Compare 15+ startup programs: AWS Activate, Google for Startups, Microsoft Founders Hub, Cloudflare, DigitalOcean Hatch, Stripe Atlas, Brex, Mercury, and more. Credit values, eligibility, vesting, and stacking strategies. Compiled 2026-03-27.
Published 2026-03-27 · Reviewed 2026-09-28, corrections outstanding · 15 programs compared · Figures compiled 2026-03-27 · 48 of 49 figures in the “Recent Changes” table come from our records for 1,574 developer tools
Startup credits in April 2026: 15 programs across cloud infrastructure, fintech perks, developer tools, and AI — from $1K self-serve credits to $350K VC-backed packages. The cloud providers (AWS, Google, Microsoft, Cloudflare) offer the highest individual values, while fintech platforms (Brex, Mercury, Stripe Atlas) bundle credits from multiple providers into single sign-ups.
Key insight: A well-planned stacking strategy can unlock $500K+ in combined credits across platforms. The highest-value approach: apply to cloud providers directly (Google $200K, AWS $100K, Cloudflare $100K) then layer fintech banking perks for additional tool credits. Watch for overlapping perks — AWS credits from Brex and Stripe Atlas may be the same underlying allocation.
This guide covers: credit values, eligibility requirements, vesting schedules, hidden constraints, application difficulty, and optimal stacking strategies — compiled by hand from vendor pricing pages.
Compiled 2026-03-27. Hover rows to highlight. Programs sorted by category.
| Program | Credit Value | Eligibility | Duration | Application |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AWS Activate | $1K (self-funded), $100K (VC-backed) | Any startup (Founders) / VC/accelerator-backed (Portfolio) | 1-2 years | Open application |
| Google Cloud for Startups | $200K (Scale) / $350K (Scale AI) | Equity-funded startups, Series A or earlier | 2 years | VC/funding required |
| Microsoft Founders Hub | $5K-$150K Azure credits | Any startup (basic) / investor-backed (premium) | 1 year | Open application |
| DigitalOcean Hatch | Up to $100K compute credits | Startups affiliated with VC/accelerator partners | 12 months | Accelerator required |
| IBM Cloud Startup | $12K (Builder) / $120K (Premium) | Builder: any startup | 12 months | Open application |
| Cloudflare Startup Program | $5K-$250K credits | 4 tiers based on funding: Bootstrapped ($5K), Up-and-Coming ($25K), Seed-Funded ($100K), High Growth ($250K) | 1 year | Open application |
| Stripe Atlas | $50K+ in founder perks | Atlas customers (incorporation via Stripe) | Varies by perk | Open application |
| Brex | $350K+ in partner perks | Brex cardholders (startups) | Varies by partner | Open application |
| Mercury | Banking perks bundle | Mercury banking customers | Varies by perk | Open application |
| Ramp | $5K AWS + partner discounts | Ramp cardholders | Varies | Open application |
| SVB (Silicon Valley Bank) | $5K AWS + $100K Google Cloud | SVB banking customers (startups) | Varies | Open application |
| PostHog YC Deal | $50K/year credits | Y Combinator companies (raised less than $25M) | Renews annually | Accelerator required |
| Segment Startup Program | $50K in Team plan credits | Early-stage startups (application required) | Up to 2 years | Open application |
| Amazon Kiro (AWS Startups) | 1 year free Pro+ ($480/yr value) | AWS Startups program members | 1 year | Accelerator required |
| Amplitude Startup Scholarship | 1 year free Growth plan | Startups building digital products | 1 year | Open application |
Startup credit programs fall into four categories, each targeting different needs and stages of growth.
A date in a heading below cites a record we hold, not a property of the vendor it names. These figures were compiled on 2026-03-27; a dated badge marks a card whose vendor we have recorded a change for since, and the date moves to the newer record on the day that record takes effect. Every record we hold for any vendor named below is in the full change log.
