up to 50% less for compute, 70% less for storage, and 80% less for networking).
Below, we explore all major OCI services by category, explaining each service’s purpose, typical usage, and how it’s licensed and priced.
Compute Services
OCI’s compute services provide on-demand processing power in the cloud, ranging from virtual machines to bare metal servers and specialized options for high-performance computing.
- Compute Instances (VMs and Bare Metal) – The core service lets you provision and manage compute hosts (virtual or physical). You can launch Virtual Machine instances (VMs) for general workloads or Bare Metal instances for dedicated, single-tenant access to a physical server for maximum performance. VMs run on the same hardware as bare metal, with hypervisor isolation between instances. You choose CPU architecture (Intel, AMD, or Arm), number of cores (OCPUs), memory, and shape type (e.g., Standard, High Memory, Dense IO for local SSD). Use cases: hosting web applications, enterprise software, microservices, or custom workloads. Pricing & Licensing: Compute instances are billed per OCPU hour and GB of memory hour. Pay-as-you-go pricing is straightforward (e.g., an AMD VM with 1 OCPU + 6 GB RAM is about $0.054 per hour in US regions), and Oracle offers fine-grained “flex shapes” so you only pay for the exact CPU and RAM needed (scaling by single core or 1 GB increments). Linux OS is free (Oracle Linux includes support at no extra cost), whereas Windows instances incur a Microsoft license fee on top (or you can BYOL your Windows Server licenses). By leveraging Universal Credits (annual/monthly commitments), compute costs can be discounted significantly from list prices. For example, OCI offers an 85% discount for reserved (unused) capacity compared to other negotiated discounts. OCI’s compute pricing is very competitive – Oracle highlights that a 4-vCPU, 16 GB RAM instance costs about half of AWS/Azure equivalents.
- High Performance Computing (HPC) and GPU Instances – OCI provides specialized bare metal and VM shapes for intensive compute workloads: HPC shapes with high core counts and RDMA networking for scientific simulations, and GPU-accelerated instances (NVIDIA GPUs like A100, V100, H100, etc.) for AI/ML training, rendering, and parallel compute. These are essentially flavors of compute instances optimized for performance. Pricing: HPC and GPU instances are billed per OCPU and GPU hour at premium rates corresponding to the hardware. For example, a VM with 1 NVIDIA V100 GPU is billed at the GPU price (around $2.95/hr for V100) plus the underlying OCPU/RAM cost. GPU bare metal servers (with 8 GPUs) cost proportionally more. Like standard computing, you can use them on demand or at a lower cost with committed use. Typical scenario: training machine learning models on GPU or running CFD simulations on HPC clusters.
- Oracle Cloud VMware Solution (OCVS) – A specialized computing service that enables you to run VMware vSphere environments on OCI’s bare metal servers. Oracle provides pre-built VMware clusters on OCI, fully isolated in your tenancy so you can migrate on-premises VMware workloads without conversion. What it does: OCVS gives you a VMware Software-Defined Data Center (ESXi hypervisors, vCenter, NSX, vSAN) running on OCI bare metal hosts. This is ideal for lifting and shifting enterprise VMware applications to the cloud. Pricing & Licensing: If you are not bringing your own, you pay for the underlying bare metal instances in the VMware cluster and a subscription fee for the VMware licenses. Generally, it’s consumption-based – each ESXi host (for example, a BM.Standard.E4.64 64-core server) has an hourly rate. VMware licenses can be BYOL (if you already own VMware licenses) or included and billed through Oracle. Typical deployments use multi-host clusters (a minimum of 3 hosts). The cost is high per host, but consolidating many VMs on each can be cost-effective versus on-prem CAPEX. Usage: Enterprises migrating legacy systems or running hybrid clouds want OCVS for full VMware compatibility in OCI.
- Container Instances – A newer compute service lets you run containers directly on OCI without managing servers or clusters. This is a lightweight serverless container runtime (similar to AWS Fargate). You provide a container image, and OCI runs it in an isolated environment. Use cases: quick deployment of containerized apps or tasks without running a full Kubernetes cluster. Pricing: Billed per vCPU and memory resources consumed by the container instance (per second). It’s purely pay-as-you-go; you’re charged while the container is running. There are no separate management fees. This offers a simple way to pay only for short-lived container workloads.
(Compute services generally have no up-front costs; you pay for what you use in CPU hours. Many smaller dev/test workloads can even run on OCI’s Always Free tier – e.g., up to 4 OCPUs of Arm compute and 24 GB RAM are free indefinitely in each account.)
Storage Services
OCI storage services are designed to handle various data needs – from high-performance block storage for VMs to long-term archival storage.
All storage is offered on a pay-per-use basis, measured by gigabytes (GB) per month, with no upfront commitments required.
- Block Volume Storage – Durable block storage volumes attached to compute instances (similar to virtual disks). These are primary storage for VM or bare metal instance operating systems and data (databases, applications, etc.). You can provision block volumes from 50 GB to 32 TB and attach/detach them from instances. Pricing: Block volumes are billed per GB-month of provisioned capacity. OCI’s list price is around $0.0255 per GB per month for standard performance block storage – roughly 70% less than comparable block storage on other clouds. Performance is tunable via volume performance units (VPUs): Balanced (default) or Higher Performance; OCI includes a baseline 10 VPUs/GB at no extra cost, which meets most needs. This means you get decent IOPS/throughput without paying more, unlike some providers that charge for IOPS. Usage: Attach block volumes as system or data disks for servers, use them in RAID for higher throughput, or back up volume snapshots to object storage. Block volumes can be scaled up on the fly and support automated backups. There’s no separate license – it’s pure utility pricing.
- Object Storage – A scalable storage service for unstructured data (documents, images, backups, logs, etc.) accessible via HTTP API. OCI’s Object Storage is highly durable (replicates data across multiple servers). It offers tiers: Standard Object Storage for hot data, Infrequent Access for cooler data (lower cost per GB, but retrieval fees), and Archive Storage for long-term retention (very cheap per GB, but requires retrieval time). Pricing: Standard tier is about $0.026 per GB-month, Infrequent Access around $0.018 per GB-month (with $0.01/GB retrieval fee), and Archive as low as $0.0025 per GB-month. Data egress (outbound transfer) from object storage counts toward the 10 TB free monthly allowance, and beyond that is charged per GB (OCI’s egress fee is roughly $0.0085/GB in the US after the free tier, which is up to 10× cheaper than AWS). Licensing: No license is needed – you pay for storage used and data transfer out (with large free quotas). Use cases: Storing backups and database dumps, serving static website content, big data lakes, or any scenario needing massive scalability. OCI’s object storage is Amazon S3–compatible and often much cheaper when factoring in the free 10 TB egress and lower fees.
- File Storage – A managed Network File System (NFS) service that provides shared file storage for OCI compute instances. It’s ideal for applications that need a file system interface accessible from multiple instances (e.g. content management, home directories, or HPC jobs). OCI File Storage is elastic and grows on demand; you don’t pre-allocate capacity. Pricing: You pay per GB stored per month (around $0.033/GB-month for file storage) and for read/write operations (measured as metered I/O requests). OCI’s pricing model for file storage charges I/O throughput at a rate per 10,000 requests (with a certain allowance of throughput per GB stored).In many cases, moderate I/O usage is included, and charges mainly scale if you have very IO-intensive workloads. Licensing: No special license is required – it’s a fully managed POSIX file system. Typical usage: lift-and-shift applications that expect NAS/NFS storage, shared file repositories for apps, or media processing pipelines needing a common file share.
- Archive Storage – An ultra-low-cost object storage tier for long-term archiving of rarely accessed data. Archive storage is appropriate for compliance records, backups you retain for years, or any data accessed infrequently (retrieval from the archive takes several hours). Pricing: extremely cheap – on the order of $0.002 to $0.003 per GB-month (less than $3/TB-month). Uploading data is free; retrieval is charged per GB and file (reflecting the cost of rehydration). Archive storage in OCI is roughly 80% cheaper than standard cloud storage. Use cases: tape archive replacement, regulatory data retention, or large media archives. Note: To optimize cost, you can transition objects between Standard, Infrequent, and Archive tiers via object lifecycle policies.
- Storage Gateway – OCI offers a Storage Gateway appliance (a VM or physical appliance) that lets on-premises systems interact with OCI Object Storage using file protocols. It caches frequently accessed data locally and asynchronously writes to Object Storage. This is useful for hybrid environments as a bridge to cloud storage. Pricing: OCI Storage Gateway software is free; you just pay for the object storage and data transfer it uses. It’s a free service that helps utilize object storage for on-prem workloads (similar to AWS Storage Gateway). Typical scenario: A company wants to back up on-prem file servers to OCI or seamlessly use the cloud as an extension of on-prem storage.
