What Is Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)? 

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is a cloud computing platform that provides a range of services, including computing, storage, networking, databases, and security. It runs enterprise workloads with high performance, scalability, and security.

OCI offers bare metal and virtual machine instances, block and object storage, and a global network backbone for low-latency connectivity. It also includes managed database services like Oracle Autonomous Database and security features such as identity and access management (IAM) and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) protection.

OCI is built with a focus on high availability, offering multiple availability domains within regions. It is used for cloud-native applications, hybrid cloud deployments, and enterprise IT modernization.

Oracle vs. AWS and Azure

Organizations often select Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) over Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure due to several key factors, with pricing being a significant consideration.​

Competitive Pricing

OCI offers a straightforward and competitive pricing model, eliminating hidden costs and complexities. Unlike other providers, OCI maintains consistent pricing across all global regions, including government regions, Oracle Dedicated Region, and Oracle Alloy:

• Flexible compute options: OCI allows customers to scale virtual machine instances by adjusting CPU cores and memory in small increments. This flexibility helps prevent overprovisioning and unnecessary costs, unlike other providers that require selecting from fixed instance sizes. ​
  Lower data egress costs: Data transfer fees can be a major expense in cloud computing. OCI provides 10 TB of free data egress per month and charges up to 10 times less than competitors for additional data transfers. This ensures businesses can move their data affordably across multiple locations and cloud environments. ​

Performance and Integration

OCI is optimized for high-performance workloads, particularly those involving Oracle databases and applications. This optimization ensures efficient and reliable performance for enterprise applications. ​

Multicloud and Hybrid Cloud Capabilities

OCI's architecture supports multicloud and hybrid cloud strategies, allowing organizations to integrate OCI services with other cloud providers seamlessly. This flexibility enables businesses to optimize their cloud environments according to specific workload requirements. ​

Adoption as a Secondary Cloud Provider

Many organizations initially adopt AWS or Azure and later incorporate OCI as a secondary cloud provider. This approach leverages OCI's strengths in specific areas, such as running Oracle applications, achieving cost savings, or enhancing disaster recovery strategies. By diversifying their cloud infrastructure, companies can optimize performance, cost, and resilience.​

Understanding the OCI Pricing Model 

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) offers a straightforward and competitive pricing model to eliminate hidden costs and complexity. 

• Always Free tier: Some services in OCI offer always-free resources for proof-of-concept or small applications. Users can use these free resources to provision VMs or autonomous databases. See more details about eligible services.
• Flexible compute pricing: OCI allows customers to scale virtual machine instances by adjusting CPU cores and memory in small increments. This helps prevent overprovisioning and unnecessary costs.
• Fixed pricing across regions: Unlike other cloud providers, OCI maintains consistent pricing across all global regions, including government regions, Oracle Dedicated Region, and Oracle Alloy.
• Low data egress costs: Data transfer fees can be a major expense in cloud computing. OCI provides 10 TB of free data egress per month and charges around 1/10 of the rate charged by competitors for additional data transfers.
• Universal credits and discounts: OCI customers benefit from Oracle Universal Credits, which provide flexibility to use any OCI service across regions. Customers purchasing sufficient credits qualify for volume discounts. Additionally, OCI offers Committed Use Discounts for long-term cost savings.
• Oracle support rewards: For enterprises transitioning to OCI, Oracle Support Rewards provide financial benefits by reducing on-premises technical support costs. Customers can earn credits—US$0.25 to US$0.33 per dollar spent on OCI, which they can use towards support services.
• Built-in cost management tools: Like other cloud providers, OCI includes free tools to help businesses monitor and optimize cloud spending. Users can create budgets, set alerts, and receive recommendations for cost-saving optimizations.

