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What changed: free AI credit offers, sweep by sweep

Latest entry

The short answer

We re-verify every live offer against the provider’s own pages at least every 30 days. This page records what moved on each pass, newest first. Each item says what changed on that date and, if it has moved again since, what replaced it. For the figure that is true today, follow the link to the offer page — it shows the current figure and the date we last checked it.

— Application status, credit clocks and current billing rules

A fresh check of all 26 published records separates current access from credit validity. Changes below describe the public terms checked on this date; no applications or redemptions were submitted.

  • Changed

    The general Claude Startups cohort is full and closed to new applications. Existing members retain access; a separate partner-VC route may provide up to $100,000 in first-party API credits, subject to eligibility.

    Current record: Claude Startups — general applications closed, verified

  • Changed

    The paid-billing model list now has eight entries, adding deepseek-v4.1-flash-1017. The 10,000 Neurons/day free allowance and 00:00 UTC reset remain.

    Current record: Cloudflare Workers AI free tier, verified

  • Changed

    The current application guide states $1,000 starter credits and approval-dependent expansion up to $150,000. Sponsorship converts to pay as you go when credits are used or expire; stage-specific expiry is not the validity of every maximum award.

    Current record: Microsoft for Startups — Azure credits, verified

  • Our correction

    Card policy is conditional: most new customers can sign up without a payment method, but identity checks may require one. AWS still gives conflicting six- and twelve-month credit-expiry statements; the free-plan duration is separate.

    Current record: AWS Free Tier credits (route to Bedrock), verified

  • Our correction

    The GitHub Pack’s Azure listing is not evidence of an additional stackable $100 grant. Do not double-count the Azure for Students benefit.

    Current record: GitHub Student Developer Pack — Azure credit & AI offers, verified

  • Our correction

    Presentation now separates the open trial application from the credit clock: $5 expires 30 days after issue, with a verified payment method required. The trial does not renew.

    Current record: Cerebras Inference free trial credits, verified

  • Our correction

    The roughly 50-billion-token headline is measured at DeepSeek V4 Flash prices; tokens are not dollar value. Service payment may use a card or prepayment, and programme-specific changes to that rule are not stated.

    Current record: DeepStart, verified

— October 2026 sweep

The biggest month of change since launch, and most of it narrowing. Hugging Face ended the monthly credit it gave free accounts, Mistral stopped publishing its $10 figure, and Fireworks' pricing page dropped its signup credit. Anthropic rebuilt its startup programme and then declared it over capacity. Two offers were added after an adversarial re-check — Alibaba Cloud Model Studio and Runway — and six other candidates had nothing publishable. We also corrected ourselves twice: AWS does not document that its new-account credits pay for Claude, and seven offers we showed as needing no card come from providers that never say so — they now read "not stated".

Read the full briefing for this sweep

  • Removed

    Hugging Face's docs were changed on 7 October 2026 to list free accounts' monthly Inference Providers credit as "None" — free users now buy credits or upgrade to PRO ($9 a month, $2.00 of included credits). The $0.10 a month we listed is gone; the listing is marked ended.

    Current record: Hugging Face Inference Providers free credits (discontinued), verified

  • Changed

    Mistral's pricing page no longer shows "$10 /mo in API credits" for the Free plan, and Mistral publishes no other figure. Free mode is still the default for new accounts and Mistral now states it needs no credit card, so the listing stays, without a number.

    Current record: Mistral Free plan, verified

  • Removed

    Fireworks' pricing page no longer offers "$1 in free credits" and now says to add a payment method to buy credits, while a Fireworks blog post still mentions the $1. With its own pages in conflict, we unpublished the listing.

  • Changed

    Anthropic expanded Claude Startups on 6 October 2026 to bootstrapped and pre-seed startups, announcing a $1,000 API credit and a free year of Claude Team — then said it was over capacity on both and would re-review all applications. Partner-VC-backed startups may get up to $100K in API credits. The credits cannot be used on Bedrock or Google Cloud.