Major cloud providers offering $5K–$350K in compute, storage, and AI credits. These are the highest-value programs — anchor your startup’s infrastructure budget here.
Credit value: $1K (self-funded), $100K (VC-backed)
Eligibility: Any startup (Founders) / VC/accelerator-backed (Portfolio)
Duration: 1-2 years
What's included: AWS credits, technical support, training. Business Support (1yr) for Portfolio tier. Separate program for each funding stage.
Vesting: Founders: lump sum. Portfolio: annual tranches
Credit value: $200K (Scale) / $350K (Scale AI)
Eligibility: Equity-funded startups, Series A or earlier
Duration: 2 years
What's included: Google Cloud credits, Firebase, Google Workspace, technical training, partner perks. Scale AI includes $100K extra for AI/ML workloads.
Vesting: $100K Y1 + $100K Y2 (Scale); $250K Y1 + $100K Y2 (Scale AI)
Credit value: $5K-$150K Azure credits
Eligibility: Any startup (basic) / investor-backed (premium)
Duration: 1 year
What's included: Azure credits, M365 Business Premium, GitHub Enterprise, LinkedIn Premium, technical mentoring, Visual Studio Enterprise.
Vesting: Lump sum on approval
Credit value: Up to $100K compute credits
Eligibility: Startups affiliated with VC/accelerator partners
Duration: 12 months
What's included: Compute credits, GPU Droplets at $1.90/GPU/hr (H100 equivalent), dedicated support, technical architecture review.
Vesting: Lump sum per partner agreement
Credit value: $12K (Builder) / $120K (Premium)
Eligibility: Builder: any startup. Premium: VC/accelerator-backed
Duration: 12 months
What's included: IBM Cloud credits ($1K/mo Builder, $10K/mo Premium), Watson AI services, Red Hat OpenShift, technical mentoring.
Vesting: $1K/mo (Builder) or $10K/mo (Premium)
Credit value: $5K-$250K credits
Eligibility: 4 tiers based on funding: Bootstrapped ($5K), Up-and-Coming ($25K), Seed-Funded ($100K), High Growth ($250K)
Duration: 1 year
What's included: Cloudflare credits covering Workers, R2, CDN, security, analytics. Access to startup community and events.
Vesting: Lump sum per tier
Startup-focused banks and financial platforms bundling cloud credits and SaaS perks with their banking products. Often the easiest way to unlock credits from multiple providers at once.
Credit value: $50K+ in founder perks
Eligibility: Atlas customers (incorporation via Stripe)
Duration: Varies by perk
What's included: $5K AWS credits, $5K DigitalOcean credits, 1yr GitHub, $2.5K Stripe processing credits, legal perks, banking setup.
Vesting: Available on Atlas completion
Credit value: $350K+ in partner perks
Eligibility: Brex cardholders (startups)
Duration: Varies by partner
What's included: $5K AWS credits, $2.5K OpenAI credits, $200K Google Cloud credits, partner discounts on Notion, Slack, and 50+ tools.
Vesting: Per-partner activation
Credit value: Banking perks bundle
Eligibility: Mercury banking customers
Duration: Varies by perk
What's included: 1 year free Datadog (up to $100K value), $5K AWS credits, up to $200K Google Cloud credits, 30% off QuickBooks Online.
Vesting: Per-partner activation
Credit value: $5K AWS + partner discounts
Eligibility: Ramp cardholders
Duration: Varies
What's included: Up to $5K AWS credits, partner discounts on Notion, and other tools. Part of $350K+ total partner rewards program.
Vesting: Per-partner activation
Credit value: $5K AWS + $100K Google Cloud
Eligibility: SVB banking customers (startups)
Duration: Varies
What's included: $5K AWS credits, up to $100K Google Cloud credits (annual cap), $5K MongoDB credits, $9K off Slack, $50K+ in total partner value.
