What support tiers are available?
In 2026, OCI (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure) stands out by including Enterprise-Grade Support as a standard feature of the "rental" price. While other cloud providers often charge a percentage of your monthly bill (typically 3%–10%) just to talk to a human, Oracle includes production-level support for all paid accounts.
Here are the tiers available for your OCI services:
Every OCI account that uses Paid Universal Credits (Pay-as-you-Go or Annual Commit) includes this tier at no extra cost.
24/7 Access: You can open "Severity 1" tickets at any time for critical production outages.
My Oracle Support (MOS): Access to the global portal for patches, documentation, and expert troubleshooting.
Proactive Tools: Access to OCI Cloud Advisor, which gives you free recommendations on cost-saving and security hardening.
Chat & Phone: Live technical assistance is available globally in multiple languages.
If you are renting Oracle Linux, Oracle Database, or Java on OCI, you are automatically upgraded to Premier Support for those specific products.
Zero-Downtime Patching: Includes access to Ksplice, allowing you to patch the Linux kernel and critical libraries without rebooting your servers.
Backports: If a bug is found in a newer version of software, Oracle engineers will often "backport" that fix to your older version specifically.
Security: Access to all Critical Patch Updates (CPUs) and security alerts.
For large enterprises requiring a more personal touch, Oracle offers Priority Support as a paid professional service.
Assigned Experts: You get a technical account team that understands your specific architecture.
Faster Response: Accelerated SLAs for ticket response times.
Proactive Monitoring: Oracle engineers proactively monitor your service requests to identify recurring patterns or configuration risks before they cause an outage.
| Feature | Always Free | Paid OCI (Standard) | Priority Support |
| Price | Free | Included (No % fee) | Paid Add-on |
| 24/7 Phone Support | No (Forum only) | Yes | Yes (Fast-tracked) |
| SLA for Response | N/A | Yes | Enhanced/Premium |
| Dedicated Engineer | No | No | Yes |
| Patching/Updates | Limited | Full Access | Full Access |
A unique feature of the OCI rental model is Oracle Support Rewards.
How it works: For every $1 you spend on OCI infrastructure (servers, storage, etc.), you earn $0.25 in rewards.
The Benefit: You can use these rewards to pay off your other Oracle bills, such as on-premises database licenses or middleware support. In many cases, customers who move enough workload to the cloud end up getting their traditional software support for free.
If you are new to the platform, Oracle provides Cloud Lift Services at no additional cost. This isn't strictly "support," but rather a team of engineers who help you architect and migrate your first few workloads to ensure they are set up correctly from day one.
When you open a ticket, you'll choose a Severity Level.
Sev 1: Your production system is down. (Requires 24/7 availability on your end to work with Oracle).
Sev 2: Major functionality is restricted, but the system is up.
Sev 3: Minor issues or questions.
Always use Sev 1 for outages to trigger the fastest response times under your SLA.