Perks
Free credits and perks for developers and startups
Cloud credits 13Startup and free-tier programs from cloud and data-infrastructure providers; amounts are what each provider states on its own page. | ||
 Amazon Web Services. Credit packages for AWS services, from a $1,000 starter tier up to the Portfolio tier.
Catch: Founders tier is up to $5,000; the largest packages are Portfolio and AI-startup tiers. | Up to $200,000 in AWS Activate credits | Pre-series B, founded in last 10 years, paid-tier AWS account |
Google Cloud credits for startups; $2,000 for pre-funded teams building an MVP.
Catch: The $350,000 figure is for AI-first startups; the standard tier is $200,000 in cloud credits. | Up to $350,000 for AI-first startups | Seed to Series A (pre-funded teams get the $2,000 tier) |
Azure credits, AI tools, developer tools and Microsoft's customer network for startups.
Catch: The page doesn't state tiers or eligibility; the top amount is a maximum. | Up to $150,000 in credits | Startups; see the program page for criteria |
DigitalOcean credits for new startups, amount varies by application.
Catch: Prioritizes AI-native startups; agencies and prior credit users are excluded; $10,000 monthly limit. | — | Raised $10M or less, company email, new team account with a card |
Three credit tiers of $10k, $100k and $350k for building on Cloudflare.
Catch: Higher tiers require being funded by an affiliated partner. | Up to $350,000 in credits | $10k: bootstrapped, under $1M raised; higher tiers via an affiliated partner |
A $300 trial credit plus Always Free services (Arm and AMD compute, databases, object storage).
Catch: The $300 credit expires after 30 days; only the Always Free resources last. | $300 trial credit for 30 days | Anyone who signs up |
Flexible Commitment Amount, Enterprise-tier access and startup-focused support.
Catch: It's a commitment amount for Vercel usage, not cash; the page doesn't list criteria. | Up to $30,000 | Eligible startup teams; see the program page |
Four tiers: Prototype $500, Build $2,500 or $5K, Scale $10K or $25K, AI $100K.
Catch: Higher tiers need an enrolled partner or VC; Prototype needs at least $25K seed funding. | Up to $100,000 in credits | New customer, Series A or earlier, under $50M raised |
Credits for Databricks and Neon, plus guidance on the Data + AI Platform.
Catch: The page gives no criteria beyond 'qualifying'; amount is a maximum. | Up to $200K in credits | Qualifying early-stage companies |
Free usage on a first contract, and an Accelerator with mentors and credits for app builders.
Catch: No credit amounts are published; the Accelerator is selective and capped at 6 months. | — | Eligible startups; Accelerator is for customer-facing apps on Snowflake |
Founders EUR 1,000; Early Stage EUR 9,000 over 6 months; Growth EUR 36,000 over 12 months.
Catch: A committee reviews applications weekly; credits are paid out monthly in the larger tiers. | Up to EUR 36,000 in cloud credits | Under 5 years old, under 50 employees, not yet a Scaleway client |
Atlas credits, Voyage AI tokens and technical advice across four tiers (Inspire to Scale).
Catch: Credit amounts aren't published; agencies and dev shops are excluded. | — | Under 7 years old, Series A or earlier, one software product |
Free program with training, partner offers, and access to free cloud credits from NVIDIA and partners.
Catch: Excludes consultancies, crypto, cloud providers, resellers, public firms; no credit amount published. | — | Incorporated, under 10 years old, working website, one developer |
AI credits 9API credits, free tiers and grants from AI model and inference providers that publish a real program. | ||
Free API credits, rate-limit upgrades and engineer time for startups backed by partner VCs.
Catch: Needs a VC referral code; no credit amount is published. | — | Backed by an eligible VC partner, with a referral code from your VC |
Anthropic. API credits, a free year of Claude Team (5 seats), and up to $45K in partner offers.
Catch: Credits expire six months after grant; the Team offer is for new Team customers only. | $1,000 in Claude API credits | Founded in last 5 years or funded in last 2; company email |
Free input and output tokens for limited models, plus Google AI Studio access.
