I have been getting my hands dirty with Kubernetes for the past 12 months on the Google Kubernetes Engine. This post summarizes the different options available as free in various Layer 1 and Layer 2 Cloud Providers. Do leverage it for learning Kubernetes and staring your cloud native journey.

Google Cloud Platform

Provides a $300 credit which can be used for a 12 month period from the account creation. There is no restriction on the resources and the number of nodes for creating a cluster.

Bonus: You get Istio installation with the Google Kubernetes Engine cluster creation.

Link: https://cloud.google.com/free/

Microsoft Azure

Provides a $200 credit which can be used for a 12 month period from the account creation. However, the Azure Kubernetes Service is free for AI and ML workloads which falls into the always free resource list.

Link: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/fre...

IBM Cloud

Provides a single worker node Kubernetes cluster along with container registry like other cloud providers. This is more than enough for a beginner to try the concepts of Kubernetes

Link: https://www.ibm.com/cloud/free/

Alibaba Cloud

Provides a $300 credit which can be used for a 12 month period from the account creation. They also provide Kubernetes in the always free resource list.

Link: https://www.alibabacloud.com/campaign...

Redhat OpenShift

Provides a single node PaaS over Kubernetes.It can be used for a trial period of 60 days in your redhat account

Link: https://www.openshift.com/learn/get-s...

Katacoda

The most used platform for playing with Kubernetes. There are different flavours of kubernetes clusters which you can use including a minikube version.

Link: https://www.katacoda.com/courses/kube...

Tryk8s

Provides a playground for trying Kubernetes for free.

Link: https://tryk8s.com/

CodeFresh

Leverages the Google Cloud Platform, provides $500 credit for trying out Kubernetes.

Link: https://codefresh.io/google-cloud/

KubeSail