Resources // free credits for builders
Free Resources for AI & ML Startups
If you are building a startup, it is easy to burn through cash just testing ideas. Plenty of services offer startup credits and free tiers you can apply for.
This is a single list of cloud credits, AI tokens, and real perks for builders, with notes on what is useful and how to apply. Offers are grouped by category, so you can go straight to what fits your team.
- High-value – Stands out for the size or quality of the offer.
- New – Recently launched, so it may have few reviews yet.
- Cash prize – Includes a monetary prize or cash grant.
- VC-only – For teams backed by investors or accelerators.
- OSS-only – For open-source maintainers.
Cloud Providers
Cloud credits are the most direct way to cut your early burn rate: compute, storage, and training capacity for free or near-free. The hyperscalers all run startup programs, and a few leaner providers now undercut them.
Akamai Cloud Rise Start-Up Program Up to $120,000 in credits 💎 Non-VC-backedVC-backedCreators 
AWS Startup credits Up to $200k credits 💎 Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
emma Founders Program $100,000 credits 💎 Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
Google for Startups $2k-$350k credits 💎 Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
Microsoft for Startups $5k-$150k credits 💎 Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
Oracle Cloud Free Tier Always-free Arm VMs and 2 free DBs 💎 Non-VC-backedCreatorsResearchersOpen-source 
Scaleway Startup Program Up to €36,000 in cloud credits 💎 Non-VC-backedVC-backedResearchersOpen-source 
Vultr Digital Start-up Program $100k for Series A+, deposit-match for the rest 💎 Non-VC-backedVC-backedCreators 
Alibaba Cloud $120,000 credits Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
DigitalOcean Hatch Program Up to $100k credits Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
IBM startup program Up to $120k credits Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
OVHCloud Startup Program €10k-€100k credits Non-VC-backedVC-backed LLM Tokens
Free and discounted inference from the model labs and the platforms that host them. Useful while you are still finding product-market fit and your token spend is hard to predict.
Baseten for Startups Up to $25,000 credits 💎 Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
Claude for Startups (by Anthropic) Free API credits 💎 Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
AI21 Studio (Jamba) $10 free, no card Non-VC-backedResearchersOpen-source 
Cerebras Cloud Free Tier 1M tokens/day Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
Cloudflare Workers AI 10,000 Neurons/day free Non-VC-backedCreatorsResearchersOpen-source 
Codex open source fund Up to $25k credits 🧑💻 Open-source 
Cohere Free Developer Tier Free trial key Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
GitHub Models Free multi-model API Non-VC-backedVC-backedCreatorsResearchersOpen-source 
Google AI Studio (Gemini API) Free tier Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
Groq for Developer Free access Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
Groq for Startups $10,000 credits Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
Hugging Face Inference Providers 200+ models, no markup Non-VC-backedVC-backedCreatorsResearchersOpen-source 
Hyperbolic Free 60-RPM tier + $5 Non-VC-backedVC-backedCreatorsResearchersOpen-source 
Mistral (La Plateforme / AI Studio) free tier for developers Free tier Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
Nebius for Startups $5,000 credits to start 🆕 Non-VC-backedVC-backedResearchers 
Novita AI for Startups Up to $10,000 credits 🚀 VC-backed OpenAI Researcher Access Program Up to $1,000 credits Researchers 
OpenRouter for Developers Free tier Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
Perplexity for Startups $5,000 credits 🚀 VC-backed 
SambaNova Cloud Free tier and $5 credit Non-VC-backedVC-backedCreatorsResearchersOpen-source 
xAI (Grok API) $150/mo for data sharing Non-VC-backedVC-backedCreators Voice & Multimodal AI
Credits for speech, audio, vision, and multimodal APIs: transcription, text-to-speech, real-time voice, image, and video generation. The fastest-moving category, so several offers are new.