Catch: Limited models and rate limits; content may be used to improve Google products. | — | Anyone with a Google account |
Mistral AI. Free plan with limited Vibe use, including Vibe for coding in the terminal, plus Mistral Studio access.
Catch: Usage is limited; no API credit amount is stated on the pricing page. | — | Anyone who signs up |
12 months of the Scale plan and 33,000,000 characters for voice products.
Catch: No agencies, one-off projects or products for under-18s; one application per company. | — | Startups under 25 employees with a monetization plan |
Build, Scale and Grow tiers with $15K, $30K and $50K credits plus free engineering hours.
Catch: Credits don't apply to Reserved GPU Clusters; the program is selection-based. | Up to $50K in platform credits | Tiered by funding: up to $5M, $5M-$10M, over $10M raised |
Free compute credits for startups and academic labs, including GPU types.
Catch: One-time grant per tier; you can't reapply after receiving credits in a tier. | Up to $50k in compute credits | New to Modal; Seed to Series A with VC from partner network or over $1M |
Credits for building voice-powered AI apps, plus resources and community benefits.
Catch: Must commit to actively building and engaging with the community. | Up to $100,000 in free credits | AI builders or early-stage startups in production or launching within 6 months |
LangChain. Build tier gets discounted seats; Scale tier gets $10K credits for 1 year plus programming.
Catch: Scale tier needs backing from a LangChain premier VC partner; Build needs $25K seed raised. | Up to $10K in LangSmith credits | First-time customer; Build under $10M funding, Scale Series A or earlier |
Startup software deals 18Discounts and free years on the tools startups commonly run on, from the vendors' own startup pages. | ||
$2,500 in Stripe product credits in year one after incorporation, plus partner discounts.
Catch: Requires paying the Atlas fee; $500 back if you deposit $5,000 into Stripe Treasury. | Over $50,000 in perks | Companies incorporated through Stripe Atlas |
Tiered discounts on HubSpot; 50% off in year two and 25% off in year three for partner-affiliated startups.
Catch: Discounts step down yearly; entrepreneurial-org members get a smaller 15% off year two. | Up to 90% off in year one | Pre-seed to Series A, with an approved partner or verified venture funding |
1, 3 or 6 months free of Notion with Notion AI, depending on your profile.
Catch: Under 100 employees (under 10 for the 1-month tier); only for non-paying workspaces. | — | Non-paying customers; 6 months needs a startup partner, 3 months a business site and domain email |
A year of PostHog credits covering analytics, session replay and feature flags.
Catch: Credits last one year. | $50,000 in credits | Under $5M funding, under 2 years old, company email domain |
Credits and priority support for startups using Sentry.
Catch: Page is an interactive terminal; eligibility and duration aren't stated. | Up to $5,000 in credits | Startups; the page gives no criteria |
93% off year one with a free year of Fin; 50% off year two, 25% off year three.
Catch: Phone, SMS and WhatsApp are charged at list price; free Fin usage shrinks each year. | 93% off in year one | Up to $10M funding, under 15 employees, new customer |
Free months of Linear through the startup program.
Catch: The page doesn't list eligibility criteria or exact terms. | Up to 6 months free | Startups; see the program page |
A year of the full Datadog platform with no feature tiers.
Catch: Needs a partner referral; credits cover your first year only. | Up to $100k in credits | Series A or earlier, referred by a partner, new to Datadog |
Partner deals such as $5k AWS credits, 25% off Google Workspace, 50% off QuickBooks Online.
Catch: You must open a Mercury account and log in to redeem the perks. | — | Mercury account holders |
A directory of partner offers from 1Password, AWS, Datadog, Deel, Asana and others.
Catch: The directory page doesn't state amounts or eligibility for most offers. | — | Brex customers; see each offer |
Free Miro credits for early startups; up to 25% off for scale-ups.
