Oracle Cloud Infrastructure compute lists at $0.025 per OCPU per hour, Autonomous Database Serverless at $4.03 per OCPU per hour without BYOL or $1.34 with BYOL, and Exadata Cloud Service X10M at $3.10 per OCPU without BYOL or $0.81 with BYOL. The BYOL discount of 75 percent off cloud rates and the Universal Credits commercial framework are the two levers that determine realised OCI cost. Negotiated discounts on Universal Credits commitments range from 10 percent at $250K annual commit to 35+ percent at $10M+ annual commit. This pillar documents the full 2026 OCI pricing surface and the commercial constructs that produce realised cost.
Inside This Pillar
- OCI 2026 list price snapshot
- Compute pricing
- Storage pricing
- Networking and egress
- Autonomous Database pricing
- Exadata Cloud Service
- BYOL discount math
- Universal Credits commercial framework
- Region pricing variation
- OCI vs AWS vs Azure pricing
- Commercial constructs to negotiate
- Total-cost modelling examples
OCI 2026 list price snapshot
The numbers below reflect Oracle's public OCI pricing as of Q1 2026. OCI publishes a per-OCPU pricing model that differs from the per-vCPU pricing used by AWS, Azure, and GCP. One OCPU equals two hyperthreaded vCPUs on x86 architecture. This affects direct price comparison with hyperscalers.
| Service category | List price (per OCPU/hour, no BYOL) | BYOL price (per OCPU/hour) | BYOL discount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Compute (VM.Standard3.Flex) | $0.025 | Not applicable | Not applicable |
| Compute (Bare Metal BM.Standard3.64) | $0.025 | Not applicable | Not applicable |
| Database VM (Enterprise Edition) | $1.3441 | $0.2688 | 80 percent |
| Autonomous Database Serverless | $4.0288 | $1.3441 | 67 percent |
| Autonomous Transaction Processing (Dedicated) | $1.9351 | $0.6451 | 67 percent |
| Exadata Cloud Service X10M | $3.10 | $0.81 | 74 percent |
| MySQL HeatWave | $0.3500 | Not applicable | Not applicable |
Compute pricing
OCI Compute charges per OCPU per hour for x86 flexible VMs, with separate pricing for ARM-based VMs (Ampere A1, $0.01 per OCPU per hour) and GPU instances. The Standard3.Flex shape is the workhorse, supporting any OCPU count from 1 to 64 with proportional memory. The Bare Metal shapes (no hypervisor overhead) carry the same per-OCPU pricing as virtualised shapes.
OCI's $0.025 per OCPU per hour list price is meaningfully below the equivalent AWS and Azure compute pricing once normalised for the OCPU-to-vCPU conversion. An equivalent AWS m6i.4xlarge (8 vCPUs = 4 OCPUs) lists at $0.768 per hour, equivalent to $0.192 per OCPU per hour. OCI compute is roughly 7x to 8x less expensive than AWS general-purpose compute at list. This is Oracle's primary OCI differentiation lever and is sustained by the Authorised Cloud Environment policy that disadvantages Oracle workloads on competitor clouds.
Storage pricing
OCI Block Storage lists at $0.0255 per GB per month for Balanced performance, $0.0425 for Higher performance, and $0.0680 for Ultra High performance. Object Storage Standard tier is $0.0255 per GB per month with no minimum size. Object Storage Archive tier is $0.0026 per GB per month.
| Storage tier | OCI list price (per GB/month) | AWS equivalent (per GB/month) | OCI discount vs AWS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Block Storage Balanced | $0.0255 | $0.080 (gp3) | 68 percent |
| Block Storage Higher performance | $0.0425 | $0.125 (io2) | 66 percent |
| Object Storage Standard | $0.0255 | $0.023 (S3 Standard) | Slightly higher |
| Object Storage Infrequent Access | $0.0102 | $0.0125 (S3 IA) | 18 percent |
| Archive Storage | $0.0026 | $0.0036 (S3 Glacier Deep) | 28 percent |
Networking and egress
OCI's pricing differentiation extends to networking. Egress to the public internet is free for the first 10 TB per month per tenancy, then $0.0085 per GB beyond. AWS charges $0.09 per GB after the first 100 GB. Azure charges similar rates to AWS. OCI egress is the single largest commercial differentiation versus hyperscalers for data-heavy workloads.
