How to Deploy OpenClaw on Oracle Cloud Free Tier: Zero-Cost Setup Guide

Oracle Cloud's Always Free tier is the best-kept secret in cloud computing for operators on a budget. While other providers give you 1 vCPU and 1GB RAM for $5-6/mo, Oracle gives you 4 Ampere A1 OCPUs and 24GB RAM for free — permanently. Not a 30-day trial. Not a promotional credit. Free forever, as long as the instance is running.

The catch? The OCI Console is more complex than Hetzner or Linode, capacity for free instances is competitive, and the networking setup has more steps. This guide walks you through all of it.

Why Choose Oracle Cloud for OpenClaw?

• Free forever: 4 OCPUs, 24GB RAM, 200GB boot volume on the Always Free ARM tier. This is not a trial. It does not expire.
• Massive specs: 24GB of RAM is 6x what Hetzner CX22 gives you for €4.15/mo. For OpenClaw, this is wildly overkill — which means plenty of headroom for running multiple agents, memory-heavy workflows, or additional services alongside OpenClaw.
• ARM Ampere A1 processors: Modern ARM chips that perform well for Node.js workloads. Energy efficient and fast.
• 200GB boot volume: Included free. More storage than any $5-12/mo plan from other providers.
• Global regions: Phoenix, Ashburn, London, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Seoul, Mumbai, Sydney, Sao Paulo, and more.

What Are the Always Free Limits?

Oracle's Always Free tier includes:

• Compute: Up to 4 Ampere A1 OCPUs and 24GB RAM total (you can split this across up to 4 instances — e.g., one instance with 4 OCPU/24GB or two instances with 2 OCPU/12GB each)
• Storage: 200GB total boot volume storage
• Network: 10TB outbound data per month
• Also free: 2 AMD micro instances (1/8 OCPU, 1GB RAM each) — these are too small for OpenClaw but useful for lightweight utilities

For a single OpenClaw agent, allocate 2 OCPUs and 12GB RAM (or go all-in with 4/24 if you only need one instance). Either configuration is absurdly generous for what OpenClaw requires.

What Do You Need Before Starting?

• Oracle Cloud account: Sign up at cloud.oracle.com. You will need a credit card for identity verification — it will not be charged for Always Free resources.
• SSH key pair: ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "openclaw-oci"
• AI provider API key: Anthropic or OpenAI with billing enabled
• Telegram bot token: From @BotFather
• Your Telegram user ID: From @userinfobot
• Patience: The OCI Console is more complex than other providers, and getting a free instance may require multiple attempts due to capacity constraints

How Do You Create an Always Free Instance for OpenClaw?

1. Log in to the OCI Console
2. Click Create a VM instance (or go to Compute > Instances > Create Instance)
3. Name it (e.g., "openclaw-prod")
4. Under Image and shape:
   • Click Change image > select Canonical Ubuntu 22.04 (ARM-compatible)
   • Click Change shape > select Ampere series > VM.Standard.A1.Flex
   • Set OCPUs to 4 (or 2 if you want to split across instances)
   • Set memory to 24GB (or 12GB)
5. Under Networking, ensure "Assign a public IPv4 address" is selected
6. Under Add SSH keys, paste your public key
7. Click Create

If it succeeds, your instance will start provisioning. If you get an error, see the capacity section below.

What If You Get an "Out of Host Capacity" Error?

This is the most common obstacle with Oracle Cloud Always Free. The ARM instances are extremely popular and capacity fills up fast in all regions.

Solutions:

• Retry manually: Try creating the instance at different times of day. Early morning UTC (2-6 AM) tends to have better availability.
• Try different availability domains: Your region may have 2-3 availability domains (AD-1, AD-2, AD-3). If one is full, try another.
• Retry script: Some operators use the OCI CLI to automatically retry instance creation every few minutes until capacity opens up. This is the most reliable approach.
• Be patient: It may take hours or days. Capacity opens up as other users delete their instances.

# OCI CLI retry approach (after installing and configuring OCI CLI)
# This retries every 60 seconds until the instance is created
while true; do
  oci compute instance launch \
    --availability-domain "YOUR-AD" \
    --compartment-id "YOUR-COMPARTMENT-ID" \
    --shape "VM.Standard.A1.Flex" \
    --shape-config '{"ocpus":4,"memoryInGBs":24}' \
    --image-id "YOUR-UBUNTU-IMAGE-ID" \
    --subnet-id "YOUR-SUBNET-ID" \
    --ssh-authorized-keys-file ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub \
    --display-name "openclaw-prod" \
    && break
  echo "Capacity not available, retrying in 60s..."
  sleep 60
done

How Do You Set Up the Oracle Cloud Instance?

SSH into your instance. Oracle Ubuntu images use ubuntu as the default user:

ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 ubuntu@YOUR_INSTANCE_IP

# Update the system
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

# Create a dedicated OpenClaw user
sudo adduser openclaw
sudo usermod -aG sudo openclaw

# Set up SSH for the new user
sudo mkdir -p /home/openclaw/.ssh
sudo cp ~/.ssh/authorized_keys /home/openclaw/.ssh/
sudo chown -R openclaw:openclaw /home/openclaw/.ssh
sudo chmod 700 /home/openclaw/.ssh
sudo chmod 600 /home/openclaw/.ssh/authorized_keys

# Switch to new user
sudo su - openclaw

How Do You Install Node.js on Oracle Cloud ARM?

Node.js has full ARM64 support. The standard NodeSource script detects the architecture automatically:

curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_22.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs
node --version  # Should show v22.x.x
npm --version

# Verify ARM architecture
uname -m  # Should show aarch64

No special flags or alternative builds needed. ARM64 Node.js runs OpenClaw identically to x86_64.