Catch: The page doesn't state eligibility details or credit amounts. | — | Early startups and scale-ups, including VC partner referrals |
Jira, Confluence, Loom, Bitbucket and more on premium tiers for $0 for 12 months.
Catch: One 12-month enrollment per startup; Marketplace apps are not included. | — | Not a paid customer, VC-funded or accelerator-backed, under $10M raised |
100% off Retool for one year on a monthly Team or Business plan.
Catch: Can't be combined with other discounts; monthly plans only. | Up to $60K value | Under $10M raised, founded in last 10 years, new customer |
A full year of Mixpanel free, every feature and add-on included.
Catch: Free for one year only. | — | Startups; the page doesn't list criteria |
First year of the Growth plan free (up to 100M events a month); year two 40% off.
Catch: Free for year one only; there are three startup scholarship tiers. | $60,000 value | Fewer than 20 employees and under $10M raised |
Seed stage: free Ultimate for a year (20 seats), then 50% off. Later stage: 50% off, then 25% off.
Catch: No support in the free year; you must show funding via Crunchbase, PitchBook or a VC page. | — | Externally funded: up to $5M (seed) or up to $20M (Series A/B), new customer |
Clerk Pro features at a discount for early-stage startups.
Catch: The discount size isn't stated on the page. | — | Up to 1 year after launch, up to $5M in venture funding |
No seat fees and 30% off usage-based fees up to $30k.
Catch: Needs a company profile on LinkedIn, Crunchbase or PitchBook, plus a live site or MVP. | Up to 1 year free of Convex Professional | Series A or earlier, under 20 employees, under 3 years old, under $3M raised |
Student perks 8Free tools, credits and licenses for verified students. | ||
Bundle of free developer tools for students, including Copilot Student and partner offers.
Catch: Partner offers change over time and vary by partner. | — | Verified students |
Free Copilot with unlimited code completions and an allowance of GitHub AI Credits.
Catch: Auto model selection only; excludes third-party agents; chat and agent use is limited. | — | Verified students |
10 JetBrains IDEs, an AI subscription with code completion, and JetBrains Academy courses.
Catch: AI chat and agents are a limited trial inside the IDE. | — | Full-time students in a program of one year or more, with a university email, ISIC/ITIC card or GitHub pack |
Microsoft. Azure services, developer tools and $100 credit with no credit card required.
Catch: Only for full-time university students. | $100 credit | Full-time university students |
Free Figma and FigJam for students and teachers.
Catch: Verification of student or teacher status is required. | — | Students and educators |
Free one-member workspace with unlimited pages and blocks, file uploads and 30-day history.
Catch: Not for K-12 or personal email accounts; student IDs aren't accepted for verification. | — | Students and educators at accredited colleges with a school email |
Unity Pro Editor, an Odin Inspector license, a Synty asset bundle and Unity Cloud access.
Catch: Enrollment at an accredited institution is required. | — | Accredited post-secondary students, or secondary students aged 16+ |
Amazon Web Services. No-cost cloud skills training and career pathways for students and educators.
Catch: Training only; the page doesn't mention cloud credits. | — | Students and educators |
Open-source maintainer perks 19Free plans, licenses and funding for people who maintain open-source projects. | ||
Free non-commercial IDE licenses; complimentary All Products Pack for projects with broad impact.
Catch: The All Products Pack is for established projects with an active lifecycle and wide impact. | — | Maintainers of non-commercial, actively developed open-source projects |
Anthropic. Six months of Claude Max 20x for qualifying maintainers and contributors.
Catch: Ends after 6 months; a prior paid plan resumes at its old rate unless you cancel. | 6 months of Claude Max 20x | e.g. 500+ dependent repos, 100+ merged PRs elsewhere, or OpenSSF criticality 0.4+ |
GitHub. Free Copilot Pro for maintainers of popular open-source repositories.
Catch: You can't cancel a free plan granted this way; GitHub decides who qualifies. | — | Maintainers of popular open-source projects, as determined by GitHub |
A 3-week security education program with expert access, health check-ins and incident support.
