Start with experimenting on your own computer. You can install Docker and setup Lemmy fx. Any reason you can't keep your computer running?
There's only IONOS with their £1 and £2 server: https://www.ionos.co.uk/servers/vps
this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2026
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I just wanna say that Lemmy isn't exactly light on resources. 4GB of RAM are barely enough, even on a single user instance. I don't think free tiers will offer more
Racknerd always has good deals. You get get a vps for as low as $11/year.
Here's a link (no affiliation with them. Been using them since 2020 when I grabbed one of these deals)
https://www.racknerd.com/BlackFriday/
(Don't worry that it says black Friday. You should still be able to get the deal)
If I get a job, I would love that. I should get one soon, thanks!
Strato has one Euro per month Linux VPS plan (1GB RAM, 10 GB disk) which you pay per quarter, so that's three Euros each time, four times per year. You can use a swapfile in case the lack of RAM would be a problem.
This is on their Spanish language site but also available in German language and more (see at the bottom of their pages).
https://www.strato.es/servidores/vps-linux
Ask a friend to do the first payment ? Then you're off to run Lemmy for at least three months.
Oracle Cloud isn't available in my location by the way, and I tried Google Cloud, it keeps crashing when I do an instance and it wants me to pay all of a sudden.
Google only gives you about $100 to start with
Oracle does it.
Be wary of oracle free tier. They’re known to just delete your vps for no reason.
oracle also is in the process of destroying cnn and any free press as well as make sure every citizen is being watched and their data is stored on oracle servers.
I know of a few VPS that are 'free', and I use that word quite loosely. Long time back I explored a few, and I can tell you that they are not worth the time of day. Very cheap VPS can be had. I had one that ran me $25 USD per year. It wasn't the most thread rippin' VPS you could have, but it certainly was cheap, and at one time I had about 25 different containers running on it with out much trouble. A good place to look for cheap VPS is at lowendbox.com.
Oracle offers a free tier, but you really have to watch your consumption of resources, and I believe they require a credit card to open an account. There are horror stories of people who went over the limit and ended up with a good size bill
I realize $25 USD is not free and does not fit within your request, and I empathize. As far as using your own computer with something like Docker, and shutting it down each evening....I shut my server down every evening via a cron job. I am the only user, and I just couldn't justify letting it run while I slept. So I guess you'd say it's an intermittent service.
Just to add to your comment:
As much as I hate oracle, I run their free-tier vps in a Canadian datacenter and it never required my cc. I think it's geographic location-dependent.
and it never required
That's cool. I was thinking one of the free tiers like Amazon, Google required a CC to open one. Side question: What do you run on Oracle, and how fastidious do you have to be about controlling resource consumption? I've read about people on one of the free tiers getting socked a big bill, in fact it's a meme now.
spoiler
I only run two instances, both run nginx and static HTML sites (plus all the stupid mandatory bits like fail2ban, python for ansible, certbot, etc. They are very low usage and get no seo or anything so they are really, really low usage.
I've never been warned about resources so far, and it's been 3 years. I intensionally don't run any high-bandwidth stuff like a matrix server or file sync for that reason.
I just lock it right down with keys and firewall entries for SSH. Logs are pretty quiet, except for llm scraping, but they are rate-limited, so they go away quickly.
Be aware that Oracle presents image "shapes" as the os images for use,which include oracle, Ubuntu, and a few others. These do have oracle metrics gathering and agents installed to help with migration between data centre zones, so it's conceivable that they can read what's on the os. I don't have any PII on there except public keys and my email address.
don't have an old pc lying around? I literally built my first server while I was jobless, (I did purchase HDDs when I was employed, though). That same server has a cpu, mobo, ram and case that are well over 15 years old now, only the PSU and storage are new.
I'm hosting a discord alternative called sharkord. Initially I just hosted it on my home server, but I couldn't open ports for voice chat so I did move to a VPS with akami (linode). At most it's costing me $5 CAD a month.
It's wayyy lighter to run compared to lemmy, because servers aren't federated. I know, different application, but just wanted to provide a point of reference.
oh yeah, and I don't know, but I only run linux, and almost never shutdown my main PC anyways, only reboot for updates or shutdown for maintenance. I could 100% just host things on my main PC, but it's only connected to the internet via wi-fi, which is why I went the separate pc route. If you need parts, see what people are willing to give away.
Looks like you're in Norway, so I suggest you reach out in norge.chat (matrix) and see if anybody can suggest something, perhaps a local provider or community of people with similar interests.
I’m in america, i just know some norwegian :)
Not quite the same thing, but maybe run a Hollos instance instead? Yet to test, but supposedly it runs on your phone by what they market.
Also seen two other minimalist projects implementing ActivityPub. Let me see if I can find them.
I'd love that!
Checking here, Hollos still needs a site to use as relay, similar to Bluesky, so I'm guessing you'd need to either host the site on your machine, or to use a VPS. I need to study and test it further though.
Anyways, here's the links:
- Hollos: https://holos.social/
- One of the softwares I had found: https://lemmy.manganiello.tech/post/303332
- The other software I~~'m still looking~~ just found again (threads-type of post, so should be compatible with Lemmy): https://scrapetacular.ydns.eu/activities/50114ac8-fd26-47cd-8fe0-ad97f0027c5e
@atheqtpie@piefed.blahaj.zone two things I just thought of.
First, it needs an initial investment, but maybe buy a Raspberry Pi or some other single-board computer to put your site/sites on?
Second, in a post asking about self-hosting that I made, someone suggested the site https://linuxupskillchallenge.org/, and reading its "what is it about" page, I see the text from the attached image. Perhaps worth investigating.
Thanks! Perfect, I'll check it out
Any specific reason you want to run a Lemmy instance? Or just trying something new?
Ramnode does really cheap instances, but you're not running Lemmy on their basement tier.
Fair, thanks!
I tried freevps.edu.pl but that won't work either, it leaves my VPS on pending no matter what I do
What's the end goal?
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| HTTP | Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web |
| PSU | Power Supply Unit |
| SSH | Secure Shell for remote terminal access |
| VPN | Virtual Private Network |
| VPS | Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting) |
| nginx | Popular HTTP server |
5 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 6 acronyms.
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