Note: Every amount, limit and eligibility rule below comes from the vendor’s own page, checked on September 27, 2026. We did not test these services, and no program has been verified by us beyond what the official page says. Credit programs change often, sometimes without notice, so confirm on the linked page before you sign up. This page is updated monthly.
Short answer:
Solo developer, no funding. The five biggest credits you can claim yourself:
- Google Cloud: $300 credit for 90 days, plus an Always Free tier.
- Oracle Cloud: $300 credit for 30 days, plus Always Free Arm and AMD compute.
- AWS Free Tier: $100 credit at sign-up and up to $100 more, for 6 months.
- Azure: $200 credit for 30 days, plus 12 months of free services.
- Akamai Cloud (Linode): $100 credit for 60 days through a referral link.
Funded startup. The five biggest programs:
- Google for Startups Cloud: up to $350,000 for AI-first startups, $200,000 for others.
- Cloudflare for Startups: up to $350,000.
- AWS Activate Portfolio: up to $200,000.
- Neon: up to $200,000 in combined Neon and Databricks credits.
- Microsoft for Startups: up to $150,000 in Azure credits.
Most startup programs require institutional funding or a partner VC or accelerator, and most credits expire after about 12 months.
Cloud and compute
| Program | What you get | Who qualifies | How to claim |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Cloud Free Trial | $300 credit to spend over 90 days, plus Always Free usage. Always Free includes 1 e2-micro VM per month, 2M Cloud Run requests per month and 1 TB of BigQuery queries per month. | New customers who have never paid for Google Cloud, Google Maps Platform or Firebase and have never used the trial. A payment method is required. | cloud.google.com/free |
| Google for Startups Cloud Program | Pre-funded: $2,000. Early Stage: $200,000 (up to $350,000 for AI-first). Series B+: custom. | Pre-funded: pre-seed or idea stage. Early Stage: seed to Series A. | cloud.google.com/startup |
| AWS Free Tier | $100 in credits at sign-up, plus up to $100 more for trying key services (up to $200 total). The free plan lasts 6 months or until the credits run out. 30+ services are always free within monthly limits. | New AWS customers | aws.amazon.com/free |
| AWS Activate Founders | Up to $5,000 (starts at $1,000) | Self-funded, pre-Series B, founded in the last 10 years, AWS account on the Paid plan | aws.amazon.com/startups/credits |
| AWS Activate Portfolio | Up to $200,000 | Pre-Series B, founded in the last 10 years (tier requirements are listed on the application page) | aws.amazon.com/startups/credits |
| Azure free account | $200 credit for the first 30 days, 12 months of selected free services, and 65+ always-free services | New Azure customers. You must move to pay-as-you-go within 30 days to keep the 12-month free services. | azure.microsoft.com/free |
| Microsoft for Startups | Up to $150,000 in Azure credits, unlocked over time as you show progress and usage. Investor Network-backed startups may unlock more. | Startups (full criteria are in the application portal) | microsoft.com/startups |
| Oracle Cloud Free Tier | $300 credit for 30 days, plus Always Free Arm (Ampere A1) and AMD compute, block and object storage, and Autonomous Database | One account per person | oracle.com/cloud/free |
| Akamai Cloud (Linode) | $100 credit for 60 days via a referral link (GPU plans excluded) | New customers who have not had a free trial. A payment method is required. | akamai.com/lp/free-credit-100 |
| DigitalOcean | Standard sign-up credit: $5, which expires 90 days after sign-up. Referral sign-ups get the same standard credit. | New teams | DigitalOcean sign-up credit docs |
| DigitalOcean Hatch | Credits for 12 months (amount varies), with a $10,000 monthly spending limit, plus 15 months of free Standard support | Raised $10M or less, business email and website, no prior credits. Service businesses and agencies are excluded. | digitalocean.com/hatch |
| Vultr | Matches your first deposit dollar for dollar, up to $100 | First-time customers. Can’t be combined with other promos. | vultr.com/coupons |
| Hetzner | No sign-up or referral credit. Hetzner’s FAQ says its referral program has been discontinued. | n/a | Hetzner Cloud FAQ |
Two things that surprised us:
- DigitalOcean. The “$200 for 60 days” referral offer you see quoted on many blogs is not on any DigitalOcean page we could find. Its docs say referred users get the standard sign-up credit, which is $5 for 90 days. For a real cost comparison, see our DigitalOcean pricing breakdown.
- Hetzner. It has no credit program at all. It competes on low list prices instead. See is Hetzner worth it.