- Data Transfer Service – This service provides a way to transfer large volumes of data to OCI by shipping physical disks. Oracle will load your data from the disks into OCI Object Storage. It includes Data Transfer Appliances if needed (Oracle can send you a storage appliance). Pricing: Oracle doesn’t charge for inbound data transfer or the service itself (you pay a refundable deposit for any appliance and shipping costs). This service exists to migrate hundreds of terabytes efficiently when network transfer would be too slow. Licensing: not applicable; it’s provided as a utility with minimal fees.
Storage summary: OCI’s storage pricing is highly pay-per-use and elastic, with no minimums. Choosing the right tier (e.g., moving cold data to Archive) can dramatically lower costs.
Also, data egress costs—often a hidden expense in cloud storage—are very low on OCI (the first 10 TB are free, then a low per GB fee), making it economical to retrieve your data when needed, a pain point on other clouds.
Networking Services
OCI networking lets you connect securely, isolate your cloud resources, and link with on-premises networks. Oracle’s networking is software-defined and offered mostly free or cheaply, with unique benefits like free ingress and large free egress limits.
- Virtual Cloud Network (VCN) – A private, software-defined network in OCI where you launch your resources (analogous to AWS VPC). A VCN is logically isolated in OCI’s regional network, with subnets (regional or AD-specific), route tables, security lists or network security groups (firewall rules). Pricing: The VCN and its components (subnets, routing, security lists) are free. You can create any number of VCNs and subnets for free. The first IP prefix announcement and basic DNS resolution for instances are free. You only pay for supplemental features (like Public IP addresses, which have a nominal cost if reserved, though ephemeral IPs are free) and for data transfer. Use case: Every deployment starts with a VCN to securely segment your cloud environment. No licensing – it’s part of OCI’s included functionality.
- Internet Connectivity and Data Transfer – OCI does not charge for inbound data transfer to the cloud (free unlimited ingress). For outbound data (egress), OCI includes 10 TB per month free per region, and beyond that, it charges a low, flat per-GB rate (which depends on region but is roughly $0.0085–$0.09 per GB, decreasing with volume). This starkly contrasts to other providers that might only include 100 GB free and then charge higher rates. In practice, many OCI customers see little to no egress charges due to the 10 TB free threshold, and even large transfers are cost-effective (Oracle’s outbound bandwidth fees are up to 10X cheaper than competitors after the free tier). Example: Transferring 50 TB out from OCI costs around $340, whereas on AWS, it could be 10–13 times more. This pricing model is very attractive for content delivery or backups.
- Load Balancing – OCI Load Balancer distributes incoming traffic across multiple compute instances for high availability. OCI offers flexible load balancers (Layer 4 and 7, supporting TLS termination, path-based routing, etc.). Pricing: An hourly rate is based on the load balancer’s shape (bandwidth capacity), plus a charge per GB of data processed through the load balancer. For example, a 10 Mbps small LB might cost around $0.018/hour, and data traffic might cost $0.005 per GB. Inbound data to the LB is free, and outbound from the LB counts toward your egress (with 10 TB free). Licensing: No license is needed; this is a managed service. Usage: common for distributing web traffic, API traffic across regional instances.
- FastConnect (Dedicated Network Connectivity) – FastConnect provides a private, dedicated network connection from your on-premises data center or colocation to OCI’s network (like AWS Direct Connect or Azure ExpressRoute). Pricing: FastConnect has no charge for port hours on Oracle’s side – you can set up a FastConnect port for free. If you use an Oracle partner facility (e.g,. Equinix), that provider may charge for the physical cross-connect. Data transferred through FastConnect does not incur the usual egress fees on OCI; it’s generally a flat monthly port fee from the provider. Oracle’s stance is that there are no per-GB charges for FastConnect itself(unlike other clouds that charge per GB on dedicated lines). This makes it predictable for hybrid cloud usage. You choose bandwidth tiers (1 Gbps, 10 Gbps, etc.) and pay the third party accordingly. Licensing: Not applicable – it’s a connectivity service.
- VPN Connect (Site-to-Site VPN) – A managed IPSec VPN that securely connects your on-premises network or device to your VCN over the internet. Pricing: OCI does not charge for using VPN Connect – it’s a free service (you just pay for any data egress over the internet as usual). You can establish multiple VPN tunnels for redundancy at no cost. Use case: quick setup of secure connectivity for development or smaller workloads or as a backup to FastConnect.
- Networking Gateways – Within a VCN, OCI provides various gateway components:
- Internet Gateway (for public internet access to VCN resources),
- NAT Gateway (for outbound internet access from private subnets),
- Service Gateway (for private access to Oracle services like Object Storage without internet),
- Local Peering and Remote Peering Gateways (to connect VCNs within or across regions).
Pricing: All these gateway resources are offered free of charge as part of the networking infrastructure. For example, you can set up a NAT Gateway to allow instances to access the Internet; OCI only charges for the data egress that flows through (which falls under the standard data transfer pricing). There are no hourly fees for the gateway itself. Usage: Gateways are fundamental building blocks for network architecture, and OCI’s pricing encourages using them as needed without extra cost.
- DNS and Traffic Management – OCI DNS is a distributed Domain Name System service. You can host your DNS zones on OCI. Pricing: DNS zone management is free; you pay for query volume. The first 1 billion DNS queries per month are free, beyond which queries are billed per million (at a very low rate, e.g., $0.85 per million). OCI also offers DNS Traffic Management (advanced routing policies like geolocation or failover), charged per DNS query directed by those policies (also per million queries). This cost is trivial for most use cases. Use case: Host your app’s DNS with OCI to integrate with other services (and possibly save versus other DNS providers if you have high query volumes).
- Content Delivery (OCI CDN Interconnect) – While OCI doesn’t have its own CDN service, it has partnerships with CloudFlare and others. OCI customers can use CloudFlare CDN without data transfer charges from OCI origin (CloudFlare’s Bandwidth Alliance with Oracle). This lets you distribute content globally without paying OCI egress fees to that CDN. Pricing in such cases is just what the CDN provider charges (CloudFlare has free and paid plans). Oracle’s network is tuned to be data-friendly, encouraging heavy data use without surprise bills.
Networking summary: Oracle’s networking services focus on low cost and high flexibility. Inbound traffic is free, outbound traffic has large free limits and low overages, and core networking constructs (VCNs, gateways, VPN) cost nothing. This benefits customers who need to transfer large datasets, stream content, or operate hybrid clouds without punitive bandwidth fees. Always verify region-specific pricing, but OCI’s pledge of consistent pricing worldwide means you don’t pay more in international regions either – the same data costs apply across OCI regions.
Containers and Serverless
OCI provides cloud-native services for running containers and serverless functions, enabling modern application architectures without worrying about managing servers.
- Oracle Container Engine for Kubernetes (OKE) – A fully managed Kubernetes service running containerized applications. OCI’s OKE is CNCF-compliant Kubernetes, where Oracle manages the control plane (api server, etcd) and you manage worker nodes (or use virtual nodes). What it does: It allows you to deploy Kubernetes clusters in OCI in minutes. Oracle handles control plane setup, upgrades, and high availability. To run your pods, you can scale worker nodes (on OCI Compute instances). Pricing: OKE’s pricing is remarkably low – the basic cluster control plane is free of charge. You only pay for the worker node instances (normal compute charges) and any load balancer or storage they use. OCI recently introduced an option for an SLA-backed control plane with advanced features (called “enhanced” clusters): that has a flat fee of $0.10 per cluster per hour, capped at $74.40 per month. But you can opt for the free tier control plane (no cost, just no formal SLA), which is sufficient for many use cases. If you choose virtual node (serverless worker) mode, there’s a small fee of $0.015 per virtual node-hour. Running Kubernetes on OCI can be significantly cheaper due to the free control plane (e.g., Oracle highlights ~one-third the cost of rival services for similar setups). Use cases: Deploying microservices, cloud-native apps, or migrating container workloads to OCI. Licensing: no license – it’s open-source Kubernetes; Oracle provides it as a service.
- Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Registry (OCIR) – A Docker/OCI container image registry to store and share container images. It’s integrated with OKE and supports private image repositories. Pricing: OCIR has a generous free allowance and is charged by storage used per month (and egress if images are pulled outside OCI). Storing up to 5 GB of images is often free; beyond that, it might cost ~$0.256 per GB-month. Many users won’t incur charges unless they store large images in bulk. Use case: Secure storage for your container images and helm charts and as a source for CI/CD pipelines.
- Oracle Functions – A serverless functions platform based on the open-source Fn Project. It lets you deploy small units of code that run on demand in a fully managed environment, which is ideal for event-driven and microservices architectures. What it does: Oracle Functions run your code in isolated containers that spin up in response to triggers (HTTP requests, file uploads, messages, or scheduled events). You don’t manage any servers; OCI handles scaling to zero and up. Pricing: Functions are billed based on invocations and resource time. The first 400,000 function calls per month are free, and beyond that, each invocation costs a tiny fraction of a cent (on the order of $0.0000002 per invocation). Memory and CPU time are also measured in GB-milliseconds; OCI charges about $0.00001417 per GB-memory second used. This is similar to AWS Lambda’s model. There is no charge when your functions are idle. You can also allocate Provisioned Concurrency (keep functions warm) at 25% of the runtime cost, but if those reserved instances execute, you pay normal execution cost. Use cases: event-driven data processing, extending SaaS apps (Functions integrates with OCI Events service), IoT data ingestion, or building APIs without managing infrastructure. Licensing: You only pay for usage; no separate license.
- API Gateway – A fully managed service to expose APIs and microservices with security, rate-limiting, and routing. OCI API Gateway is often used in front of Functions or other backend services to provide a RESTful API endpoint. Pricing: API Gateway is billed per million API calls handled. The pricing might be around $3 per million requests (after a free tier of ~2 million requests). There’s no hourly cost for the gateway instances; you pay purely by usage. This makes it cost-efficient to host APIs that get variable or infrequent traffic. Usage: Common in serverless architectures – e.g., an API Gateway triggers an Oracle Function on an HTTP request. Also used to provide public endpoints to microservices in OKE or back-end services in a VCN (via private integrations). No special license is required.
- Service Mesh – Oracle’s OCI Service Mesh is a managed service for microservice-to-microservice communication (built on Istio), providing observability, traffic encryption, and routing within OKE clusters. Pricing: OCI Service Mesh is currently provided at no additional cost (as it’s in line with OCI’s approach to not nickel-and-dime core infrastructure). You effectively pay for the underlying compute resources. If pricing were introduced, it might be similar to how AWS charges for App Mesh (by envoy hours), but Oracle’s documentation suggests it’s free for now. Use case: running complex microservice apps on Kubernetes that need mTLS security and traffic policies without building a custom solution.
In summary, Containers and serverless on OCI are very attractively priced. You can run production Kubernetes clusters without paying for the control planeand use serverless functions with a substantial free tier and low incremental costs.
This encourages developers to adopt cloud-native patterns with minimal cost barriers. All services are pay-per-use; costs drop to near zero if your cluster or function is idle.
The combination of OKE + Functions + API Gateway effectively covers most modern app needs.
Database Services
Oracle is a database leader, and OCI offers a rich portfolio of database services, ranging from autonomous Oracle databases to open-source databases. Depending on the database engine, these services can be licensed in flexible ways, including pay-as-you-go, BYOL, or subscription.
- Autonomous Database (ADB) – OCI’s flagship database cloud service that is fully managed and self-driving. Autonomous Database comes in two workload-optimized flavors: Autonomous Transaction Processing (ATP) for OLTP and mixed workloads and Autonomous Data Warehouse (ADW) for analytics. There’s also Autonomous JSON (for document stores) and APEX Service (for low-code apps). What it does: It automates DBA tasks – provisioning, tuning, scaling, patching, backups – without user intervention. You can run it in Serverless mode (provision just compute and storage, Oracle handles multi-tenant infrastructure) or on Dedicated Exadata Infrastructure (a private Exadata cluster in the cloud). Licensing & Pricing: Autonomous DB is billed per database compute unit (CPU) hour (Oracle calls them ADB “OCPUs” or “ECPUs”). You can choose License-Included (Oracle DB license is included in the price) or BYOL (bring your existing Oracle Database licenses for a big discount). BYOL can lower the compute cost by up to ~76% because you only pay for cloud infrastructure. For example, an ADW serverless might cost ~$2.52 per hour for 1 OCPU with license-included, but only ~$0.84 per hour with BYOL (these are list prices in USD). Storage is charged per TB monthly (around $150/TB-month for autonomous storage). You can scale CPU and storage independently, and auto-scaling can increase CPUs as needed (billed per second). Consumption models: pay-as-you-go hourly or monthly/universal credits for lower rates. Use cases: enterprise databases, large data warehouses, or any scenario where you want a “hands-off” managed Oracle DB that can tune and secure itself. Many businesses choose BYOL to reuse existing Oracle DB licenses and achieve cloud savings.
- Oracle Base Database Service (Virtual Machine/Bare Metal DB Systems) – These are managed Oracle Database instances running on dedicated compute shapes in OCI (not the autonomous tier). It’s essentially Database-as-a-Service for Oracle DB, where you have more control over the database and OS. You can choose single-instance databases or RAC (Real Application Clusters) for HA. What it does: Oracle handles provisioning of the DB system (on a VM or Bare metal server), and automates patching and backups if you choose, but you have full SYS DBA access and control over tuning, etc. It’s suitable if you need specific Oracle Database versions or options not yet in Autonomous or if you want more customization. Licensing: Available as BYOL or License-Included. If you bring an existing Oracle Database license (Enterprise or Standard Edition), you can launch a DB system at a lower infrastructure-only cost. If not, you can pay for the license as part of an hourly rate. Pricing: Scales with the OCPUs of the DB server and the storage. For example, a VM.Standard2 (X7) DB System with 2 OCPUs might be ~$1.15/OCPU-hour license-included for Enterprise Edition High Performance (list price), or ~$0.288/OCPU-hour with BYOL (covering just the hardware cost). Storage (block storage for the DB) is charged per GB-month as usual. There are also different editions: Standard Edition (cheaper, limited to 16 OCPUs, no extra cost options) vs Enterprise (with optional packs). Use cases: applications requiring an Oracle database with specific configurations (e.g., specific patch control, certain init parameters) or those migrating an on-prem Oracle DB to the cloud without using autonomous features.
- Exadata Database Service – This service gives you Oracle databases running on Exadata in the cloud. Exadata is Oracle’s high-end database-engineered system (with specialized hardware and smart storage for extreme performance). OCI offers Exadata in two forms: Exadata Cloud Service (Database Service on Exadata) in Oracle’s cloud data centers and Exadata Cloud@Customer, which installs Exadata machines in your own data center but is managed via OCI. What it does: Provides Oracle DB instances with the highest performance and availability – you can slice the Exadata into multiple databases/VM clusters. Oracle manages the infrastructure while you manage the databases. Licensing: As with other DB services, you can use License-Included or BYOL. Many customers bring their Enterprise Edition and database option licenses to Exadata to reduce cost since Exadata can leverage those (you still pay for the Exadata hardware utilization). Pricing: For Exadata Cloud Service, pricing is based on the number of OCPUs enabled and the fraction of Exadata rack you use. For instance, a quarter-rack Exadata base system might start at around $Oracle does not publicize a simple hourly rate, instead it’s often a monthly subscription or hourly in Universal Credits (e.g., ~$33.45/OCPU-hour license-included for a minimum 48 OCPUs quarter-rack as of 2024 pricing). BYOL would be significantly less (just the Exadata infrastructure, maybe ~$10/OCPU-hour). It’s a premium service geared toward large enterprises needing the utmost Oracle DB performance. Use cases: mission-critical OLTP workloads, large-scale OLAP/analytics that require the Exadata optimizations, or consolidation of many databases onto one platform. Exadata Cloud@Customer is usually an annual subscription (with BYOL required) and appeals to customers with data residency needs.
- Autonomous Database on Exadata [Dedicated] – This is a variant where Autonomous Databases run on dedicated Exadata infrastructure (either in OCI or Cloud@Customer). The licensing is similar to the Autonomous + Exadata combination: you pay for reserved Exadata infrastructure (monthly) and then autonomous DB usage. This gives isolation and customizability while retaining autonomous features. Often, BYOL is used here to maximize value (as each autonomous instance can consume your on-prem licenses).
