Pricing, Billing and Support
How you buy OCI
OCI is consumption-based. Universal Credits are a committed spend that can be applied flexibly across eligible services, purchased as pay-as-you-go, monthly flex, or an annual commitment that typically carries a discount. Bring Your Own License (BYOL) lets you reuse eligible existing Oracle licenses instead of paying license-included prices. The Always Free tier provides permanent free resources, while free trial credits are time-limited.
How metering works
Compute is billed per second with a short minimum, storage per GB-month, and data transfer is free inbound with a monthly outbound allowance before egress charges apply. Pricing varies by region.
Cost management tools
Cost Estimator projects a workload's cost before you build it. Cost Analysis shows actual and forecast spend, filterable by compartment and tag. Budgets fire alerts when actual or forecast spend crosses a threshold. Invoices and payment methods live under Billing & Cost Management.
Support
Basic support is included at no cost and gives access to documentation and community resources. Premier and Platinum are paid tiers with 24/7 access to Cloud Support Engineers; Platinum adds a designated technical account manager and higher-touch services. Severity 1 denotes critical production down; lower severities cover degraded or general questions. My Oracle Support is the portal for service requests.
Exam traps
Budgets do not cap or stop spending - they only alert. Universal Credits do not give unlimited usage; they are a prepaid balance consumed by metered usage. And the free outbound data transfer allowance is finite.
Rule of thumb
Before you provision, use Cost Estimator; after you provision, use Budgets plus Cost Analysis - and remember that tags are what make cost reporting readable.