Inter-region egress within OCI is free for the first 10 TB per month then $0.005 per GB. VCN-to-VCN traffic within a region is free. Site-to-site VPN connections are free at the service level (only the underlying compute and egress incur cost). FastConnect dedicated connections list at $0.018 per hour for 1 Gbps and $0.072 per hour for 10 Gbps.
Egress as a competitive lever: OCI's near-zero egress pricing is the single largest cost advantage versus AWS, Azure, and GCP for data-intensive workloads such as media streaming, analytics export, and disaster recovery cross-cloud replication. For workloads that egress 100+ TB per month, OCI's total cost can be 60 to 80 percent below AWS or Azure even without further discounts. Use this in the OCI commercial negotiation as evidence of total-cost ownership rather than per-OCPU price comparison alone.
Autonomous Database pricing
Autonomous Database is Oracle's flagship cloud database service with two deployment modes (Serverless and Dedicated) and two workload types (Transaction Processing and Data Warehouse). Pricing differs across the matrix.
Autonomous Database Serverless lists at $4.0288 per OCPU per hour without BYOL or $1.3441 with BYOL. Serverless supports auto-scaling within a configured minimum and maximum OCPU range and pauses to zero cost when no queries run. Storage lists at $118.40 per TB per month for active storage and $232.10 per TB per month for backup storage.
Autonomous Database Dedicated lists at $1.9351 per OCPU per hour for Transaction Processing or $1.6128 for Data Warehouse, with BYOL discount to $0.6451 and $0.5376 respectively. Dedicated runs on Exadata Cloud Infrastructure and requires a minimum Exadata commitment. The economics work for steady-state workloads at 70 percent or higher utilisation versus Serverless.
Exadata Cloud Service
Exadata Cloud Service runs Oracle Database on Exadata X9M or X10M hardware in OCI regions. The pricing structure is base infrastructure cost plus per-OCPU compute. The X10M base infrastructure lists at $4.0512 per hour with 16 minimum enabled OCPUs at $3.10 per OCPU without BYOL or $0.81 with BYOL.
A typical enterprise Exadata Cloud X10M deployment with 64 enabled OCPUs lists at $4.0512 base plus 64 × $3.10 = $198.40 per OCPU per hour, total $202.45 per hour without BYOL. With BYOL, the same configuration lists at $4.0512 base plus 64 × $0.81 = $51.84 per OCPU per hour, total $55.89 per hour. The BYOL configuration saves $1.28M per year on a single 64-OCPU X10M.
BYOL discount math
BYOL applies existing on-premise Oracle licences to OCI consumption at deeply discounted hourly rates. The on-premise licence continues to incur 22 percent annual support in parallel. The net BYOL cost is the cloud BYOL rate plus the on-premise support obligation. A customer with $100K in Database Enterprise Edition on-premise licences pays $22K per year in support and can apply those licences to OCI workloads at 80 percent off the cloud rate.
| BYOL configuration | OCPU-hours per year | Cloud rate | BYOL rate | Annual saving |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Database VM 8 OCPUs (steady state) | 70,080 | $94,166 | $18,838 | $75,328 |
| Autonomous Database 16 OCPUs (steady state) | 140,160 | $564,696 | $188,419 | $376,277 |
| Exadata Cloud X10M 64 OCPUs | 560,640 | $1,737,984 | $454,118 | $1,283,866 |
BYOL portability is a critical contract clause. Standard OCI contracts allow BYOL licences to move between OCI regions and between OCI compute shapes, but customers should negotiate explicit language permitting BYOL on the customer's own future Oracle estate even after OCI consumption ends. The default contract is silent on this and Oracle can dispute portability later.