- MySQL HeatWave – A managed MySQL Database service with an integrated in-memory analytics accelerator (“HeatWave”) for fast queries and machine learning. What it does: It’s a cloud MySQL service that handles transactions and can perform near real-time analytics on the MySQL data (HeatWave cluster scales out in-memory for complex queries) and even includes AutoML capabilities in DB. OCI’s MySQL service is notable for blending OLTP and OLAP in one database. Pricing: MySQL HeatWave is billed per shape of the MySQL node and HeatWave nodes. For example, a MySQL instance (with certain OCPUs and RAM) might cost ~$0.322/OCPU-hour, and each HeatWave node (which has 32 GB RAM chunks) might be an additional hourly fee. Oracle often cites that MySQL HeatWave is far cheaper than provisioning a separate MySQL + analytics stack on other clouds. There’s no license cost (MySQL is GPL); you pay for the service usage. Use cases: New applications that prefer MySQL but also need fast analytics or offloading analytics from an existing MySQL app to HeatWave rather than exporting to a separate data warehouse.
- PostgreSQL (OCI Database with PostgreSQL) – A fully managed PostgreSQL service introduced on OCI. It provides a compatible PostgreSQL database with automated scaling, updates, and high availability. Licensing: Open-source PostgreSQL has no license fee; OCI’s service is pay-as-you-go for the infrastructure. Pricing: charged per OCPU hour of the Postgres compute and per GB of storage. Oracle positions it with “price-performance” leadership for Postgres. For example, you might pay around $0.058/OCPU-hour for a standard Postgres shape (list), which is competitive with AWS RDS for Postgres. Storage might be ~$0.10/GB-month for premium SSD. An intelligent auto-tuning feature is also included. Use cases: Apps needing a managed Postgres – developers who prefer Postgres can get one on OCI without managing VMs. BYOL is irrelevant here since Postgres has no license, but Oracle allows you to manage it via the same interfaces as other databases.
- NoSQL Database Cloud – A fully managed NoSQL database service for applications that need low-latency key-value or JSON data storage. Oracle’s NoSQL service supports flexible schemas (doc, key-value, table) and is comparable to AWS DynamoDB. Pricing: OCI NoSQL offers two modes – On-Demand and Provisioned capacity:
- On-Demand: You don’t pre-set read/write units; you are billed for the actual read/write throughput consumed in request units (RU). This is great for variable workloads. Provisioned: You reserve a certain throughput (e.g., 500 writes/sec, 1000 reads/sec); you are billed a fixed amount for that, which gives lower unit prices if used fully. Unused capacity is wasted but cost predictable.Dedicated (Hosted Environment): you can get a dedicated NoSQL cluster for very large workloads for a simple monthly price.
- Oracle NoSQL on-prem licenses—If you had Oracle NoSQL Database on-prem, OCI’s BYOL could let you use the cloud service at a reduced rate, but Oracle actually provides the cloud NoSQL as a separate offering; you typically just pay for the service usage.
- Oracle GoldenGate – A managed service for data replication and streaming across databases. GoldenGate is an Oracle product that allows real-time change data capture (CDC) and replication between heterogeneous sources (Oracle DB, MySQL, Kafka, etc.). What it does: On OCI, GoldenGate is a fully managed service where you can configure replication pipelines via UI or REST APIs without running servers. Licensing: GoldenGate on OCI has a BYOL option. If you own GoldenGate licenses, you can use them to reduce costs. Otherwise, you pay for license-included. Pricing: Billed per OCPU hour of the GoldenGate deployment. For instance, one OCPU of GoldenGate might be ~$0.836/OCPU-hour license-included and ~0.2/OCPU-hr BYOL (illustrative). Since GoldenGate usage can vary, you’d size the service for the workload needed (depending on the replicated transaction volume). Use cases: Migrating databases with near-zero downtime, feeding a data warehouse from an OLTP system in real-time, multi-cloud database sync (OCI GoldenGate can replicate to other cloud databases too). Oracle offering it as a service simplifies what traditionally is a complex setup.
- Database Tools and Utilities: OCI also provides ancillary services like Database Migration Service (to help migrate on-prem or other cloud DBs into OCI – this is free for use), Data Safe (a security and compliance service for databases), and Oracle Data Guard for disaster recovery (Data Guard is included with Autonomous and available for Exadata service). Oracle Data Safe is worth noting: it helps with security assessment, data masking, and database activity auditing. It’s free for OCI databases (if you are an OCI database customer, Data Safe can be enabled at no extra cost). There might be a fee if you want to use Data Safe with on-prem databases. Usage: Data Safe ensures your cloud databases are configured securely and mask sensitive data in non-prod environments.
In summary, OCI’s database services provide cloud elasticity and Oracle’s database expertise. Pricing can be pay-as-you-go by the hour with no minimum (especially attractive for dev/test or spiky workloads). Alternatively, you can opt for more traditional monthly billing for stable workloads (e.g., a monthly Exadata subscription).
BYOL is a key cost saver – Oracle encourages bringing your licenses: e.g., running Autonomous Database with BYOL can cut the hourly compute cost by roughly 70-80%. Similarly, running an Oracle DB on a VM DB System with BYOL means you only pay for computing/storage, not database software.
Always Free tier: Oracle even provides Always Free Autonomous Database instances (two databases with 1 OCPU and 20 GB each) for unlimited time, which is great for development or small usage at no cost.
The variety from Autonomous to MySQL/Postgres means you can choose the right database engine and pricing model for each application.
Security and Identity Services
Security in OCI is a fundamental, built-in aspect. Many security services are provided at no extra cost to help cloud users maintain a strong security posture. Oracle offers identity management, encryption, threat detection, and network security tools in the cloud.
- Identity and Access Management (IAM) – OCI’s core identity service controls authentication and authorization for all resources. What it does: IAM manages users, groups, dynamic groups (for instances/functions), and policies to grant permissions. It also supports federating with external identity providers and enabling Multi-Factor authentication. Pricing: OCI IAM is provided free of charge. There is no cost to create users or use IAM features. You can create as many compartments (for isolation) and policies as needed. Use case: Every OCI customer uses IAM to securely manage access – it’s analogous to AWS IAM and included in the platform. No separate license (Oracle does have an Identity Cloud Service outside of OCI for enterprise SSO, but within OCI, the IAM for cloud console/API is free).
- OCI Vault (Key Management) – A managed Key Management Service (KMS) lets you create and control encryption keys and secrets. It uses hardware security modules (HSMs) under the covers for secure key storage. Purpose: Allows you to manage your encryption keys for OCI services (customer-managed keys) and securely store secrets like passwords or API keys. Pricing: Key Management keys are typically free up to a certain number. OCI’s model: You pay for HSM usage if you exceed free limits. Currently, Oracle does not charge for key storage or basic key usage for a moderate number of keys; charges might apply for extremely high request volumes or if using a dedicated single-tenant HSM. In practice, most users incur no cost for using Vault for encryption keys (it’s encouraged to enhance security). Use case: managing keys for object storage encryption, database TDE keys, and your applications’ credentials. No Oracle license is needed; it’s part of the cloud service.
- Cloud Guard – A cloud security posture management (CSPM) service that monitors your OCI resources for security risks and misconfigurations. What it does: Cloud Guard continuously scans configurations (IAM policies, network settings, etc.) and runtime activity to detect anomalies or violations of best practices. It can then suggest or take corrective actions. Pricing: Cloud Guard is provided at no extra cost on OCI. It’s free for all supported OCI services in your tenancy – Oracle sees it as an essential guardrail. (It simply requires that your tenancy is not a free trial; you need a paid account to enable it, but Cloud Guard itself doesn’t cost.) Typical findings: open storage buckets, overly permissive security lists, and unusual login activity. Licensing: none – included for OCI tenants. Use case: Use Cloud Guard to get a unified view of security across your cloud deployment and auto-remediate issues; it’s especially useful for cloud security teams to enforce policies.
- Security Zones – A feature that works with Cloud Guard, allowing you to designate compartments as Security Zones where only secure configurations are allowed (for example, preventing the creation of an object storage bucket that isn’t encrypted or internet-exposed). Pricing: Security Zones are free to use. It’s essentially a policy framework with no cost. Use case: Enforce strict compliance in certain compartments (like for sensitive data) – OCI will block non-compliant resources from even being created.
- Vulnerability Scanning Service – OCI provides a service to scan compute instances for OS vulnerabilities and docker images in the Registry. Pricing: No charge for vulnerability scanning of VMs and images. It runs on a schedule (e.g., weekly scans) and reports on CVEs and open ports. Oracle includes this as part of its security-first approach. Use case: Ensure your cloud VMs aren’t running outdated software; help meet compliance by regular scans.