How Do You Install OpenClaw on Oracle Cloud?

npm install -g openclaw
openclaw --version
openclaw onboard

Complete the onboarding wizard with your AI provider key, Telegram bot token, and user ID.

openclaw status
openclaw channels status

How Do You Run OpenClaw 24/7 on Oracle Cloud?

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/openclaw.service

[Unit]
Description=OpenClaw AI Agent
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=openclaw
WorkingDirectory=/home/openclaw
ExecStart=/usr/bin/openclaw
Restart=always
RestartSec=10
StandardOutput=journal
StandardError=journal

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable openclaw
sudo systemctl start openclaw
sudo systemctl status openclaw

With 24GB of RAM, memory pressure is not a concern. Your OpenClaw agent will run with more headroom than any paid VPS at this price point (which is zero).

How Do You Configure OCI Networking for OpenClaw?

Oracle Cloud networking is the most involved part of this setup. OCI uses a two-layer firewall: Security Lists at the VCN level and iptables/UFW at the host level. Both must be configured.

Configure VCN Security Lists:

1. In the OCI Console, go to Networking > Virtual Cloud Networks
2. Click your VCN (created automatically with your instance)
3. Click Security Lists > Default Security List
4. Under Ingress Rules, verify SSH (TCP 22) is allowed (it should be by default)
5. Add HTTPS if needed: click Add Ingress Rules > Source CIDR: 0.0.0.0/0, Destination Port: 443, Protocol: TCP
6. Remove any unnecessary rules

Important OCI quirk: The default Oracle Ubuntu image has iptables rules that block most inbound traffic at the host level, even if the Security List allows it. You need to also open ports in iptables.

How Do You Configure the Host-Level Firewall on OCI?

Oracle's Ubuntu images use iptables directly (not UFW by default). You have two options:

Option 1: Use iptables directly (matches Oracle's default configuration):

# Allow SSH (should already be open)
sudo iptables -I INPUT 6 -m state --state NEW -p tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT

# Allow HTTPS (if using webhooks)
sudo iptables -I INPUT 6 -m state --state NEW -p tcp --dport 443 -j ACCEPT

# Save the rules so they persist across reboots
sudo netfilter-persistent save

Option 2: Switch to UFW (simpler but replaces Oracle's default rules):

sudo apt install ufw -y
sudo ufw allow ssh
sudo ufw allow 443/tcp
sudo ufw enable

If you switch to UFW, first flush the existing iptables rules or you may lock yourself out. Test carefully and keep the OCI Console shell available as a backup.

How Do You Harden OpenClaw on Oracle Cloud?

Disable password auth (should already be disabled on OCI Ubuntu images, verify):

sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

PasswordAuthentication no

sudo systemctl restart sshd

Install fail2ban:

sudo apt install fail2ban -y
sudo systemctl enable fail2ban
sudo systemctl start fail2ban

Enable automatic security updates:

sudo apt install unattended-upgrades -y
sudo dpkg-reconfigure -plow unattended-upgrades

Keep OpenClaw updated:

npm update -g openclaw
sudo systemctl restart openclaw

For the complete security workflow, see the OpenClaw Security Hardening Checklist.

What Does It Cost to Run OpenClaw on Oracle Cloud?

• Oracle Cloud Always Free instance: $0/mo — 4 OCPU, 24GB RAM, 200GB storage
• Network: $0/mo — 10TB outbound included
• Anthropic API (Claude Sonnet): $5-30/mo depending on usage
• Domain (optional): ~$10-15/year

Total for production OpenClaw on Oracle Cloud: $5-30/mo — all of which goes to your AI provider API. The infrastructure is completely free.

This makes Oracle Cloud the cheapest possible production deployment for OpenClaw. The only cost is the AI API itself.

How Do You Back Up OpenClaw on Oracle Cloud?

Oracle Cloud includes free boot volume backups in the Always Free tier:

Block Volume Backups:

1. In the OCI Console, go to Block Storage > Boot Volumes
2. Click your instance's boot volume
3. Click Create Boot Volume Backup
4. Choose Incremental for regular backups (faster and uses less storage)

You get 5 free boot volume backups in the Always Free tier.

Application-level backups:

mkdir -p ~/backups

crontab -e
# Add:
0 2 * * * tar -czvf /home/openclaw/backups/openclaw-$(date +\%Y\%m\%d).tar.gz /home/openclaw/.openclaw
0 3 * * * find /home/openclaw/backups -name "openclaw-*.tar.gz" -mtime +30 -delete

With 200GB of free storage, you have ample room for local backup retention.

What Does a Production-Ready Oracle Cloud Deployment Look Like?

• Always Free ARM A1 Flex instance with Ubuntu 22.04
• Dedicated non-root user running the OpenClaw process
• systemd service with Restart=always and RestartSec=10
• VCN Security List allowing only SSH and HTTPS (if webhooks)
• Host-level iptables or UFW matching the Security List rules
• fail2ban active on SSH
• Password auth disabled
• Telegram bot restricted to your user ID
• Boot volume backup created
• Daily cron backup of ~/.openclaw

The Oracle Cloud setup takes longer than Hetzner or Linode due to the networking complexity and potential capacity issues. But once it is running, you have the most powerful free compute available for an OpenClaw agent — and it costs nothing, forever.

Don't want to do this yourself? Remote OpenClaw handles the entire deployment — server setup, OpenClaw installation, Telegram or WhatsApp connection, and hardening baseline — so you skip straight to using your agent. See the plans and book a call.