Frontend and serverless hosting
| Program | What you get | Who qualifies | How to claim |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare Free plan | Free CDN with unlimited bandwidth, unmetered DDoS protection and free SSL. Workers Free includes 100,000 requests per day and 10 ms of CPU time per invocation. D1 includes 5 GB of storage. | Anyone | cloudflare.com/plans/free |
| Cloudflare for Startups | $10,000 (no minimum funding), $100,000, or up to $350,000, depending on tier. Valid for 1 year. | Founded in the last 10 years, funded up to Series B within the last 12 months, building a tech product, not previously approved | cloudflare.com/forstartups |
| Vercel Hobby | Free: 100 GB of Fast Data Transfer, 1M edge requests, 1M function invocations and 4 hours of active CPU per month | Personal, non-commercial use only | vercel.com/docs/plans/hobby |
| Netlify Free | 300 credits per month. Sites pause at the limit until the next cycle. | Anyone | netlify.com/pricing |
| Render free tier | 750 free instance hours per workspace per month. Free web services spin down after 15 minutes without traffic. Free Postgres expires after 30 days. | Anyone | render.com/docs/free |
| Render Startup Program | $500 up to $100,000 depending on tier, valid for 1 year | New customers, under 4 years old, under $50M raised, Series A or earlier. Most tiers require a partner or VC. | render.com/startups |
| Railway | Trial: a one-time $5 for up to 30 days, then the Free plan at $1 per month. Sign-ups through a referral link get $20 in credits (our referral link; we earn a commission). | New users | Railway free trial docs |
| Fly.io | Trial: 2 hours of machine runtime or 7 days, whichever comes first. No card needed to start. | New users | Fly.io free trial docs |
For a Render and Railway comparison beyond the free tiers, see Railway vs Render.
Databases
| Program | What you get | Who qualifies | How to claim |
|---|---|---|---|
| Supabase Free | 2 active projects, a 500 MB database per project, 50,000 MAUs, 1 GB of file storage and 5 GB of egress. Projects pause after 1 week of inactivity. | Anyone | supabase.com/pricing |
| Neon Free | Up to 100 projects, 100 CU-hours and 0.5 GB of storage per project. Scales to zero after 5 minutes. | Anyone | neon.com/pricing |
| Neon for Startups | Self-funded: up to $1,000. VC-backed: up to $200,000 in combined Neon and Databricks credits. Valid for 12 months. | Self-funded: under $1M raised. VC-backed: $1M+ raised or a recognized accelerator. | neon.com/startups |
| MongoDB Atlas M0 | Free forever: 512 MB of storage, shared RAM and vCPU, up to 100 ops/sec. No card needed. | Anyone | mongodb.com/pricing |
| MongoDB for Startups | Atlas credits in four tiers (Inspire, Grow, Innovate, Scale). Amounts are not published. You have 12 months to activate and 12 months to use the credits. | Under 7 years old, Series A or earlier, single software product, not an agency | mongodb.com/solutions/startups |
If you’re choosing between the first two, see Supabase vs Firebase.
AI and APIs
| Program | What you get | Who qualifies | How to claim |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anthropic (Claude) Startups Program | API credits and priority rate limits. No amount is published. | Institutional equity funding, founded in the last 4 years, no prior Anthropic startup credits | claude.com/programs/startups |
| OpenAI for Startups | API credits via partner VCs. No amount is published. | Startups with a referral code from a partner VC | openai.com/startups |
| Twilio free trial | Product-specific free units instead of a dollar balance: 100 SMS, 100 WhatsApp messages, 3,000 emails and 75 voice minutes. The trial ends after 30 days. | New accounts. You can only send to up to 5 verified numbers, and you must use Twilio’s templates. | Twilio trial docs |
| Stripe Atlas | $500 one-time fee to incorporate. Includes $2,500 in Stripe product credits for the first year and “over $50,000” in partner discounts. | Founders incorporating in Delaware through Atlas | stripe.com/atlas |
Dev tools and education
| Program | What you get | Who qualifies | How to claim |
|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub Student Developer Pack | Copilot Student, GitHub Pro, $100 in Azure credit (18+), Heroku credit of $13/month for 24 months, $50 in MongoDB Atlas credits, JetBrains IDEs, and 50+ more offers | Age 13+ and enrolled in a degree- or diploma-granting program, with proof of enrollment | education.github.com/pack |
| GitHub Copilot Free | 2,000 completions and 50 chat requests per month | Anyone with a GitHub account. Verified students, teachers and OSS maintainers can get Copilot Pro free. | github.com/features/copilot/plans |
| JetBrains educational licenses | All JetBrains IDEs and .NET tools, including IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate. Valid for 1 year and renewable. Not for commercial use. | Students and teachers | JetBrains education FAQ |
| JetBrains open source licenses | 1-year subscription, renewable on application | Non-commercial open source projects that meet the OSI Open Source Definition | jetbrains.com/community/opensource |
| Sentry Developer plan | Free forever: 1 user, 5,000 errors per month, 5M spans and 5 GB of logs | Anyone | sentry.io/pricing |
| Sentry Open Source Sponsorship | 5M errors, 1B spans, 100K replays and Business features, with no term limit | Projects under a permissive license such as MIT or Apache (application reviewed) | sentry.io/for/open-source |
Crypto sign-up bonuses
This isn’t a developer credit, but readers building trading bots often ask about it. Crypto is risky, and this is not financial advice.
