shellter.me
- Free allowance
- 'A free bash account on a shared FreeBSD host.
- Verdict
- ★ qualifiesusable as stated; the read path was probed
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- emailno card, no phone
- Binding limit
- volume-quota150 MB ZFS dataset with lz4 compression and refquota enforced
- Evidence
- documented21 sources; a first-party page was read and the sentence quoted
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-11-21checked 2026-11-04 (live); stale on 2026-11-21
| Free tier | 'A free bash account on a shared FreeBSD host. 150 MB of ZFS home, three dedicated IPv6 addresses with reverse DNS you control, a 50-port TCP slot on the host IPv4 for inbound services.' And: 'There is no paid tier, no SLA, no uptime guarantee.' unit MB; metered on stored-bytes; the vendor writes 150 MB; kept as stated. The LowEndTalk announcement thread of 2026-05-21 states 60 MB, so the figure was raised between the announcement and the rules page, whose footer reads 'Last updated: 2026-05-24' |
|---|---|
| Price | none stated |
| Limits |
An automated anti-abuse flag suspends the account and kills live sessions with no warning and no published threshold, and the appeal route is a conversation on IRCnet, so an unattended background process is the fastest way to lose the account. |
| Binding | volume-quota 150 MB is the first thing that fails: it holds dotfiles, configs and small logs, and the operator says so plainly, so no workload that stores data fits here at all |
| Identity | email No card and no hold: the site states 'No card, no autoaccept bot.' Signup asks for a username, an optional SSH public key, and email confirmation, or a GitHub sign-in. Then a human admin on IRCnet types '!accept'. No phone and no document. |
| Egress | not stated as a volume: the rules page sets 'no SMTP egress, no scanning, no abuse' and a default-deny pf egress with HTTP/HTTPS pass-through, and the fair-use section says 'Free, not infinite'. No traffic figure is published. free allowance: unstated |
| Per-object cap | not applicable: the unit is a ZFS home dataset, not an object |
| Retention | 'We'll mail you a warning at 75 days of no SSH or dashboard login. At 90 days, the account is archived (home dataset snapshotted to /var/archive/users, account locked). ... we keep archives at least a year before pruning.' (90 days) |
| Interface | ssh inferred from the tooling the provider documents; not probed |
| Tooling | not stated |
| Composes with | A shell with three IPv6 addresses and self-service reverse DNS composes with a free IPv6-to-IPv4 proxy, and it holds a long-running session in tmux across disconnects, which is what a shell buys over a job. |
| Reliability | a disclosed incident on 2026-05-21: shelluser email addresses were exposed in the world-readable FreeBSD GECOS field, fixed the same day and disclosed in the vendor's own LowEndTalk thread; the operator also records that no SLA and no uptime guarantee exist |
| Notes | The announcement thread and the live site disagree on storage: 60 MB in the 2026-05-21 LET post, 150 MB on the rules page last updated 2026-05-24. The live page is the one a new applicant is provisioned from, so the record uses 150 MB and writes the disagreement down. What could not be established: the traffic allowance, and whether the IRC admin gate is answered promptly (the thread shows signups accepted the day after the announcement, so the gate does clear). The 90-day clock resets on a dashboard login as well as SSH, which makes it cheaper to hold than serv00's SSH-only clock. |
| Evidence note | documented quota, port slot, IPv6 allocation, retention clock and the signup gate are all quoted from first-party pages read |
| Parsed numbers |
|
Evidence 21
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-05-24 | shellter.me/rules | quoted: 'We can suspend or terminate any account at any time, with or without notice, with or without prior warning'; instant suspension with no warning for 'deliberate attacks on the host or other users, signup-evasion after a previous suspension' |
| 2026-05-24 | lowendtalk.com/discussion/217500/free-shellter-me-freebsd-pu | a user's account suspended with sessions terminated and logins blocked, then attributed by the operator to 'our automatic anti abuse system' |
| 2026-05-24 | shellter.me/rules | quoted inactivity terms: warning at 75 days without login, archive and lock at 90 days, archives kept at least a year |
| 2026-10-22 | shellter.me/about | quoted: 'Two people, no company ... There is no paid tier, no upsell, no affiliate link, no investor.' |
| 2026-10-22 | shellter.me/ | 'A bash account, 150 MB of ZFS, and three dedicated IPv6 addresses - each with reverse DNS you set yourself' and 'ssh on port 2222', quoted; probe 200, 55393 bytes, sha256 bef1adbbd013121bcc5713aae206a1b5af410e7b24ed4e06362744eb8f74aa5e |
| 2026-10-22 | shellter.me/rules | '150 MB of ZFS home, three dedicated IPv6 addresses with reverse DNS you control, a 50-port TCP slot on the host IPv4 for inbound services... There is no paid tier, no SLA, no uptime guarantee', quoted; page last updated 2026-05-24 |