Universal Credits commercial framework
Universal Credits are Oracle's prepaid commitment mechanism for OCI. The customer commits a dollar amount of OCI consumption over a one to four year term and receives a tiered discount. The credits draw down at standard per-service pricing as consumption occurs. Unused credits at term end do not roll over and are forfeited.
| Annual commit | 1-year term discount | 3-year term discount | 4-year term discount |
|---|---|---|---|
| $250K to $500K | 5 to 10 percent | 10 to 15 percent | 12 to 18 percent |
| $500K to $2M | 10 to 15 percent | 15 to 22 percent | 18 to 25 percent |
| $2M to $10M | 15 to 22 percent | 22 to 30 percent | 25 to 33 percent |
| $10M+ | 22 to 30 percent | 30 to 40 percent | 33 to 45 percent |
The credit drawdown mechanism produces three commercial risks. The first is overcommitment: customers who commit too aggressively forfeit unused credits at term end. Typical overcommitment is 20 to 35 percent of the contracted amount. The second is service price-changes: Oracle reserves the right to adjust per-service rates during the commitment term, which can change the effective consumption value. The third is exit terms: customers who decide to leave OCI mid-term cannot recover prepaid credits.
Region pricing variation
OCI pricing varies modestly by region. US commercial regions (Phoenix, Ashburn) carry the base price. EU and UK regions carry a 5 to 15 percent premium. APAC regions carry a 10 to 25 percent premium. Government and sovereign cloud regions carry 30 to 60 percent premiums. The variation is smaller than AWS or Azure where region price differences can exceed 30 percent for compute. Universal Credits draw down at the regional rate, so multi-region deployments should be modelled at the actual region mix.
OCI vs AWS vs Azure pricing
OCI compute, storage, and egress are systematically cheaper than AWS and Azure equivalents. OCI database services with BYOL are systematically cheaper than running Oracle Database on AWS RDS or Azure Database for Oracle. The pricing advantages are real and reflected in customer adoption of OCI for Oracle-heavy workloads. The pricing disadvantages compared to hyperscalers are around the broader ecosystem (PaaS breadth, AI/ML services, third-party software marketplace), where Oracle is catching up but remains narrower than AWS and Azure.
The right architecture decision is rarely "OCI for everything" or "AWS for everything." For Oracle Database workloads with BYOL economics, OCI is the cost-optimal choice. For non-Oracle workloads, AWS and Azure typically win on ecosystem breadth. Multi-cloud architectures that use OCI for Oracle and AWS or Azure for other workloads are common in 2026.
Commercial constructs to negotiate
The Universal Credits commercial constructs that produce the strongest negotiation position at contract signature are: the credit expiration policy (negotiate 90-day post-term consumption windows), the credit reduction clause (right to reduce committed amount if Oracle changes service prices materially), the multi-region portability clause (credits usable across any OCI region), the BYOL portability clause (BYOL licences remain customer property after OCI consumption ends), the exit data egress clause (waived egress charges for migration off OCI), and the price-protection clause (per-service rates fixed for the commitment term).
Each clause Oracle resists has a counterproposal. Most clauses Oracle accepts at $2M+ annual commits if asked at the right time. The right time is before the signature page is on the table, not at renewal.
Total-cost modelling examples
A typical enterprise OCI deployment with $4M annual Universal Credits commitment, 3-year term, 25 percent commit discount produces $3M effective annual spend. Of that, $1.6M on Database services (Autonomous and Exadata Cloud with BYOL), $0.8M on Compute and Storage, $0.4M on Networking and FastConnect, $0.2M on Object Storage and backup, generating roughly 70 percent utilisation of committed credits in Year 1 ramping to 95 percent by Year 3.
For the broader Oracle commercial framework, see Oracle licensing costs 2026, Oracle Cloud migration, Oracle AWS BYOL, Exadata Cloud Service, complete Oracle licensing guide, and the Oracle vendor hub. For an engagement on an OCI Universal Credits negotiation, see cloud contract negotiation or software licensing advisory.