- Bastion – OCI Bastion is a managed service that provides secure SSH access to private resources in your cloud without exposing them to the internet. It’s essentially a transient jump host service. Pricing: OCI Bastion is completely free to use. You create a Bastion session, which is available for a limited time to let an admin SSH (or RDP) into a private server via an OCI-managed endpoint. This eliminates the need to run your bastion VM. Use case: Securely manage servers in private subnets for troubleshooting from anywhere without cost or keeping a constantly running jump box.
- Web Application Firewall (WAF) – A global WAF service to protect web applications from common threats (SQL injection, XSS, etc.) and to provide bot management and access control. What it does: OCI’s WAF can sit in front of any internet-facing endpoint (OCI Load Balancer, OCI Object Storage website, etc.), inspecting HTTP(S) traffic and enforcing rules (using the OWASP Core Rule Set and custom rules). Pricing: WAF on OCI is typically charged by request count. It might be around $0.70 per million requests (just an example) and possibly a small monthly charge per WAF policy (~$100 per month). However, Oracle often bundles some WAF usage for free for Oracle Cloud Web Applications (or uses a partner like Akamai). It’s not expensive relative to the protected traffic. Use case: Improve web app security without managing your WAF appliances.
- Network Firewall (Layer 4 Firewall) – Oracle has a Network Firewall service (powered by Palo Alto Networks technology) that provides next-gen firewall capabilities for your VCNs (beyond security lists). What it does: It can filter traffic with application-level intelligence and intrusion detection. Pricing: This is a paid service – it is typically charged per firewall gateway hour and by data processed. For example, the firewall software might cost a few cents per hour plus a tiered charge per GB of traffic through it. If it uses third-party tech, BYOL might not apply – you pay for the managed software, including the licensing. Use case: If you need advanced network security (IPS, URL filtering) in the cloud akin to having a physical firewall appliance on-prem.
- Threat Intelligence Service – OCI provides a threat intel feed service where Oracle collects and provides indicators of compromise, malicious IP addresses, etc., which you can use to bolster security rules. Pricing: Included at no cost for OCI customers. It’s available via API and integrated into Cloud Guard. Use case: automatically block known bad IPs in your WAF or be alerted when a known malicious actor touches your resources.
- Data Safe (also mentioned earlier in the database context) provides security features specifically for databases, such as user risk assessment, data classification, audit reports, etc. Pricing: It’s free for use with OCI databases. Connecting to on-prem DBs might require a paid target license, but for the cloud, it’s free. Use case: Ensure databases are securely configured and meet compliance (PCI DSS, etc.), and mask sensitive data when moving to test environments.
- Identity Cloud Service (IDCS) – While OCI IAM covers infrastructure, Oracle IDCS is an Identity-as-a-Service for managing application identities (single sign-on, OAuth, etc.). IDCS is included with many Oracle Cloud offerings and can be licensed standalone. However, for an OCI general IT audience, IDCS might not be a focus unless the OCI login is integrated with enterprise SSO (which can be done without cost via federation to your AD or other IdP).
In summary, most OCI security services are offered free or with minimal cost, ensuring customers can secure their cloud environment without worrying about budgets. Oracle’s philosophy is “secure by design”; for example, Cloud Guard is free to monitor your configurations, Bastion is free for secure access, and encryption key management is free.
Where paid security services are available (WAF, Network Firewall), they are optional and priced comparably to industry norms (with pay-as-you-go flexibility, e.g., by request or throughput).
Many customers will find they can leverage the free security features to cover most needs (hardened configurations, basic firewalls, monitoring) and then selectively pay for advanced protection like WAF or specialized firewalls as needed.
AI and Machine Learning Services
OCI has a growing suite of AI and Machine Learning services, including pre-built AI services (for vision, language, etc.) and a platform for custom model development.
These services help enterprises add AI capabilities to applications or build and train their AI models on Oracle’s cloud infrastructure.
- OCI Data Science – A fully managed platform for data scientists to build, train, and deploy machine learning models. What it does: Provides Notebook sessions (JupyterLab environments) with powerful compute (including GPU options), a library of algorithms, and integration with OCI resources. It also manages model deployment (as endpoints) and a model catalog. Pricing: OCI Data Science is primarily charged by your underlying compute resources for notebook sessions, jobs, and model deployments. For example, a notebook session running on 1 OCPU and 15 GB might cost ~$0.10 per hour. The service itself (the orchestration, workspace) has no additional charge – you only pay for computing and storage consumed (and possibly a small fee for storing model artifacts, which is just object storage cost). There is no per-user fee. Use case: A team of data scientists can collaboratively develop ML models in the cloud, using powerful instances on demand (far cheaper than provisioning permanent high-end workstations). By leveraging pay-as-you-go, they can shut down sessions when not in use. Licensing: No software license is needed – all tools (like scikit-learn, TensorFlow, etc.) are open source.
- AI Services (Prebuilt Models) – OCI offers a set of ready-made AI services that developers can call via APIs without needing to train models. Key services include:
- OCI Vision – for image analysis (object detection, image classification) and document AI (extracting text via OCR, form recognition).OCI Language – for text analysis (sentiment, entity recognition, and key phrase extraction).OCI Speech – for speech-to-text transcription.OCI Anomaly Detection – for detecting anomalies in time-series data.OCI Forecasting – a time-series forecasting service.OCI Digital Assistant – a platform to build chatbots (with NLP and integration abilities).
- Generative AI Services – In 2024–2025, OCI introduced Generative AI offerings, partnering with Cohere and others:
- OCI Generative AI Service allows access to large language models (LLMs) for text generation (similar to OpenAI GPT).Generative AI for Code (Code Assist) – an AI pair programmer service.Generative AI Agents – for building GPT-powered chatbots/agents with Oracle’s context.
- Anomaly Detection Service (if not counted above) allows training an anomaly detection model on your own dataset without deep ML expertise. You upload time-series data, and it trains a model to detect outliers. Pricing is likely per active trained model and the number of predictions/inferences made. It may be charged per 1,000 data points processed. Oracle sometimes includes anomaly detection under AI Services and offers a free tier. Use case: IoT sensor monitoring, IT ops anomaly alerts, etc., where you want to catch unusual patterns automatically.
- Data Labeling – A supporting service where you can label data (images, text) that will be used for model training. OCI Data Labeling service helps manage datasets and human labeling tasks. Pricing: The storage of datasets (in object storage) is the main cost, plus using Oracle’s human labeling (perhaps via a partner workforce) could incur additional fees. The tooling itself is free for you to label with your in-house team.
- Media AI Services (Media Flow and Media Streams) – These are specialized for video and media processing. Media Flow handles workflows like transcoding videos, generating thumbnails, and extracting metadata. Media Streams focuses on streaming video analysis. Pricing: Media Flow likely charges per minute of video processed for transcoding or analysis (with different rates for SD/HD/4K). For example, transcoding an HD video might be $0.002 per minute. Media Streams might have a subscription or per-stream-hour pricing for live streaming analysis. These are niche but useful for media companies. Use case: building a video streaming app – you’d use Media Flow to prep videos (encode to different bitrates) and possibly use Vision AI to tag content or Media Streams to get real-time highlights.
- Machine Learning in Oracle Database – Oracle also offers algorithms inside the Oracle Database (Oracle Machine Learning). On Autonomous Database, you can build ML models using SQL. This doesn’t have a separate cost (it’s included with the database license). It’s worth noting for Oracle DB users, but it is not a standalone OCI service per se – it’s a feature.
- Big Data Services (overlap Analytics category, but AI/ML folks use them): Apache Spark (OCI Data Flow) – serverless Spark for big data processing, often used in AI pipelines to prep data. Hadoop (Big Data Service) – to run large Hadoop or HDFS clusters. These are covered in Analytics but integrate with ML workflows.
AI/ML pricing approach: Nearly all are pay-per-use, with no upfront. For custom ML (Data Science), you pay for the compute and storage (and possibly GPUs if you use them, e.g., $3.05/hour for an NVIDIA A100 in a notebook). For pre-built AI, pay per API call or data unit.
Oracle typically provides some free capacity monthly (so developers can try it out, and small apps might even stay within free limits), followed by volume-based rates. This is good for a general IT audience to know – you can experiment with AI services on OCI very cheaply (e.g., transcribe a few hours of audio or analyze a few thousand images for only a few dollars if that).
OCI’s advantage for AI/ML has also been in the high-performance infrastructure side: they offer GPU bare metals and clusters with RDMA for training large models (OpenAI famously partnered with Oracle for cloud GPU capacity).