| 2026-10-22 | shellter.me/rules | the reaper is published: 'We'll mail you a warning at 75 days of no SSH or dashboard login. At 90 days, the account is archived (home dataset snapshotted to /var/archive/users, account locked)... we keep archives at least a year before pruning', quoted |
| 2026-10-22 | shellter.me/signup | 'Pick a username + drop an SSH key (optional). Confirm your email or sign in with GitHub. An admin reviews on IRC - once accepted, we mail you the shell password', quoted |
| 2026-10-22 | shellter.me/about | 'shellter.me is a free, non-commercial pubnix shell host run by two people in their spare time... There is no paid tier, no upsell, no affiliate link, no investor', quoted |
| 2026-10-22 | shellter.me/ | 'Free by design. A bash account, 150 MB of ZFS, and three dedicated IPv6 addresses'; 'FreeBSD ssh on port 2222'; 'No card, no autoaccept bot'; signup is 'Pick a username and confirm your email - or sign in with GitHub. Your request lands on IRC, an admin reads it and runs !accept', quoted |
| 2026-10-22 | shellter.me/rules | 'a free bash account on a shared FreeBSD host. 150 MB of ZFS home, three dedicated IPv6 addresses with reverse DNS you control, a 50-port TCP slot on the host IPv4 for inbound services'; 'There is no paid tier, no SLA, no uptime guarantee' |
| 2026-10-24 | shellter.me/rules | quoted: '150 MB of ZFS home, three dedicated IPv6 addresses with reverse DNS you control, a 50-port TCP slot on the host IPv4 for inbound services' |
| 2026-10-24 | shellter.me/rules | quoted: 'We'll mail you a warning at 75 days of no SSH or dashboard login. At 90 days, the account is archived (home dataset snapshotted to /var/archive/users, account locked).' |
| 2026-10-24 | shellter.me/ | quoted: 'Your inbound TCP+UDP/v4 slot: 193.200.238.186 ports 30000-30049', 'Your IPv6 addresses (any port — bind to one of these): 2a03:94e0:257e:1::1 / ::2 / ::3', 'Quota: 150M', 'ssh on port 2222' |
| 2026-10-24 | shellter.me/signup | quoted: 'Pick a username + drop an SSH key (optional). Confirm your email or sign in with GitHub. An admin reviews on IRC — once accepted, we mail you the shell password.' |
| 2026-10-24 | shellter.me/about | quoted: 'shellter.me is a free, non-commercial pubnix shell host run by two people in their spare time' and that the operators are two named individuals; 'One small FreeBSD VPS leased from Gigahost in Norway' |
| 2026-10-24 | lowendtalk.com/discussion/217500/free-shellter-me-freebsd-pu | the vendor's own announcement, 2026-05-21: '60 MB ZFS dataset (lz4 compressed, refquota enforced)' and 'Inbound TCP/v4 slot (50 ports per user)'; the thread also carries the operator's disclosure that registration emails had been written into the world-readable GECOS field, 'Fixed as of today' |
| 2026-10-24 | lowendtalk.com/discussion/217500/free-shellter-me-freebsd-pu | the operator answering on 2026-05-22: 'Yes, ssh jumphost is a legit use — for now we only allow it over IPv6. I will consider later on if it will be available also for ipv4, for now is blocked by pf rule.' |
| 2026-10-24 | lowendtalk.com/discussion/217500/free-shellter-me-freebsd-pu | a user reporting after signup, 2026-05: 'I played with the shell just a little and everything is very fast and cool' — evidence the IRC admin gate does clear and the shell is usable, from a third party |
| 2026-10-24 | lowendtalk.com/discussion/217500/free-shellter-me-freebsd-pu | the operator on enforcement: 'We have suspended first and purged 6 accounts today. Those were poking around host infrastructure, penetration tryouts, proxy endpoint for big proxy relays, hiveproxy ... and website pretending to be EB Games waiting page' — the host does purge accounts it judges abusive |
| 2026-11-03 | shellter.me/ | access is SSH on port 2222 |
More fields 13
| facets | {"class": "enforcement","free_tier_kind": "perpetual-hobby","shape": {"disk_mib": 150}} |
|---|---|
| shape | {"vcpu": null,"ram_gib": null,"disk_gib": null,"gpu_class": null,"gpu_count": null} |
| billing model | free |
| term | perpetual |
| m10h usd | 0.0 |
| m24h usd | 0.0 |
| price arithmetic | no price: no paid tier exists and no payment method is collected |
| free tier kind | perpetual |
| network out | {"allow_outbound": true,"allow_inbound_listen": true,"ports": "30000-30049 TCP+UDP on 193.200.238.186, plus any port on three dedicated IPv6 addresses","static_ip": true,"ipv6": true,"per_session_bytes": null} |
| session cap | {"wall_clock_min": null,"idle_reap_s": null,"restart_required": false,"note": "none; tmux, screen and mosh are provided and 'sessions outlive the wifi'"} |
| storage discrepancy | 60 MB in the 2026-05-21 announcement, 150 MB on the live rules page updated 2026-05-24 |
| disclosed incident | 2026-05-21: registration emails were readable in the FreeBSD GECOS field; wiped the same day, pipeline fixed, disclosure published by the operator in its own thread |
| inbound slot note | the operator answered a question about using the account as an SSH jumpbox: 'Yes, ssh jumphost is a legit use — for now we only allow it over IPv6. I will consider later on if it will be available also for ipv4, for now is blocked by pf rule.' That is about outbound jump-hosting; the 50-port inbound slot on 193.200.238.186 is a separate, stated feature. |
Unknown values 2
- egress metered: egress metering was not published
- tooling: a source was read and is silent on this field