Catch: Needs community traction, clear governance and commitment from core leaders to take part. | — | Current maintainers aged 18+, in a GitHub Sponsors-supported region, with a clear license |
Vercel platform credits, an OSS Starter Pack of third-party credits and community support.
Catch: Credits can only be used for open-source work on the project. | $3,600 in credits over 3 years | Actively maintained open-source project hosted on Vercel, with a Code of Conduct |
10,000 credits a month, free production deploys, deploy previews and unlimited team members.
Catch: Non-commercial projects only; a link back to Netlify is requested. | — | OSI or Creative Commons licensed non-commercial project with a Code of Conduct |
Upgraded Cloudflare plans, more Workers and Pages requests, more R2 storage, Zero Trust features.
Catch: The project must be non-profit and aligned with the program's mission. | — | Open-source project with a recognized license, run on a non-profit basis |
Free Sentry account with business features: 5M errors, 1B spans, 100K replays and more per month.
Catch: You apply and Sentry decides; quotas are fixed monthly allowances. | — | Open-source project under a friendly license such as Apache or MIT |
A free 1Password Teams account for open-source teams.
Catch: Team accounts only; no commercial activity apart from OSS funding programs. | — | Core contributors of a 30+ day-old, active, permissively licensed project |
Free hosted search for public technical documentation and technical blogs.
Catch: Applications that aren't production-ready or have non-technical content are usually declined. | — | Public technical docs or technical blogs |
Verified badge, no Docker Hub rate limits for your images, free Docker Team for core contributors.
Catch: No pathway to commercialization; donations are allowed. Team subscription is one year. | — | OSI-compliant, public Docker Hub images, active in the past 6 months |
400,000 monthly credits for Linux, Arm and Docker builds; 30,000 for macOS and Windows.
Catch: Credits are monthly allowances; macOS and Windows get far fewer. | Up to 400,000 credits per month | Open-source organizations; eligibility isn't detailed on the page |
GitLab Ultimate features with 50,000 compute minutes free for qualifying open-source projects.
Catch: Criteria aren't spelled out on the overview page. | — | Qualifying open-source projects |
SonarQube and Gitar AI code review free for public repos, with Pro-plan features.
Catch: Public, OSI-licensed repos only. | — | Public repositories under an OSI license |
Snyk at no cost for open-source maintainers, via an application form.
Catch: The pricing page gives no criteria; the free plan is capped (e.g. 100 Snyk Code tests a month). | — | Open-source maintainers; apply on Snyk's open-source page |
Free Crowdin license for open-source projects, for localization.
Catch: You must request the license through the form. | — | Open-source projects; request a license via the form |
Free documentation hosting for publicly hosted open-source projects.
Catch: Private docs and extra build resources need a paid plan. | — | Publicly hosted open-source projects |
Free visual testing for open-source projects.
Catch: Eligibility is decided case by case; no limits are published. | — | Contact Chromatic to confirm eligibility |
Free testing on desktop and mobile (Live, Automate, Percy) with 5 users and 5 parallels, lifetime access.
Catch: You apply and BrowserStack decides; criteria aren't stated on the page. | — | Open-source projects that apply with project details |
Also useful: accelerators and startup programs · free and open-source alternatives · free APIs.
FAQ
How can a startup get free cloud credits?+
Apply to the startup programs of the big clouds (AWS Activate, Google for Startups Cloud, Microsoft for Startups) and the infra providers listed under Cloud credits. The largest tiers usually need funding from a partner investor or accelerator; smaller tiers are open to self-funded startups.
Are there free AI API credits?+
Yes. Several AI providers run startup programs or give free credits on sign-up; see AI credits for the amounts and conditions each official page states.
What perks are there for open-source maintainers?+
Free licenses and plans from JetBrains, GitHub, hosting and monitoring providers and others for active open-source projects; see Open-source maintainer perks. Most require a public repository under an OSI license and an application.
How current is this list?+
Every perk was checked on its official page on 2026-10-08. Programs end and amounts change, so confirm on the provider's page before you apply.