Deepgram Startup Program $100,000 credits 💎 Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
AssemblyAI Startup Program 200K hours free Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
Black Forest Labs (FLUX) FLUX image models, 1 credit = 1 cent 🆕 Non-VC-backedCreatorsOpen-source 
Cartesia x Google Cloud Startups Free access Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
D-ID Talking-avatar API, 14-day trial CreatorsNon-VC-backed 
ElevenLabs Startup Grants program 12 months free Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
fal.ai 1,000+ media models, pay per generation Non-VC-backedCreatorsResearchersOpen-source 
HeyGen 3 free avatar videos/mo, then API from $5 CreatorsNon-VC-backedVC-backed 
Luma AI Creative Partner Program Monthly credits Creators 
Meshy - Creator Program Free Pro Creators 
NVIDIA NIM Free access Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
Pollinations AI Free access Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
Replicate Thousands of models, billed by the second Non-VC-backedCreatorsResearchersOpen-source 
Roboflow Free year of Core for funded startups 🆕 VC-backedNon-VC-backedResearchersOpen-sourceCreators 
Runway – Creative Partners Program Free Max plan Creators Runway – Hundred Film Fund Up to $1M/film 🏆 Creators 
Stability AI Open models free under $1M revenue Non-VC-backedOpen-sourceResearchersCreators 
Tavus 25 min/mo conversational video, white-labeled Non-VC-backedCreatorsResearchersVC-backed 
Thesys Generative UI for Startups $1,000 credits Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
Twelve Labs 600 free minutes of video understanding Non-VC-backedResearchersCreators 
Vapi for Startups 90,000 free minutes 🚀 VC-backed AI Infrastructure
LLM inference, model serving, and GPU compute for teams running their own models. These offers cover the layer between raw cloud and a finished API.
RunPod Startup Program Up to $75k credits 💎 Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
Together AI Startup Accelerator $50,000 credits 💎 🚀 VC-backed 
Anyscale $100 credit, up to $20k for startups VC-backedNon-VC-backedResearchersOpen-source 
Beam (Beam Cloud) $30/mo of serverless-GPU credit Non-VC-backedCreatorsResearchersOpen-source 
Cerebras AI Startup Deal $22,500 credits Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
Fireworks for Startups Credits + experts Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
Lambda Research Grant Up to $5k GPU credits for researchers Researchers 
Modal for Startups Up to ~$25k credits Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
NVIDIA Developer Program Free access Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
NVIDIA Inception Free access Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
Qubrid AI Startup Accelerator Up to $100k credits Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
Vast.ai Startup Program $2,500 matched GPU credit 🆕 Non-VC-backedVC-backedResearchersCreatorsOpen-source Developer Infrastructure
Hosting, edge, databases, and the plumbing every product needs. Generous free tiers and startup programs that scale with you.
Clerk Auth free up to 50,000 users 💎 Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
Cloudflare for Startups Up to $350k credits 💎 Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
Neon Serverless Postgres, free + up to $100k 💎 Non-VC-backedVC-backedCreatorsOpen-source 
Supabase Full Postgres backend, free forever 💎 Non-VC-backedVC-backedCreatorsOpen-source 
WorkOS Auth free up to 1,000,000 users 💎 Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
Fly.io Free 7-day trial, then pay-as-you-go 🆕 Non-VC-backedCreatorsOpen-source 
MongoDB Atlas Free 512 MB cluster + up to $5k credits Non-VC-backedVC-backedCreatorsResearchers 
Netlify Free static hosting, hard-capped 🆕 Non-VC-backedVC-backedCreatorsOpen-source 
Railway Free $5 trial, then usage-based Non-VC-backedVC-backedCreatorsOpen-source 
Render for Startups $500-$100k credits Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
Resend 3,000 free emails/month Non-VC-backedVC-backedCreatorsOpen-source 
Twilio for Startups Up to $5,000 in comms credits Non-VC-backedVC-backedResearchers 
Vercel AI accelerator $8M credit pool 🏆 Non-VC-backedVC-backed Vercel for Startups Up to $30k credits 🚀 VC-backed Vercel Open Source Program $3,600 credits 🧑💻 Open-source Infrastructure-as-Code
Platforms for provisioning and managing infrastructure as code.
Video Infrastructure
Streaming and VOD APIs for products with video at their core.
Data Platforms & Clouds
Data warehouses and lakehouses with startup programs. Where your analytics and ML features live once the data outgrows a single database.
Databricks for Startups $50,000 credits 💎 Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
Pinecone for Startups Free access Non-VC-backedVC-backed 
Snowflake for startups Free usage Non-VC-backedVC-backed Snowflake Startup Accelerator Credits + mentorship Non-VC-backedVC-backed Snowflake Startup Challenge (2026 concluded, 2027 interest open) Up to $1M investment 🏆 Non-VC-backedVC-backed ETL, ELT & Orchestration
Moving and scheduling data between systems. Connectors, pipelines, and orchestration with startup credits.
Observability
Metrics, logs, traces, and dashboards. Startup programs that keep monitoring affordable while you scale.
Data, Analytics & Search
Product analytics and hosted search. Credits that buy you insight and discovery without standing up your own stack.
Project Management
Planning and collaboration tools with startup discounts.
Creators & Researchers
Programs aimed at individual creators and academic researchers: early access, artist payouts, and research API credits rather than startup credits.
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