    Current record: Claude Startups — general applications closed, verified

  • Our correction

    Since August we had called Amazon Bedrock, funded by AWS's new-account credits, the documented cloud route to Claude. AWS documents no such thing: Claude on Bedrock is billed through AWS Marketplace, and AWS's promotional-credit terms exclude Marketplace charges unless AWS authorises them. AWS Activate's startup credits are authorised; the Free Tier's are not documented either way.

    Current record: AWS Free Tier credits (route to Bedrock), verified

  • Changed

    AWS now says a payment method "isn't required to sign up for most new customers", though it may ask for one and its new sign-up is still rolling out — we still list a card as required. AWS's own FAQ gives both 6 and 12 months for the credits' expiry, so we publish only the 6-month free plan.

    Current record: AWS Free Tier credits (route to Bedrock), verified

  • Our correction

    Seven offers showed "No card" although their providers never say so: Google's Gemini API free tier, Groq, Cohere, NVIDIA NIM, Stability AI, Leonardo.Ai and Claude Startups. They now read "Card: not stated". Only offers whose provider states it in its own words — OpenRouter, Mistral, Cloudflare and three student offers — are marked as needing no card.

  • Our correction

    We removed the "10,000 requests per day" headline: the string is in NVIDIA's page data, but no part of the page shows it to users. NVIDIA's help centre states "up to 40 requests per minute (RPM) for most models", which is now the headline.

    Current record: NIM API endpoints via the NVIDIA Developer Program, verified

  • Changed

    DeepInfra's DeepStart grew from up to 1 billion to about 50 billion free tokens, now measured at DeepSeek V4 Flash prices, and DeepInfra now says the credits expire 1 year after approval.

    Current record: DeepStart, verified

  • Changed

    Microsoft for Startups narrowed eligibility to pre-seed through Series B and documented a staged ladder to $150,000 tied to Azure usage. Its own pages now disagree on the starter amount ($200 or $1,000), so we quote none. Microsoft names Anthropic among the providers its credits do not cover.

    Current record: Microsoft for Startups — Azure credits, verified

  • Our correction

    Our copy said you stay on a free account after the 30-day Azure credit period. Microsoft says the account and services are disabled unless you move to pay-as-you-go.

    Current record: Azure free account — $200 credit, verified

  • Changed

    Google renamed Vertex AI: "Vertex AI is now part of Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform" (Google's release notes, April 2026 — we caught it on this sweep). The $300 and both of its exclusions are unchanged; we now also state that past paying users of Google Maps Platform or Firebase are ineligible.

    Current record: Google Cloud free trial — $300 credit, verified

  • Changed

    Google states its startup credits do not cover third-party models, which our listing had not said. Its two startup sites now give conflicting numeric age limits for both tiers, so we still publish none.

    Current record: Google for Startups Cloud Program, verified

  • Changed

    The Gemini API free tier covers selected models only — Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview, Omni Flash, Veo, Lyria and the Nano Banana image models are "Not available" on it — and Google's API terms require users to be 18 or over.

    Current record: Google AI Studio / Gemini API free tier, verified

  • Changed

    Groq decommissioned groq/compound and compound-mini on 21 September 2026, and gpt-oss-safeguard-20b dropped to 3 requests a minute. The gpt-oss-120b worked example is unchanged.

    Current record: GroqCloud free tier, verified

  • Changed

    Cohere's rate-limits page and its FAQ now give different trial Embed limits, so we stopped quoting one. The 1,000 calls a month and Chat at 20 a minute are unchanged.

    Current record: Cohere trial (evaluation) API keys, verified

  • Changed

    Stable Audio now costs 8 credits per generation instead of 20, so the 25 free credits buy three. Stability's terms from 30 September 2026 say unused service credits expire after a year.

    Current record: 25 free credits on the Developer Platform, verified

  • Changed

    JetBrains' Student Pack page now says "No card required", and its eligibility wording is "Full-time student in a program lasting one year or more".

    Current record: JetBrains educational licence with AI Free, verified

  • Changed

    Together AI, which we do not list, now requires a minimum $15 credit purchase to use its platform, up from $5, and still offers no free trial.

  • Added

    Alibaba Cloud Model Studio: a free quota of typically 1,000,000 tokens per eligible model for new users, valid 90 days, only for models in the Singapore region with the International deployment scope. Alibaba requires completed account information, including a payment method, before activation.