OCI vs. AWS Pricing Comparison 

As the world’s largest cloud provider, AWS is a natural option to compare when evaluating OCI. Generally speaking, OCI provides a more cost-effective pricing model compared to Amazon Web Services (AWS), particularly in key areas like compute, storage, and data transfer:

• Compute costs: OCI charges significantly less for equivalent compute capacity than AWS. For instance, a 4 vCPU AMD-based virtual machine with 16 GB of memory costs more than twice as much on AWS’s cheapest region. Even with AWS's savings plans, which require long-term commitments, OCI remains the more affordable option.
• Flexible sizing: OCI allows users to scale compute resources in small increments, ensuring they only pay for what they need. AWS, in contrast, offers fixed instance sizes, which can lead to overprovisioning and unnecessary costs.
• Block storage pricing: OCI offers high-performance block storage at a lower price, with flexible performance settings that can be adjusted dynamically. AWS requires users to select from predefined storage options, often making OCI the cheaper alternative for high-performance workloads.
• Data transfer fees: OCI provides 10 TB of free data egress per month and charges significantly less for additional transfers. AWS, by comparison, offers only 100 GB of free data egress and charges nearly 13 times as much as OCI for 50 TB of outbound data.
• Consistent global pricing: OCI maintains the same pricing across all regions, including public, sovereign, and dedicated regions. AWS, however, varies pricing by region, with costs in locations like London and Brazil being significantly higher than in the U.S.

OCI Costs: A Deep Dive

The following sections provide a summary of OCI pricing, with pricing examples that are accurate as of the time of this writing. OCI pricing is subject to change, for up-to-date pricing and additional options see the official pricing page. 

Below are a few examples of the services available and their costs.

1. OCI Compute

OCI Compute provides scalable virtual machines (VMs) and bare metal instances for running applications in the cloud. It supports various workloads, including enterprise applications, HPC, and AI/ML. Users can choose from different CPU architectures, including AMD, Intel, and Arm-based processors.

Pricing:

• VM.Standard.E4: $0.025 per OCPU per hour, $0.0015 per GB of memory per hour
• BM.GPU.H100.8: $10.00 per GPU per hour
• Ampere A1 (ARM-based): $0.01 per OCPU per hour, $0.0015 per GB of memory per hour

2. OCI Block Volume

OCI Block Volume provides persistent storage for compute instances with high performance and durability. It supports dynamic scaling and backup integration, making it ideal for databases, applications, and virtual machines.

Pricing:

• Storage capacity: $0.0255 per GB per month
• Performance units: $0.0017 per GB per month (for balanced performance)

3. OCI Object Storage

OCI Object Storage is a highly scalable and durable solution for unstructured data. It is commonly used for backups, big data analytics, and content distribution, with options for frequent and infrequent access storage tiers.

Pricing:

• Standard storage: $0.0255 per GB per month
• Infrequent access storage: $0.01 per GB per month
• Archive storage: $0.0026 per GB per month

4. OCI Autonomous Database

Oracle Autonomous Database automates tasks like tuning, patching, and security updates, reducing administrative effort. It supports both transactional and analytical workloads and offers serverless and dedicated deployment options.

Pricing:

• Autonomous Data Warehouse (ADW) and Autonomous Transaction Processing (ATP): $0.336 per OCPU per hour
• BYOL (Bring Your Own License) pricing: $0.0807 per OCPU per hour
• Storage: $0.0244 per GB per month

5. OCI Kubernetes Engine (OKE)

OKE is a fully managed Kubernetes service that simplifies the deployment, scaling, and operations of containerized applications. It supports integration with OCI services and offers both free and premium cluster options.

Pricing:

• Basic cluster: Free
• Enhanced cluster: $0.10 per cluster per hour
• Virtual node: $0.015 per virtual node per hour

6. OCI Load Balancer

OCI Load Balancer distributes network traffic across multiple compute instances to ensure application availability and performance. It supports automatic scaling and integrates with OCI security features.

Pricing:

• Base load balancer: $0.0113 per hour
• Bandwidth usage: $0.0001 per Mbps per hour

7. OCI VPN and FastConnect

OCI VPN enables secure connections between on-premises networks and OCI, while FastConnect provides high-speed, dedicated network connections to OCI. These services enhance hybrid cloud deployments and minimize network latency.

Pricing:

• VPN: Free
• FastConnect (1 Gbps port): $0.2125 per hour
• FastConnect (10 Gbps port): $1.275 per hour

8. OCI Data Science

OCI Data Science provides an integrated environment for building, training, and deploying machine learning models. It includes managed Jupyter notebooks, pre-configured AI frameworks, and model deployment options.