As mentioned, those are priced by the hour (e.g., an NVIDIA H100 8-GPU bare metal might be ~$28/hour). If your organization needs to train its deep learning models, OCI can be cost-attractive at scale (especially with BM.GPU shapes and flexible capacity reservations with discounts).
Analytics and Big Data Services
Oracle offers several services for analytics, business intelligence (BI), data lakes, and big data processing on OCI. These help turn raw data into insights, leveraging Oracle’s analytic software heritage and open-source big data tech.
- Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC) – A comprehensive cloud BI and analytics platform. What it does: OAC provides interactive dashboards, data visualization, ad-hoc analysis, and reporting, similar to Oracle’s on-prem OBIEE but cloud-native. It can connect to various data sources (cloud and on-prem), including Oracle Autonomous DB, and has built-in machine learning for insights. OAC comes in two editions: Professional (self-service data viz oriented) and Enterprise (full BI suite with enterprise reporting). Pricing: OAC has two pricing models:
- User-based: Professional at about $16 per user/month, Enterprise at $80 per user/month (good for broad enterprise deployments where each named user is licensed).
- OCPU-based (metered): You pay per OCPU hour of the OAC server running. This can autoscale as usage demands. For instance, Oracle Analytics Cloud – Enterprise – OCPU might be around $1.209 per OCPU-hour, and Professional – OCPU around $0.3226 per OCPU-hour. There are BYOL options too – if a customer has a license for Oracle Analytics Server or OBIEE, they can get a reduced rate on OCI (roughly half price). Oracle gives flexibility: pay by number of users (fixed monthly) or purely by consumption (which could be cost-efficient for intermittent or small-scale use). Use case: Company-wide business analytics, combining data from Oracle ERP, databases, and spreadsheets into a single portal. Licensing: For user-based, it’s a subscription per named user. For OCPU-based, it’s pay-as-you-go with optional BYOL (which requires equivalent on-prem licenses).
- Oracle Fusion Analytics – These are pre-built analytic applications for Oracle Fusion SaaS data, e.g., Fusion ERP Analytics, Fusion HCM Analytics, and Fusion CX Analytics. They come with ready-made dashboards and data models for those domains (finance, HR, sales). Pricing: It is typically sold as a subscription per SaaS user or per module. However, since they are part of the OCI marketplace, they may consume OAC and Autonomous DB under the covers. A general IT reader should know these exist if they use Oracle SaaS – they can turn on a turnkey analytics warehouse without developing it from scratch. If pricing details are needed, e.g., Fusion Analytics might cost $150 per Oracle Fusion pillar user per month (ballpark) if pricing details are needed. However, this is usually negotiated as part of the SaaS contract.
- Big Data Service – OCI’s managed Hadoop and big data clusters offering. It essentially provides Oracle’s distribution of Hadoop (which can include Spark, HDFS, etc., often in partnership with Cloudera). What it does: It allows you to provision clusters running Cloudera Data Platform (CDP) or the Hadoop ecosystem on OCI VMs, integrated with OCI storage. Pricing: Charged per compute instance in the cluster (and any software subscription if included). If it includes Cloudera Enterprise, the license might be bundled. For example, a Big Data Service node might cost say $0.5 per hour for the VM + $0.2 per hour for Cloudera license. Oracle often also allows BYOL if you already have Cloudera or Big Data SQL licenses. Storage (HDFS) typically sits on block volumes or object storage and is charged accordingly. Use case: when a company wants to run large-scale Hadoop jobs or already has big data workloads they want to move to the cloud without re-architecting to Spark serverless or such. Big Data Service can autoscale and integrate with OCI Data Catalog.
- Data Flow – A serverless Apache Spark service. What it does: Enables running Spark jobs without managing a Spark cluster – you submit a job (with code and data references), and OCI spins up the necessary compute, runs the Spark application, and shuts it down. This is great for ephemeral or on-demand big data processing. Pricing: Data Flow is billed per OCPU, and the Spark job per hour uses memory. Specifically, Oracle charges an execution fee per OCPU-hour for the job runtime. For example, if a Spark job used 10 OCPUs for 1 hour, the rate is $0.XX per OCPU-hour, that’s what you pay (there might also be a minimal job fee). Notably, the first 20 OCPU-hours per month on Data Flow are free per Oracle’s Free Tier. So many small jobs might incur no cost. If a job fails, you still pay for the resources consumed during its attempt. But you don’t pay for idle cluster time since no persistent clusters exist. This can be much cheaper for spiky workloads than running a 24/7 cluster. Use case: ETL jobs run a few times daily, and you want to offload large data transformations to a managed Spark environment.
- Data Catalog – A metadata management service to catalog data assets across OCI (and beyond). What it does: It crawls and organizes metadata from databases, object storage, data lakes, etc., allowing you to search data, track lineage, and govern data definitions. Pricing: OCI Data Catalog is offered at no cost for OCI users. Oracle encourages the use of data catalogs to improve data governance. There’s effectively no meter on several assets or queries – it’s free. Use case: enterprises use it to build a unified data inventory (what datasets they have, what they contain, and where they come from). It’s a value-added service that drives the usage of OCI for data management.
- OCI Data Integration – A fully managed Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) service for building data pipelines. What it does: It provides a visual interface to design data flows (from sources to targets, with transformations) and executes them on a serverless runtime. It’s comparable to Informatica or AWS Glue Studio. Pricing: Likely billed per hour of pipeline runtime and maybe per 1000 rows processed. Oracle’s price list suggests that Data Integration is free for pipeline executions and charges only for the underlying computing of the integration worker (which might be an OCPU-hour metric). For instance, you pay for that compute time if a data integration task spins up 4 OCPUs for 10 minutes. There might not be a separate licensing fee (unless using on-prem Oracle Data Integrator, in which case you could BYOL for an agent, but OCI’s service is new and separate). Use case: Moving data from an Oracle DB to a data warehouse (Autonomous), combining data from object storage and DB, etc., in a low-code way. It competes with other iPaaS for data.
- OCI Data Integrator—This likely refers to Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) being available as a cloud service. ODI is Oracle’s legacy ETL tool. Oracle may allow ODI BYOL customers to run ODI in OCI on a managed server. Pricing: If offered, it will probably be BYOL only or a high hourly cost if license-included. Most new projects would use OCI Data Integration instead. This exists mainly for compatibility for those with ODI skills/flows.
- Streaming – OCI Streaming is a Kafka-compatible streaming platform (like Apache Kafka as a service). What it does: Allows you to create partitions and streams to ingest high-volume data streams, which consumers can read in real time (for event processing, logs, etc.). It’s fully managed – you don’t maintain Kafka brokers. Pricing: Streaming is billed by throughput and retention. Oracle charges per GB of data ingress and per partition hour. OCI’s pricing for Streaming is very low: they often cite that ingesting streaming data is 1/3rd the cost of other providers. For example, a Streaming service might cost $0.05 per GB ingested and $0.02 per partition-hour beyond some free limit. They also might include some baseline (like first 10 GB or first 10 partitions free). A note in the price list: “no charge for streaming within default limits; if you exceed a partition quota, $0.25/hour per 50 partitions”. This implies that small-scale use could be effectively free. Use case: collecting application logs, user event streams, and IoT sensor feeds, processing them with consumers, or dumping them to Object Storage for data lake. Licensing: No, it uses Apache Kafka API, but Oracle runs it.
- Queue – OCI Queue is a fully managed message queuing service (similar to AWS SQS). What it does: Provides reliable message queues for asynchronous communication between application components. Pricing: likely per million messages (very low cost, maybe $0.20 per million after a free tier) and by optional features like long-term payload storage. It’s a simple service: you create a queue, send messages (up to a certain KB each), and consume them. Many OCI services (like Functions or Monitoring) can be published in queues. Use case: decouple microservices, task scheduling, buffering workloads.
- Big Data SQL – An Oracle software that can query data across Hadoop, Object Storage, and Oracle DB with SQL. On OCI, Big Data SQL Cloud Service can be used with Big Data Service clusters. Pricing: usually BYOL (if you have Big Data SQL licenses) or license-included with Exadata Infrastructure if used. It’s a niche, but it helps unify query on data lakes with Oracle DB tech.
To summarize Analytics & Big Data on OCI: Oracle provides both its proprietary analytics tools (OAC, Fusion Analytics), usually on a subscription model or metered model, and open-source-based big data tools (Spark, Hadoop, Kafka) on a metered model. The pricing tends to be resource-based:
- If you use serverless options (Data Flow, Streaming), you pay only per job run or data stream, often with significant free tiers and low incremental costs.
