Oracle’s published Always Free documentation states an outbound-data allowance of 10 TB per month, and its India price list shows the first 10 TB per month free for a category that groups APAC, Japan and South America. The listed overage price applies to that grouped origin category; the table does not give India a separate rate row.
You can estimate a stream’s data from its configured bitrate and running time, then compare that estimate with the published allowance. That arithmetic is useful for planning, but it is not a complete OCI bill estimate and does not establish what a particular tenancy will be billed or how a VM will perform.
What Oracle publishes for outbound transfer
Oracle’s Always Free Resources documentation says that Always Free resources include 10 TB per month of outbound data. Oracle’s Free Tier product page describes the allowance as “up to” 10 TB per month. Keep both details in view: the dedicated documentation states the allowance, while the product-page wording is qualified.
For a creator sending a live feed from an OCI virtual machine to YouTube, outbound transfer is the relevant direction to examine: data leaves Oracle’s cloud to reach the ingest destination. This does not mean every account receives an unconditional, independent 10 TB pool for each VM. Oracle’s reviewed public passages do not settle how the allowance aggregates across resources, regions or a particular tenancy, so avoid multiplying the stated amount by the number of machines you run.
The allowance is about data transfer, not a promise of a given network speed. It does not say that an instance can encode a particular resolution, sustain an encoder’s bitrate without interruption, or maintain a healthy YouTube ingest connection. Those are separate questions to test on the actual VM and stream setup.
The figures in this article are planning inputs, not a report of a tested stream or a billing account. Oracle can change documentation or prices, and an individual account’s billing configuration matters. Before acting on a rate, verify the current official pages and the figures shown in your own OCI console.
How Oracle groups India under APAC pricing
Oracle India’s Cloud Price List places outbound transfer originating in APAC, Japan and South America in a shared pricing category. It lists the first 10 TB per month as free and lists transfer above that amount at ₹2.388625 per GB per month. The published row does not name India separately.
For an India creator, the accurate way to express this is that Oracle’s published category includes APAC alongside Japan and South America, and the India price list gives a rate for that category. Do not call it an India-only price: the table does not identify an India-only origin row. The country is being considered under the published APAC grouping, not a distinct India line.
The price list also does not answer every operational question you might have about crossing the allowance. The cited public material does not establish, for a particular Free Tier account, whether usage is aggregated in a specific way, exactly how billing boundaries are applied, or whether a service would be limited or billed after the allowance. Do not assume that reaching the threshold is impossible to bill, or that a stream necessarily stops. Check the current price list, your tenancy’s billing configuration and the usage shown in the console.
Treat the listed rate as a conditional price reference, not a forecast. It becomes relevant only after you know how Oracle counts the account’s outbound transfer and whether the usage is chargeable under your tenancy. The calculation below estimates only the stream payload implied by a selected bitrate; it cannot resolve those account-specific details.
Estimate data from stream bitrate
For a simple stream-only estimate, multiply bitrate by the number of seconds streamed, convert bits to bytes, then convert bytes to decimal gigabytes. The calculation is:
Mbps × seconds ÷ 8 ÷ 1,000 = decimal GB
Because one megabit per second represents one million bits per second, multiplying by seconds gives megabits. Dividing by eight converts bits to bytes; dividing by 1,000 expresses the result in decimal GB. For an hourly figure, use 3,600 seconds. At 10 Mbps, the calculation is 10 × 3,600 ÷ 8 ÷ 1,000 = 4.5 GB per hour. At 12 Mbps, it is 12 × 3,600 ÷ 8 ÷ 1,000 = 5.4 GB per hour.
Use the bitrate actually configured in your encoder, not a resolution label as a substitute. YouTube Help’s live encoder settings guidance lists H.264 recommendations of 10 Mbps for 1080p at 30 frames per second and 12 Mbps for 1080p at 60 frames per second. These recommended settings give useful example inputs, but your own configuration may differ.
The figures assume that the chosen bitrate runs continuously for the stated time. A variable-rate stream, changes in encoder settings, interruptions and reconnects can make real transfer differ. Also check whether your quoted bitrate includes audio: if audio is sent in addition to the video target, count that data as well rather than silently treating the video figure as the whole stream.
