Recently one of my friend who started learning OCI told me he is not able to locate Oracle 21c Autonomous database in the list, but can only see 19c. He was using ‘Always Free Autonomous Databases’ to test few things on Oracle Database version 21c.

I was sure it was happening due to region he selected, I mean you can provision free Autonomous Databases only in your home region, and not all regions support the same database versions. The supported version may be 19c-only or 21c-only, depending on the region you have selected.

When checked, found he was trying from the ap-tokyo-1 (Tokyo region – key NRT) where only 19c version is available in ‘Always Free Autonomous Databases’. So, it always depends the region where you are trying creating your Always Free Autonomous Database Oracle Database weather you see 19c or 21c.

Always Free databases can be created in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure accounts that are in a trial period, have paying status, or are always free. More details : https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/Database/Concepts/adbfreeoverview.htm

Try and sign up for Oracle Cloud Free Tier, trust me its awesome 🙂 🙂 : https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free/

Hope It Helped
Prashant Dixit