Make the offers comparable
Use the effective monthly price for the first twelve months, including any introductory period. If a provider bills yearly, divide that charge by twelve. Add recurring domain, backup, storage, licence, IPv4 and support charges to annual extras. Keep one-time migration or installation charges in setup. Include tax consistently in both plans.
The second-year comparison uses the renewal monthly prices and the same annual extras, with no repeat setup charge. Adjust those extras if they also change at renewal. The initial numbers are invented examples for arithmetic, not current provider quotations.
A zero price does not establish suitability
A free tier, short trial and temporary cloud shell are different services. Check persistence, allowed workloads, payment-card requirements, availability, architecture and resource limits at the provider. This calculator does not supply a VPS or guarantee a free offer. Cost alone does not compare CPU performance, reliability or support.
Estimate variable charges with the server bandwidth calculator and backup storage planner. Compare those estimates with the provider's actual billing units and quotas before including them in annual extras. Review Google Cloud's official compute pricing as an example of separate compute, storage and network pricing, not as a recommendation.