Vesting: Annual cap on cloud credits
SaaS companies offering generous startup plans for analytics, data, and developer infrastructure. Smaller individual values but stack well with cloud credits.
Credit value: $50K/year credits
Eligibility: Y Combinator companies (raised less than $25M)
Duration: Renews annually
What's included: Full PostHog platform: product analytics, session replay, feature flags, experimentation. Auto-renews each year.
Vesting: Annual renewal
Credit value: $50K in Team plan credits
Eligibility: Early-stage startups (application required)
Duration: Up to 2 years
What's included: $50K toward monthly Team plan. Access to $1M+ in partner deals (AWS, Google, Intercom). Analytics Academy training.
Vesting: Monthly against Team plan
AI coding tools and ML platforms offering startup-specific credit programs. A newer category driven by the AI tool boom.
Credit value: 1 year free Pro+ ($480/yr value)
Eligibility: AWS Startups program members
Duration: 1 year
What's included: Kiro Pro+ with expanded credits. Three tiers: Starter (2 users), Growth (50 users), Scale (100 users). Includes SWE-1.5 model access.
Vesting: Monthly credit allocation
Credit value: 1 year free Growth plan
Eligibility: Startups building digital products
Duration: 1 year
What's included: Growth plan with 200K MTUs or 100M events/month. Behavioral Cohorts, Pathfinder, and all Growth features.
Vesting: Full plan for 12 months
The credit value is rarely the full story. These are the constraints that catch founders off guard after committing to a program.
Most credits expire 12–24 months from activation, not application. Unused credits are lost — no extensions. Google splits $200K into $100K/year; AWS Founders gives all $1K at once but expires in 12 months.
Google, IBM, and some others release credits in monthly or annual tranches. You can’t front-load usage. IBM Builder gives $1K/month — if you need $12K in month 1, you only get $1K.
Google Scale requires equity funding. PostHog YC Deal has a $25M fundraising cap. Programs may retroactively check if you still qualify when renewing.
Credits only work on the issuing platform. After credits expire, you’re on production pricing with established data gravity. Migration costs can exceed the original credit value.
Brex, Mercury, SVB, and Stripe Atlas all offer AWS credits — but you can’t stack them. The $5K AWS credit from Brex and the $5K from Stripe Atlas may be the same underlying AWS Activate program.
Most startup programs can be combined across platforms. Here are optimal stacking strategies for different startup profiles.
Google for Startups ($200K) + AWS Activate Portfolio ($100K) + Cloudflare Seed-Funded ($100K) + DigitalOcean Hatch ($100K) = $500K+ across 4 platforms. Requires VC backing for most.
AWS Activate Founders ($1K) + Microsoft Founders Hub Basic ($5K) + Cloudflare Bootstrapped ($5K) + Stripe Atlas perks = $15K+ with zero funding requirement.
Full AWS Portfolio ($100K) + Google Scale ($200K) + PostHog ($50K/yr) + banking perks via Brex/Mercury = $400K+ first year.
Google Scale AI ($350K with AI credits) + Amazon Kiro free year + AWS Activate = $450K+ with dedicated AI/ML credits.
Sign up for Brex + Mercury + Stripe Atlas to unlock overlapping cloud perks. Careful: some AWS credits from different programs don't stack.
Startup credit programs change frequently. Here are the changes we've tracked. See full change timeline for all tracked changes.