These are decimal-unit calculations, not an estimate copied from an OCI meter. The arithmetic helps answer “how much data would this nominal stream send?” It does not answer “what will Oracle invoice?” Those are different questions, and the distinction matters when comparing a stream to a free-transfer allowance.
Worked examples at 10 and 12 Mbps
At 10 Mbps, one hour corresponds to about 4.5 decimal GB of stream data. A four-hour session therefore corresponds to roughly 18 GB: 4.5 multiplied by four. If the same four-hour programme were sent on 30 separate days in a month, the stream-only arithmetic would be 540 GB, before overhead or other traffic.
At 12 Mbps, one hour corresponds to about 5.4 decimal GB. A four-hour session would be about 21.6 GB, and 30 such sessions would total about 648 GB. These examples hold the bitrate and duration constant to make the calculation reproducible; they do not establish that an encoder or OCI instance will actually sustain the selected bitrate.
A continuous channel has a different monthly duration from a short daily broadcast. Using 30 days as a planning month gives 720 hours. At 10 Mbps, 720 × 4.5 GB is 3,240 GB, or about 3.24 decimal TB. At 12 Mbps, 720 × 5.4 GB is 3,888 GB, or about 3.888 decimal TB. These are stream-only totals under constant-bitrate assumptions.
The examples make a practical point: a 24/7 feed at these inputs is not the same usage as four-hour daily sessions, but the illustrative stream-only total still sits below 10,000 decimal GB. That comparison is not a guarantee that a tenancy remains within an allowance. Other outbound traffic, multiple streams and billing treatment all need separate attention.
If your stream uses multiple simultaneous outputs or you run more than one channel from the account, estimate each stream and add their transfer before comparing totals. A single 10 Mbps figure is not a cap on all account traffic. For a prerecorded loop, the guide to streaming MP4 videos continuously to YouTube from a VPS in India is relevant to the sending setup; this article’s arithmetic remains the same regardless of the playback method.
Compare monthly usage with the allowance
The table puts the assumed stream data beside the published 10 TB reference. It treats 10 TB as 10,000 decimal GB solely for arithmetic and assumes a constant bitrate throughout. The “hours to 10 TB” column is a mathematical comparison, not a safe operating limit or an assertion that Oracle allocates the same amount to every account.
| Illustrative bitrate | Approximate stream data per hour | Approximate stream-only hours to 10 TB |
|---|---|---|
| 10 Mbps | 4.5 GB | 2,222 hours |
| 12 Mbps | 5.4 GB | 1,852 hours |
At a 10 Mbps constant bitrate, dividing 10,000 GB by 4.5 GB per hour gives about 2,222 hours. At 12 Mbps, dividing by 5.4 gives about 1,852 hours. The values are rounded, and both omit additional traffic. A 720-hour month at either example bitrate is below the table’s stream-only comparison point, but the difference should not be treated as spare capacity you can spend without checking other usage.
For your own estimate, write down four inputs: configured bitrate, audio treatment, hours streamed in the billing month, and number of concurrent streams. Calculate each stream’s data, add them, then account for traffic unrelated to YouTube. Keep the transfer total in the same units as the allowance; do not compare decimal GB from this formula with a binary GiB reading as though they were identical.
A 24/7 channel can be harder to estimate than a scheduled broadcast if you do not have a clear record of hours and bitrate changes. Keep a simple log when you change encoder settings or add a second output. If the stream is not constant, use a conservative planning assumption and then compare it with the actual usage displayed in OCI rather than treating a single nominal bitrate as measured billing data.
A stable video file and correct encoder configuration matter for the stream itself, but they do not alter Oracle’s price table. If a loop uses FFmpeg, check the constant frame-rate setup for a YouTube FFmpeg loop separately from transfer arithmetic. Frame rate can affect the encoding choices you make; the outbound estimate still depends on the configured bitrate and running time.
What the calculation excludes from a bill
The formula covers only the nominal stream bitrate and duration. Actual outbound transfer can also include protocol overhead, retransmissions, and reconnect activity. Audio sent beyond the assumed target bitrate can add data, and traffic to destinations other than YouTube may count toward outbound usage too. The examples deliberately do not assign invented percentages to those additions.
