Best online VPS

I'd recommend giving Hetzner a look, they're similar to Linode/Digital Ocean/etc., but they're a bit cheaper. They're a European company, but they've recently added a couple North American locations.

I generally use Digital Ocean, but I was also informed recently that Hetzner has new US datacenters, which would significantly lower latency for me. Might be something to look into in the future.

Just use Hetzner Cloud. They’re great. And if you want really cheap and low end stuff, have a look at https://lowendstock.com/

Oracle's free option generally comes pretty highly recommended for small jobs or people just starting out.

Google Cloud has a free tier, as do many other large cloud providers (Oracle and AWS for sure).

Google Cloud is a little tricky because you just configure a Google Compute instance to match what they say is free, then cross your fingers you don't get billed (at least that's my experience).

Another vote for Hetzner Cloud, if you don’t mind it being in Germany, you can get even more memory and other specs on their ARM based ones. It does has pretty cheap backups and has DDoS protection and some basic firewall stuff built in all their VPSes.