    Current record: Alibaba Cloud Model Studio new-user free quota, verified

  • Added

    Runway's Free plan: 125 one-time credits for its web app that do not expire but never refresh, with "no credit card required". The credits cannot be used on the Runway API, whose own docs disagree about a free API credit.

    Current record: Runway Free plan — 125 one-time credits, verified

— Coverage pass: 15 → 25 offers

Twenty-four candidate providers were checked against their own pages, and every confirmed figure was re-read by a second pass whose job was to refute it. Ten offers were added. That second pass also found a claim of ours that had never been sourced: AWS Activate was listed as needing no card. Of the 24 providers, only ten published a free figure we could quote; GitHub Models was retired outright on 2026-07-30.

  • Our correction

    Our AWS Activate listing had said "Apply with no card" since June, and no AWS page ever said so. Activate requires an AWS account on a paid plan, and AWS states that free account plans are not eligible for Activate credits, so the listing was corrected to card-required.

    Current record: AWS Activate startup credits, verified

  • Removed

    qwen/qwen3.6-27b no longer appeared in Groq's free-plan table. It was deleted from the offer and from the hobby-projects guide rather than carried forward.

    Current record: GroqCloud free tier, verified

  • Added

    Azure for Students: $100 in Azure credits for 12 months, renewable while you remain a student. Microsoft states verbatim that no credit card is required.

    Current record: Azure for Students, verified

  • Added

    Mistral's Free plan: $10 a month in API credits, shared across the API, Studio and Vibe Code. Held as a draft since June until Mistral published a figure.

    Since then: On 2026-10-10 the $10 figure was gone from Mistral's pricing page. Free mode still exists, Mistral now states it needs no credit card, and it no longer says how much usage it includes.

    Current record: Mistral Free plan, verified

  • Added

    NVIDIA NIM endpoints through the free NVIDIA Developer Program: a published ceiling of 10,000 requests a day and up to 40 requests a minute.

    Since then: On 2026-10-10 we removed the 10,000-a-day figure: it sits in NVIDIA's page data but no part of the page displays it. NVIDIA's help centre states up to 40 requests a minute for most models.

    Current record: NIM API endpoints via the NVIDIA Developer Program, verified

  • Added

    JetBrains' educational licence with AI Free: 3 AI Credits every 30 days. AI Pro is not included for students.

    Current record: JetBrains educational licence with AI Free, verified

  • Added

    Google AI Pro for students: 12 months of the consumer Gemini app — not API credits. A payment method is required at sign-up, and it auto-charges $19.99 a month afterwards.

    Current record: Google AI Pro student offer, verified

  • Added

    DeepInfra DeepStart: up to 1 billion free tokens for startups that have raised between $250K and $10M.

    Since then: On 2026-10-10 the grant had grown to about 50 billion tokens, measured at DeepSeek V4 Flash prices, and DeepInfra now says the credits expire 1 year after approval.

    Current record: DeepStart, verified

  • Added

    Nebius Token Factory: $1 in trial credit for 30 days. A bank card is mandatory at onboarding.

    Current record: Nebius Token Factory trial credit, verified

  • Added

    Fireworks AI: $1 in signup credit. Fireworks' own docs disagree on whether a card is needed first, so we list it as card-required and quote the conflict.

    Since then: On 2026-10-10 Fireworks' pricing page no longer offered a signup credit while a Fireworks blog post still did; we unpublished the listing until Fireworks' pages agree.

  • Added

    Stability AI Developer Platform: 25 free credits, which Stability values at $0.01 each.

    Since then: On 2026-10-10 Stable Audio cost 8 credits per generation instead of 20, and Stability's new terms (from 30 September 2026) say unused service credits expire after a year.

    Current record: 25 free credits on the Developer Platform, verified

  • Added

    Leonardo.Ai: 150 tokens a day in the web app, resetting every 24 hours. API access is not included.