Concurrent streams need to be counted separately. If one VM sends two streams at the same time, or multiple VMs in a tenancy send data, do not assume that the example for one stream describes the account total. Include all relevant outbound traffic and then confirm how Oracle applies the allowance to the resources and account in question.
The calculation also excludes compute and storage charges. A transfer allowance does not establish that an instance, attached storage, image, or any other resource is free in your configuration. The price list’s transfer row is not a full bill of materials, and stream bitrate says nothing about the cost or eligibility of the VM you selected.
Nor does the allowance measure performance. An instance might not have the CPU capacity to encode the chosen settings, and available throughput or YouTube ingest health cannot be inferred from the 10 TB figure. YouTube recommends testing upload bitrate and monitoring stream health. Its encoder settings guidance is a useful reference for encoder inputs, but it is not a certification of a particular OCI instance or network path.
If the practical burden is keeping your own computer running overnight and recovering a dropped broadcast, a file-based workflow can remove that particular operational task: StreamNeo turns an uploaded video into a YouTube live stream, so your local computer does not need to stay on. It is YouTube-only, and it does not change Oracle pricing or make a bandwidth allowance an uptime guarantee.
There is also a distinction between the amount a stream sends and the amount a provider’s billing meter records. This article has not measured a tenancy. Use the calculation as a transparent estimate, then compare it with account usage and billing data after the stream has run. Do not reverse-engineer an invoice from the bitrate table alone.
Check current pricing and actual usage
Before deploying, open Oracle’s current price list and Always Free documentation rather than relying on a saved copy of either page. Confirm that the wording and figures still match, and note that the India page’s outbound-transfer category groups APAC with Japan and South America. A category-level published price should not be represented as a distinct India-origin rate.
Check the configuration of your own tenancy and the usage data Oracle exposes. If the console’s meter, resource coverage or billing treatment is unclear, ask Oracle support or consult the current billing documentation before assuming that the allowance is pooled, that a threshold is harmless, or that a stream will be stopped automatically. The reviewed public passages do not settle those account-specific outcomes.
Then test the stream independently of the cost calculation. YouTube recommends running a speed test to test upload bitrate; check the ingest health while the stream is running and look for dropped frames or connection problems. A free transfer allowance cannot tell you whether the selected VM and encoder are suitable for a continuous channel.
A practical planning sheet can keep these checks separate: bitrate and hours for stream data; other egress for the account total; current Oracle pricing and tenancy terms for billing; and a real test for stream stability. If you make a change, such as increasing from 10 to 12 Mbps or adding another channel, recalculate the stream-only estimate and review the account’s actual usage afterwards.
If your aim is a continuous prerecorded channel, also consider the mechanics of keeping the source material and stream format consistent. The guide to YouTube livestream rules and common issues covers operational checks that are separate from bandwidth costs. Copyright, ingest health, continuity and billing are related parts of a live channel, but none is resolved by the transfer calculation alone.
Before committing, compare the operating options on the pricing page. When the file and channel are ready, start free — 24-hour trial, no card.
FAQ
Does Oracle give India creators a separate outbound-transfer rate?
The reviewed Oracle India price list does not show a separate India row for this outbound-transfer category. It groups APAC, Japan and South America, with the first 10 TB per month free and a listed overage rate for that group. Refer to the current Oracle page for its exact wording rather than calling the figure an India-only rate.
Is the 10 TB allowance guaranteed for every Free Tier account?
Oracle’s Always Free documentation states 10 TB per month of outbound data, while the Free Tier page describes it as up to 10 TB per month. The reviewed public text does not settle all account-specific aggregation and billing behaviour. Check your tenancy and current official documentation before treating the figure as an account-specific guarantee.
How much data does a 24/7 stream at 10 Mbps send?
At a constant 10 Mbps, the decimal-unit calculation is about 4.5 GB per hour. Using 720 hours as a 30-day planning month gives about 3,240 GB, or 3.24 TB, for the stream alone. Overhead, other egress and actual billing-meter behaviour are not included.
Does staying below the stream-only estimate prove the whole account is free?
No. The estimate does not include other outbound traffic, compute, storage, or account-specific billing treatment. Compare the complete resource and usage picture with Oracle’s current pricing and your tenancy’s usage data.