- If you use dedicated options (Big Data cluster, OAC always-on instance), you might opt for monthly licensing for predictability or run them on demand with hourly billing.
Oracle Analytics Cloud can be consumed flexibly: either named user licensing (like traditional BI software) or hourly pay-as-you-go. Many general IT audiences find the user-based model easier to budget for broad internal usage, whereas project-based uses might spin up an OCPU-based OAC for a month and then turn it off.
Oracle also emphasizes integration between these services: Data Catalog is free to ensure you can find data from Autonomous DB or Object Storage. Data integration and flow can move data into an autonomous data warehouse, which can then be analyzed by OAC, an end-to-end pipeline all on OCI.
Pricing at each stage is usage-driven and has no overlapping charges (e.g., if Data Flow writes to Object Storage, you just pay for Data Flow compute and Object Storage GB – no extra data movement fee within OCI). This integration and single bill for all of it (with universal credits) can simplify things.
Developer Services and DevOps
OCI provides various services to support the platform’s software development lifecycle and developer productivity. These range from code repositories and CI/CD pipelines to low-code app development tools.
- OCI DevOps (Code Repo and CI/CD) – A managed DevOps platform on OCI that includes Git code repositories, build pipelines (CI), and Deployment pipelines (CD) for delivering applications to OCI (compute instances, OKE, functions). What it does: It allows developers to host their code in private Git repos, define build stages (which run on OCI ephemeral build runners), and then deploy artifacts to target environments (like rolling out a new version to a Kubernetes cluster or function). Pricing: OCI DevOps service has a very generous model – no charge for using the service itself (creating repos and pipelines is free). You only incur charges for the build runner compute time and artifact storage used. Build runners are ephemeral compute instances that run your build jobs; OCPU and memory like any bill their usage compute (and logs stored maybe in Object Storage, which is negligible). For example, a build that runs on 4 OCPUs for 10 minutes might cost a few cents. The first several hours of build time per month could fall under the free tier. There’s no per-user or per-repo fee, unlike some external CI/CD services. Use case: Streamlining application delivery on OCI – e.g., commit code, automatically run tests and build a container, then deploy to OKE or as a serverless function, all within OCI. Licensing: No separate license – uses open tools under the hood (Git, etc.) but managed by Oracle.
- Resource Manager (Terraform as a Service) – OCI’s managed Infrastructure-as-Code service, supporting Terraform. What it does: You can store Terraform templates and use Resource Manager to run Terraform apply/plan on OCI without needing your own Terraform CLI host. It handles state file storage, executes in a safe environment, and can automate the provisioning of OCI resources. Pricing: Free of charge for the service itself – you only pay for the resources you create. Running Resource Manager jobs does not incur compute charges; Oracle provides the engine for free (it’s a differentiator – to encourage Infrastructure as Code usage). Use case: Automating cloud deployments, enabling GitOps for infrastructure. Licensing: none; it’s based on open-source Terraform.
- Oracle APEX Application Development – A low-code development platform (Oracle APEX) provided as a managed service on OCI. APEX allows developers to create web applications with minimal coding, using Oracle Database as the foundation. In OCI, APEX service has an underlying Autonomous Database (Autonomous JSON Database with APEX enabled). Pricing: APEX Service is very affordable – it’s often quoted at about $360 per month for 1 OCPU and 1 TB of database (roughly $0.5/OCPU-hour). It’s essentially the cost of an Autonomous Database (JSON type) with a BYOL discount (since it’s aimed at new apps). Oracle sometimes lists it as $0.48 per instance hour (for 1 OCPU, license-included). Storage is included up to a limit. This is a simplified “one shape” pricing; you scale by adding OCPUs. Use case: Quickly build internal apps and data dashboards or extend SaaS with custom apps without worrying about infrastructure. APEX apps are often for departmental use (CRUD apps, data tracking, small portals).
- Visual Builder Studio (VBS) – A development environment and lifecycle management tool that includes low-code development for web/mobile UIs and also manages CI, Git, and deployment (it was originally an extension for Oracle SaaS dev). What it does: In one interface, it provides Git repos, agile boards, and a visual development environment for building HTML5/JavaScript applications. Pricing: Historically, Visual Builder was licensed per user or as part of Oracle Integration. On OCI, Visual Builder Studio is included at no extra cost for OCI customers (Oracle often allows unlimited VBS users if you have certain Oracle Cloud entitlements). If used standalone, it might be a user-based subscription (e.g., $/user/month), but if you’re using Oracle Integration Cloud or Oracle SaaS, you get some VBS included. For simplicity, assume no direct cost on OCI if activated via a service. Use case: Quickly create front-ends or extend Oracle Cloud apps with custom UI and manage code and issues in one tool.
- Oracle Developer Tools – Oracle provides various tools for developers, such as the OCI Cloud Shell (a free in-browser shell with OCI CLI and tools preinstalled, free 5GB home directory), SDKs for many languages, and an API Gateway (discussed under serverless). Cloud Shell is free and extremely useful for scripting and managing OCI resources without installing anything locally.
- API Management – Beyond API Gateway, Oracle has an API Management service (part of Integration), which includes an API developer portal, API discovery, and full lifecycle management. This is often tied in with Oracle Integration offerings. Pricing: Possibly bundled with Oracle Integration or charged per API call, similar to Gateway. Many customers use just API Gateway for basic needs (cheap per call) or Oracle Integration’s built-in API platform if they have that licensed. API Management is typically part of the Integration suite pricing (see below).
- Blockchain Platform – Oracle Blockchain Platform is a managed Hyperledger Fabric service for creating and managing blockchain networks and smart contracts. It allows consortia or single organizations to run distributed ledger nodes easily on OCI with a governance console and identity management for participants. Pricing: It’s usually priced per blockchain node hour. For example, an Enterprise blockchain node might be around $0.58 per OCPU-hour (license-included with all needed Fabric components). If you run a network of 4 nodes, each 2 OCPUs, for a month, you’d pay that hourly rate times nodes. Oracle might also have a monthly package (like a fixed price for a standard 4-org network). There is also a Blockchain Platform Enterprise Edition BYOL option. If you had Oracle Blockchain on-prem licenses, you could bring them, but that’s rare since the Blockchain Platform is primarily a cloud subscription. Use case: track supply chain transactions on a tamper-proof ledger, share data between companies with trust, etc., without manually setting up Fabric.
- Content Management – Oracle Content Management (OCM) is a cloud content and experience platform for managing web content, digital assets, and headless content delivery. It’s a bit of a crossover between PaaS and SaaS. Oracle listed “Content Management” under developer services (perhaps because you can integrate via APIs to deliver content to apps). Pricing: OCM is typically licensed by capacity (e.g., per 1000 assets or site) or user seats. For instance, $4 per 1000 assets per month, or a flat $fee per environment with user limit. This one is not usually pay-per-use; it’s more like a subscription. If included here, assume it’s a monthly subscription depending on the usage tier. Use case: hosting a company intranet or public website on Oracle’s managed content platform, managing marketing assets, etc. It competes with Adobe Experience Manager, etc.
- Java Management Service (JMS) – A newer service to help track and manage Java runtimes in your environment (on OCI or on-prem). It’s part of OCI management. Pricing: Included for Oracle Java SE Subscription customers (who pay Oracle for Java support). On OCI, enabling JMS doesn’t incur cost by itself. Use case: ensuring security of Java deployments.
OCI’s Developer Services are free or minimal-cost adjuncts to using OCI for your app deployments. For example, DevOps code repo and CI/CD are free except for computing used during builds, which is a big cost saver compared to paying for external CI services. Resource Manager (Terraform) is free to encourage infrastructure as code.
Low-code and dev platforms like APEX and Visual Builder are relatively low-cost compared to custom development efforts, and their pricing (either bundled or as cheap add-ons) reflects Oracle’s strategy to attract developer adoption on OCI.
Management and Governance
OCI provides tools for monitoring, managing, and optimizing your cloud usage. These services ensure you can operate at scale, maintain reliability, and keep costs in check.
