Yes, load balancing is fully supported and is even included for free under certain conditions. Oracle provides two distinct types of load balancers depending on your technical needs (Layer 4 vs. Layer 7).

Here is the breakdown of your load balancing options in 2026:

1. The "Always Free" Option

If you are looking for the most cost-effective "rental," OCI includes load balancing in its Always Free Tier:

• Flexible Load Balancer: You get one instance with a bandwidth of 10 Mbps at no cost forever.

• Flexible Network Load Balancer: This is a no-cost service (no hourly or bandwidth charges) regardless of whether you are on the free or paid tier. It is designed for high-performance, low-latency Layer 4 traffic.

2. Flexible Load Balancer (Layer 7)

This is a sophisticated "Application Load Balancer" that understands web traffic (HTTP/HTTPS).

• Capabilities: It handles SSL/TLS termination, session persistence (sticky sessions), and advanced routing based on URL paths or headers.

• Bandwidth Scaling: You don't have to pick a "fixed" size. You define a Minimum and Maximum bandwidth (from 10 Mbps to 8,000 Mbps), and it scales instantly as your traffic spikes.

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• Pricing (Paid): If you exceed the free tier, you pay a small hourly base fee (~$0.0113) plus a tiny charge for the bandwidth you actually use.

3. Flexible Network Load Balancer (Layer 4)

This is a pass-through load balancer that operates at the network level (TCP/UDP/ICMP).

• Performance: It is built for "extreme" performance and ultra-low latency. It is the best choice for gaming, VoIP, or IoT applications.

• Cost: Free. Oracle does not charge for the Network Load Balancer instance or the data processed through it.

• Capacity: It can handle millions of concurrent connections and is virtually "transparent" to your traffic.

Comparison: Which Load Balancer should I use?

4. High Availability (Health Checks)

Both types of load balancers act as the "heartbeat" monitor for your servers:

• Health Checks: They constantly ping your backend servers. If one server crashes or becomes unresponsive, the load balancer instantly stops sending it traffic and re-routes users to the healthy servers.

• Regional Scope: You can deploy a single load balancer that distributes traffic across multiple Fault Domains or Availability Domains (data centers) within a region, ensuring that even a physical rack failure won't take your app offline.

Pro-Tip: Security Integration

In 2026, the Flexible Load Balancer is often used as the "entry point" for the OCI Web Application Firewall (WAF). With one click, you can protect your rented servers from SQL injection, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), and bot attacks directly at the load balancer level.