    Current record: Leonardo.Ai free tier daily tokens, verified

— September 2026 sweep

Four material changes across 15 offers, and the biggest was a correction to our own listing: Cerebras is no longer a free tier. Groq's free plan dropped every Llama chat model, Cloudflare's paid-billing list grew from five models to seven, and GitHub's Copilot Student pause ended. The AWS Free Tier's Bedrock listing, which our tooling could not read in August, was confirmed unchanged.

Read the full briefing for this sweep

  • Reclassified

    Cerebras' docs now answer "Is there a permanently free tier? No." The $5 in credits arrive only after adding a verified payment method and expire 30 days after they are granted. We corrected the card requirement to yes, moved the offer to trial credits and changed the headline figure to $5.

    Current record: Cerebras Inference free trial credits, verified

  • Changed

    Groq's free-plan table no longer listed any Llama chat model; llama-3.3-70b-versatile and llama-3.1-8b-instant were gone. Our worked example became openai/gpt-oss-120b at 30 requests/min, 1,000 requests/day, 8,000 tokens/min and 200,000 tokens/day.

    Since then: On 2026-09-19 qwen/qwen3.6-27b, which the September briefing listed as a free chat model, no longer appeared in Groq's free-plan table and was removed from our pages. On 2026-09-21 Groq decommissioned its groq/compound and compound-mini systems.

    Current record: GroqCloud free tier, verified

  • Changed

    Seven models now required a paid billing method, up from five: glm-5.3 and glm-5.3-flash were added to the list. The 10,000 free Neurons a day were unchanged.

    Current record: Cloudflare Workers AI free tier, verified

  • Changed

    The Copilot Student sign-up pause ended: the pack page stated that Copilot Student is available to verified students. GitHub published no figure for the AI-credit allowance, so our listing stayed scoped to the $100 Azure credit.

    Current record: GitHub Student Developer Pack — Azure credit & AI offers, verified

— August 2026 sweep

Five material changes and one new listing — and one correction we owed readers directly. Google Cloud's $300 credit stopped covering partner models on Vertex AI, which means it cannot pay for Claude there, and we had been saying it could. Microsoft retired the Founders Hub brand and its documented OpenAI credit, Google for Startups stopped stating a founding window, Cerebras began describing a $5 signup credit, and Cloudflare put five large models behind a paid billing method. The GitHub Student Developer Pack was published.

  • Our correction

    Google's free-trial docs added a second generative-AI exclusion: you "can't access or use the $300 credit for a generative AI partner model that is offered as a managed API". That rules out Claude on Vertex AI. We had been advising readers to run Claude on Vertex with the $300, and corrected that advice across the site; Amazon Bedrock, funded by AWS's new-account credits, became the documented cloud route to Claude.

    Since then: Corrected again on 2026-10-10: AWS does not document that its new-account credits pay for Claude. Claude on Bedrock is billed through AWS Marketplace, which AWS's promotional-credit terms exclude unless AWS authorises it; AWS Activate's startup credits are the documented AWS route.

    Current record: Google Cloud free trial — $300 credit, verified

  • Changed

    Microsoft retired the Founders Hub brand; the programme is now simply Microsoft for Startups. The $2,500 OpenAI credit was no longer documented on any Microsoft page, so we removed it rather than let it age. The initial unlock was documented as $200 in starter credits at Azure account creation, replacing the $1,000 we had described; the up-to-$150,000 ceiling remained, tied to approval.

    Since then: By 2026-10-10 Microsoft's own pages disagreed on the starter amount — $200 or $1,000 depending on the page and application route — so we stopped quoting one. Eligibility narrowed to pre-seed through Series B. The up-to-$150,000 ceiling is unchanged.

    Current record: Microsoft for Startups — Azure credits, verified

  • Removed

    The 24-month founding window for the Start tier was no longer stated, and Google's own properties disagreed on company age. We dropped the figure and kept only the funding-stage criteria both sources agree on.

    Since then: On 2026-10-10 Google's pages gave conflicting numeric limits for both tiers (Start: 24 months or 5 years; Scale: 5 or 10 years), so we still publish none.

    Current record: Google for Startups Cloud Program, verified

  • Changed

    Cerebras' pricing page began describing "$5 in free credits after making an account". We recorded it as a bonus alongside the daily token allowance, which we kept as the headline.