- Monitoring – OCI Monitoring is a service for metrics and alarms (comparable to Amazon CloudWatch). What it does: It collects metrics from all OCI resources (CPU utilization of instances, latency of load balancers, etc.) and custom metrics from your applications. You can set alarms to trigger notifications or automated actions based on metric conditions. Pricing: OCI Monitoring is generally free at a basic level and charges for custom metric streams or high-frequency monitoring. By default, many service metrics are included at no charge. If you push custom metrics, Oracle allows a certain number of metric writes per hour free, then charges per 1000 metric data points. The cost is low (pennies per 1000). Most normal usage (monitoring a fleet of VMs) will fall in the free tier or incur negligible cost. Alarm notifications are sent via the Notification Service (which can send email, Slack, etc.). The notifications themselves are free for email or pager duty; if you use SMS or voice, those might have a telco pass-through cost. Use case: You set an alarm for if CPU > 80% for 5 minutes on a database server, it sends an email. This is core to cloud operations.
- Logging – OCI Logging service collects logs from OCI services and your custom apps. What it does: It centralizes logs (system logs, application logs, audit logs) with search and analysis capabilities. Pricing: Storing logs beyond a certain retention incurs cost. By default, audit logs and default service logs are kept for 30 days for free. If you store logs longer or ingest high volumes of custom logs, pricing applies per GB ingested and stored. Oracle’s rate is roughly $0.50 per GB ingested to Logging (with some free daily quota) and $0.05 per GB per month stored (after some retention). They also offer an Analytics tier for logs (Logging Analytics), which can auto-analyze patterns; that is a separate service. Logging basic usage is often free – e.g., writing under 10 GB per month or retaining short term might not show a bill. Use case: aggregate all application logs for debugging, fulfill compliance by centralizing audit logs, etc.
- Logging Analytics – An advanced service to perform machine learning and pattern analysis on logs (not just store and search). Pricing: Based on log data analyzed. Possibly charged by GB ingested into Logging Analytics with tiers. For instance, the first 1 GB/day is free, then $2.30 per GB (hypothetical). It may also have a BYOL option if you have Oracle Management Cloud licenses. It’s optional – you’d only use this if you need to do AI-powered troubleshooting on lots of log data. Use case: Detect anomalies across millions of log entries or get insights like “this error usually follows that event”.
- Application Performance Monitoring (APM) – Provides distributed tracing, metrics, and application end-user experience monitoring. What it does: Helps pinpoint performance issues in microservices or complex apps by tracking transactions across services (and includes RUM – real user monitoring for web apps). Pricing: APM on OCI has an interesting model: 100,000 telemetry events per hour included free, then charged per event beyond. An event could be a trace span, metric data point, etc. Oracle makes APM free for moderate volumes (which cover many small/medium apps), and charges for very large environments. There’s also mention that trace data retention is not charged regardless of volume(so you pay for ingestion, not for querying it). Synthetic monitoring (simulated user tests) is billed in packs of 10 runs. The goal is to keep APM’s cost predictable. In practice, APM can be far cheaper than something like New Relic or DataDog if you’re already an OCI customer, especially if you stay within included limits. Use case: You instrument your Java or Node.js apps with Oracle’s APM agent to find slow calls or errors across distributed services.
- Database Management Service – A unified console and toolkit for managing databases on OCI (Autonomous or not) and even on-premises DBs. Pricing: For managing OCI databases, it’s often included (or minimal). For external (on-prem) databases, Database Management has a fee per host CPU hour, essentially turning it into a paid cloud service for on-prem DBs. For cloud usage, if you use it to manage an Autonomous or a VM DB, Oracle doesn’t double-charge – you already pay for the DB. Use case: Use the service to run performance diagnostics, SQL tuning advisor, or manage database backups via a web interface.
- Operations Insights (Ops Insights) – A service focusing on long-term performance and capacity planning for databases and hosts. What it does: It retains performance data for up to 25 months and provides analysis to forecast resource usage and detect bottlenecks across fleets of databases. Pricing: Included with Autonomous Database license (so using it with ADW/ATP is free) and available as a paid service for other databases (possibly if you BYOL an Oracle Diagnostics Pack license, it’s free; if not, pay per target). But generally, Ops Insights is included if you have the appropriate database packs on-prem and bring it to the cloud (BYOL). Use case: A DBA can see which databases will run out of CPU next year or which SQL statements are common top consumers across the enterprise.
- Enterprise Manager (OEM) Integration – Oracle provides a management plug-in to connect cloud resources to your on-prem OEM. This doesn’t have a cloud cost; it’s more a feature.
- Full Stack Disaster Recovery (DR) – A service to coordinate disaster recovery plans across OCI regions, covering not just data replication but orchestrating failover of entire application stacks. Pricing: Likely a subscription per protected instance or recovery group. Possibly charged per resource under management. Oracle may have priced it as a percentage of resource cost or a flat fee for each group of VMs. It’s relatively new. Use case: one-click failover for a multi-tier app (web, app, DB) from primary region to standby region.
- Cloud Advisor—OCI Cloud Advisor gives cost and performance optimization recommendations (like rightsizing instances or removing idle resources). Pricing: This is a free advisory service that analyzes your usage.
- Budgets and Cost Analysis—These let you set spending budgets, get alerts, and analyze spending trends by service. Pricing: Free to use—part of the account management. Quotas—to set limits on resource usage for governance (free). Compartment Management and Organization—for multi-tenancy and separating departments, also free.
- Support Rewards is not a service per se but a program: if you have Oracle Support contracts on-prem, Oracle gives you credits ($0.25 per $1 on OCI consumption) as you use OCI, effectively reducing your support bill. This is a unique incentive for Oracle customers to move workloads to OCI—mentionable to an IT audience controlling budgets.
- Compliance and Security – Oracle has compliance documentation and makes attestations (SOC, ISO, etc.) readily available. These aren’t charged; they’re part of the service assurance.
To sum up Management and Governance: OCI’s philosophy is to embed these capabilities with minimal extra cost so that customers aren’t dissuaded from using them. Basic monitoring and logging are free or near-free (with high limits), so you’ll likely never be in the dark about your resources.
Advanced tools like APM and Logging Analytics incur costs mainly when used at a large scale. Still, their value in troubleshooting justifies the cost, and even then, Oracle’s pricing undercuts many third-party APM/logging tools.
For cost management, there’s no charge to use budgets or cost reports. And if you use a lot of OCI, Oracle’s Universal Credits and committed use discounts automatically apply – e.g., committing to a certain annual spend can yield significant savings on all services (often 20-30% off pay-go rates depending on volume). OCI also uniquely offers Support Rewards to cut costs for existing Oracle customers.
Finally, all these OCI services come under a single contract and bill. You can mix and match (compute, database, etc.) under one purchasing model (universal credits). If you negotiate a $100k annual OCI commitment, you can use it on ANY OCI service across these categories.
This flexibility, combined with the pay-as-you-go rates and BYOL options, allows a general IT team to experiment widely and gradually optimize their architecture and spending.
Oracle provides cost calculators and advisors to compare the cost of running a given workload on OCI vs. other clouds. These often highlight savings due to the factors we’ve discussed (lower unit prices, no charge for key services like data ingress, and discounted rates with commitments).
In conclusion, the OCI service catalog spans all the layers needed to build and run modern applications, with services in compute, storage, networking, database, security, AI/ML, analytics, integration, and management. Oracle’s licensing and pricing model for OCI is designed to be cloud-friendly:
- Virtually everything is available on a pay-as-you-go, per-use basis with no long-term contracts required (but with the option to save with commitments).
- Many services offer BYOL to leverage existing investments for lower costs (databases, WebLogic, analytics, etc.).
- List prices are often lower than competitors’ and consistent globally (no premium for certain regions).
- Substantial free tiers and inclusions (free outbound data, free security tools, free control planes, etc.) reduce your total cost.
- Oracle also provides tools to optimize usage and spending (budgets, Cloud Advisor, etc.).
For a general IT audience, you can adopt OCI services on demand, tightly control costs with Oracle’s transparent pricing, and achieve enterprise-grade performance (especially for Oracle workloads), often at a lower price point than other public clouds.
Each service described above can be enabled as needed and scaled from small dev/test usage to large production deployment with pricing that scales linearly and often drops on a per-unit basis with greater usage or commitments.
In OCI, the prudent use of the pricing models (PAYG vs. monthly universal credits, BYOL vs. included) can lead to significant savings. For example, switching an Autonomous Database from license-included to BYOL if you have spare on-prem licenses can cut the bill dramatically, or committing to a year of use can yield perhaps 30%+ off versus pure PAYG.
Oracle’s strategy is clearly to compete on price-performance and flexible licensing, making OCI an attractive cloud option, particularly for enterprises that want predictable costs and the ability to maximize existing Oracle license investments while enjoying a broad range of cloud services.