Pricing:

• Compute (Ampere A1): $0.01 per OCPU per hour, $0.0015 per GB of memory per hour
• Compute (Standard E4): $0.025 per OCPU per hour, $0.0015 per GB of memory per hour

9. OCI Web Application Firewall (WAF)

OCI WAF protects web applications from common cyber threats, such as DDoS attacks, SQL injection, and cross-site scripting (XSS). It ensures secure API traffic and application access.

Pricing:

• First WAF instance: Free
• Additional instances: $5.00 per month
• Requests (over 10M per month): $0.60 per million requests

10. OCI Identity and Access Management (IAM)

OCI IAM provides centralized authentication, authorization, and access control for cloud resources. It supports role-based access control (RBAC), single sign-on (SSO), and multi-factor authentication (MFA).

Pricing:

• External users: $0.016 per user per month
• Premium IAM for enterprise users: $3.20 per user per month
• SMS for multi-factor authentication (MFA): $0.03 per message sent

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Limitations

While Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) offers a range of cloud services and competitive pricing, it also has several limitations that users should be aware of. These challenges include complexity in setup, cost concerns, documentation gaps, and support issues. These limitations were reported by users on the G2 platform:

• Complex setup and maintenance: Users often find OCI's setup process complicated, especially compared to other cloud providers. Routine tasks like DNS hosting can be difficult due to the overly complex OCI Console.
• Limited adoption and ecosystem: While OCI has established itself among the top cloud platforms, its adoption remains lower than competitors like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. This can lead to fewer third-party integrations and community resources.
• Frequent maintenance and downtime: OCI infrastructure is frequently targeted by cyber threats, resulting in occasional outages and extended maintenance periods.
• Challenging cost management: If not carefully monitored, costs can add up quickly. Some services, like Visual Builder and Oracle Content, have multiple pricing models, which can lead to unexpected billing if not properly managed.
• Steep learning curve: New users often struggle with discovering and utilizing OCI features effectively. kubernetes services like Oracle Kubernetes Engine (OKE) also require prior kubernetes knowledge to manage clusters efficiently.
• Slow customer support: Many users report that Oracle's official support system is slow to respond and often unhelpful, leading to delays in resolving technical issues.
• Difficult resource management: Deleting unused resources in OCI can be cumbersome. The platform does not always provide an intuitive way to remove unwanted instances, potentially leading to wasted resources.
• Email and UI limitations: Email delivery can be slow, and the user interface lacks certain features that could improve usability, such as enhanced search capabilities.
• kubernetes-specific limitations: OCI’s Kubernetes Engine (OKE) is perceived as overpriced compared to competitors. It also lacks flexibility in customization and integration with all Oracle Cloud services, potentially causing vendor lock-in.

Optimizing OCI Cost with Finout

Managing and optimizing Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) costs is a complex challenge for enterprises, as fluctuating usage, diverse services, and intricate pricing models often lead to unexpected expenses and budget overruns. Without a unified view of spending across compute, storage, networking, and other OCI resources, businesses struggle to pinpoint inefficiencies or allocate costs accurately, especially in dynamic, multi-tenant environments. Traditional tools and manual processes fall short, lacking the granularity and real-time insights needed to tame OCI’s sprawling cost landscape. Finout steps in as a powerful solution, offering a comprehensive platform to streamline OCI cost optimization by integrating seamlessly with OCI’s ecosystem and delivering actionable visibility into every layer of cloud spend.

Finout transforms OCI cost optimization by providing enterprises with advanced tools to monitor, allocate, and reduce expenses effortlessly. Its MegaBill feature consolidates OCI billing alongside other cloud and SaaS platforms into a single dashboard, while Instant Virtual Tagging ensures 100% cost attribution—even for untagged resources—across compartments, services, and tenancies. Finout enhances OCI’s native capabilities with real-time analytics, enabling teams to drill down into specific cost drivers like overprovisioned compute instances or underutilized storage. Coupled with financial planning and forecasting, Finout empowers businesses to predict OCI spend, optimize resource usage, and align costs with strategic goals, making it an indispensable ally for mastering OCI cost efficiency.