    Since then: Superseded on 2026-09-13: the $5 replaces the free tier rather than adding to it. It requires a verified payment method and expires 30 days after it is granted.

    Current record: Cerebras Inference free trial credits, verified

  • Changed

    Cloudflare Workers AI began requiring a paid billing method for five large third-party models regardless of remaining free Neurons: kimi-k2.6, kimi-k2.7-code, glm-5.2, deepseek-v4-flash-0731 and deepseek-v4-pro-0813. The 10,000 free Neurons a day were unchanged.

    Since then: On 2026-09-13 the list grew to seven models, with glm-5.3 and glm-5.3-flash added.

    Current record: Cloudflare Workers AI free tier, verified

  • Added

    The GitHub Student Developer Pack was published, scoped to its verified $100 Azure credit. The bundled Copilot Student plan was described but not quantified, because GitHub's own pages disagreed about whether sign-ups had reopened.

    Since then: On 2026-09-13 the sign-up pause banner was gone and Copilot Student was stated as available to verified students. GitHub still publishes no figure for its AI-credit allowance, so the listing stays scoped to the $100 Azure credit.

    Current record: GitHub Student Developer Pack — Azure credit & AI offers, verified

— July 2026 sweep

The first full re-verification after launch: three material changes and one addition. Google Cloud's $300 trial stopped covering the standalone Gemini API, Microsoft's startup programme added a card step, and Google for Startups restructured its tiers. Cerebras joined the directory. Groq, OpenRouter, Cohere, Hugging Face, Cloudflare Workers AI, AWS Free Tier, AWS Activate and Claude for Startups were re-confirmed unchanged; OpenAI and Together offered no free API trial, and Anthropic's first-party API published no quotable signup credit.

  • Changed

    Google Cloud's $300 trial credit no longer covered the standalone Gemini API (AI Studio) — Google's billing docs stated the exclusion, effective March 2026. Vertex AI usage, including Gemini served through Vertex, was still covered.

    Since then: On 2026-08-15 Google added a second exclusion: the credit cannot be used for generative-AI partner models offered as a managed API, so Claude and Llama are not covered either. Google's own Gemini models are still covered — in what Google has called Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform since April 2026.

    Current record: Google Cloud free trial — $300 credit, verified

  • Changed

    Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub added a mandatory payment-card step to account setup and required a personal Microsoft account. We listed it then as up to $150,000 in Azure credits plus a $2,500 OpenAI credit, with a $1,000 initial unlock.

    Since then: On 2026-08-15 the Founders Hub brand was retired in favour of plain Microsoft for Startups, the $2,500 OpenAI credit was no longer documented anywhere official and we removed it, and the initial unlock was documented as $200. By 2026-10-10 Microsoft's own pages disagreed on that starter amount ($200 or $1,000), and eligibility had narrowed to pre-seed through Series B. The card step remains.

    Current record: Microsoft for Startups — Azure credits, verified

  • Changed

    Google for Startups restructured its tiers. Start required founding within the last 24 months, with up to $2,000 over a year; Scale required founding within 5 years plus pre-seed to Series A equity, covering 100% of usage up to $100,000 in year one and 20% of usage up to a further $100,000 in year two. AI-first startups could reach $350,000.

    Since then: On 2026-08-15 the 24-month window was no longer stated consistently, and Google's own startup pages still disagree about company age — on 2026-10-10 they gave 24 months or 5 years for Start, and 5 or 10 years for Scale — so we publish only the funding-stage criteria. The credit amounts are unchanged.

    Current record: Google for Startups Cloud Program, verified

  • Added

    Cerebras Inference was listed as a free tier: up to 1M tokens a day per model (5 requests/min, 30K tokens/min) on open models. We published it as needing no card, inferred from the absence of a payment step in its signup flow.

    Since then: Corrected on 2026-09-13. Cerebras now states it has no permanently free tier: new accounts get $5 in credits only after adding a verified payment method, and they expire 30 days after they are granted. Our July inference about the card was wrong, and the listing is now a card-required trial credit.

    Current record: Cerebras Inference free trial credits, verified

How we check, and what counts as a source: methodology. Every live offer as structured data, with its own lastVerified date: the dataset.