| Program | What you get | Who qualifies | How to claim |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kraken referral | Kraken’s referrals page says “You and your friend will both receive up to $75.” Its app-referral help article describes a fixed $20 bonus. The offer shown in the app when you sign up is the one that applies. | New Kraken users in eligible countries (the help article excludes Maine and New York). You must sign up in the mobile app, deposit fiat and complete the required trades within the window (15 days on the referrals page, 30 days in the help article). Stablecoin trades don’t count. | Kraken sign-up link (referral) |
Disclosure: the Kraken link above is a referral link. If you use it, jcalloway.dev may also receive a bonus. More detail is in our Kraken referral guide.
How to stack credits for a side project
You can’t combine two offers from the same vendor. You can use several vendors side by side, and a typical side project needs only a few pieces. Here is a practical order:
- Start on permanent free tiers, not expiring credits. Use Cloudflare for DNS, CDN and Workers, Vercel Hobby or Netlify Free for the frontend (use Netlify if the project earns money), and Supabase or Neon for Postgres. None of these run out on a date.
- Add Sentry’s Developer plan and GitHub Copilot Free. Neither needs a card.
- Claim a big trial only when you need real compute. Google Cloud’s $300 lasts 90 days, the longest window of the big three. Oracle’s $300 lasts 30 days, but its Always Free Arm VMs keep running afterwards. Start the clock when you have work for the credits to cover, not before.
- Set a budget alert on day one. Google, AWS and Azure bill your card once credits or trials end unless you close or downgrade. Put the expiry date in your calendar.
- If you’re a student, verify with GitHub Education first. The pack bundles Azure, Heroku, MongoDB and JetBrains offers that you would otherwise claim one by one.
- When the project becomes a company, apply to startup programs in order of ease. Start with the ones that need no funding: AWS Activate Founders, Google’s $2,000 pre-funded tier, Cloudflare’s $10,000 tier and Neon’s self-funded tier. Apply to the larger ones once you raise money or join an accelerator. Most startup credits run for 12 months from approval, so don’t apply until you’ll actually use them.
FAQ
Which cloud gives the most free credit to an individual? Google Cloud and Oracle Cloud both offer $300. Google gives you 90 days to use it, Oracle gives you 30. AWS offers up to $200 over 6 months, and Azure $200 over 30 days.
Can I use Vercel’s free plan for a business? No. Vercel’s Hobby plan is for personal, non-commercial use only. Netlify’s pricing page shows no such restriction on its Free plan.
Is the DigitalOcean $200 credit still available? We couldn’t verify it. DigitalOcean’s docs describe a standard $5 sign-up credit, valid for 90 days, and its referral page doesn’t name an amount for the new user.
Do I need a credit card for free credits? For most cloud trials, yes: Google Cloud, Akamai and others require a valid payment method. MongoDB Atlas M0 doesn’t require a card, and neither does the start of Fly.io’s trial.
Do startup credits expire? Usually, yes. Cloudflare, Render, Neon and MongoDB state 12 months. AWS and Microsoft point to their own credit terms, and their overview pages don’t state a validity period.
Can I get startup credits without VC funding? Yes, smaller ones. Options include AWS Activate Founders (up to $5,000), Google’s pre-funded tier ($2,000), Cloudflare’s Tier 3 ($10,000, no minimum funding) and Neon’s self-funded tier (up to $1,000).
Sources, checked September 27, 2026: Google Cloud Free, Google Cloud Free Program docs, Google for Startups Cloud Program, AWS Free Tier, AWS Activate credits, Azure free services, Microsoft for Startups, Microsoft for Startups docs, Oracle Cloud Free Tier, Akamai $100 credit, Akamai referral program docs, DigitalOcean sign-up credit, DigitalOcean referral docs, DigitalOcean Hatch, Vultr coupons, Hetzner Cloud FAQ, Cloudflare Free plan, Cloudflare Workers pricing, Cloudflare for Startups, Vercel Hobby, Netlify pricing, Render free tier, Render startups, Railway free trial, Railway affiliate program, Fly.io free trial, Supabase pricing, Neon pricing, Neon startups, MongoDB pricing, MongoDB for Startups, Claude Startups Program, OpenAI for Startups, Twilio trial docs, Stripe Atlas, GitHub Student Developer Pack, GitHub Education eligibility, GitHub Copilot plans, JetBrains education FAQ, JetBrains educational license duration, JetBrains open source license terms, Sentry pricing, Sentry for open source, Kraken referrals, Kraken app referral program.