| Date | Vendor | Change | Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| effective Oct 7, 2026 | AWS | AWS Proton reaches end of support on 2026-10-07, when its console and resources stop being accessible. AWS: "Your deployed CloudFormation stacks and the resources they manage will remain intact and continue to function." New customers could not sign up after 2025-10-07. Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| effective Sep 30, 2026 | AWS | AWS App Mesh reaches end of support on 2026-09-30. AWS: "After September 30, 2026, you will no longer be able to access the AWS App Mesh console or AWS App Mesh resources." AWS points App Mesh users to Amazon ECS Service Connect. Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| discovered Sep 9, 2026 · effective date unknown | Amplitude | Amplitude renamed its Startup Scholarship "Early Stage Startup Pricing". The first year is still the full Growth plan free for startups with under 20 employees and under $10M raised; year 2 is now 40% off the annual Plus plan, or the free plan. Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| discovered Sep 5, 2026 · effective date unknown | Ramp | Ramp's AWS perk no longer states an amount. It now says "Redeem AWS credits through the AWS Activate program."; in the Internet Archive's capture of 2026-05-21 it said "New to AWS? Get $5,000 in AWS credits to get started". Source ↗ | HIGH |
| discovered Sep 2, 2026 · effective date unknown | Cloudflare | The program now offers up to $350k in credits instead of $250k. Tier 1 now offers $350k, Tier 2 offers $100k, and Tier 3 offers $10k. Workers AI credit caps are now $2,500 for Tier 3, $10,000 for Tier 2, and $50,000 for Tier 1. AI Gateway is temporarily not covered by credits. Source ↗ | HIGH |
| effective Jul 10, 2026 | Amazon Kiro | Kiro added a Pro Max plan at $100 per user a month with 5,000 credits, between Pro+ and Power. It first appears on kiro.dev/pricing between the 2026-06-03 and 2026-07-10 captures. Source ↗ | LOW |
| effective Jul 2, 2026 | Mercury | Mercury paused its Google Cloud perk. mercury.com/perks/google-cloud offered "Google Cloud and Firebase costs covered up to $200,000 USD over 2 years" in the Internet Archive's capture of 2026-02-10 and said "Offer temporarily unavailable. New offer coming later this year" in the capture of 2026-07-02, as it does today. Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| effective Jun 30, 2026 | AWS | Fargate platform version 1.3.0 reached end of support on June 30, 2026. AWS blocked new tasks and services on it from June 15 and said it would terminate the tasks still running on it on June 30. Platform version 1.4.0 replaces it. Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| effective Jun 14, 2026 | AWS Activate | AWS raised Activate Portfolio from up to $100,000 to up to $200,000 in credits. aws.amazon.com/startups/credits/ said "Up to $100,000 USD AWS Activate Credits" in the Internet Archive's capture of 2026-05-31 and "Up to $200,000 USD in Activate Credits" in the capture of 2026-06-14. Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| effective Jun 3, 2026 | Amazon Kiro | Kiro stopped giving new users 500 bonus credits on sign-up, usable within 30 days, and now credits $20 toward the first paid plan instead. The change falls between the 2026-05-02 and 2026-06-03 captures of kiro.dev/pricing. Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| effective May 19, 2026 | Google added a Google AI Ultra plan at $99.99 a month with $40 a month in Google Cloud credits, and cut the top AI Ultra plan from $249.99 to $199.99 a month; the top plan keeps $100 a month in credits. Source ↗ | MEDIUM | |
| effective May 13, 2026 | DigitalOcean | As of 2026-05-13, DigitalOcean's startup credits exclude Dedicated and Serverless Inference, third-party AI models, Paperspace Machines, Cloudways and Bare Metal GPUs as well as GPU Droplets and H100 GPU products, the two exclusions its page stated before. The page also now puts the monthly credit limit at $10,000; its April capture mentioned a monthly limit without an amount. Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| effective Apr 30, 2026 | AWS | AWS App Runner closed to new customers. Service enters maintenance mode with no new features. AWS recommends migrating to Amazon ECS Express Mode for simplified container deployment. Source ↗ | HIGH |
| effective Apr 30, 2026 | AWS | The Node.js 20 Lambda runtime (nodejs20.x) was deprecated on 2026-04-30. Lambda blocks creating functions on it from 2027-02-01 and updating them from 2027-03-03; AWS's runtime page says "you can continue to invoke your functions indefinitely". Source ↗ | HIGH |
| effective Apr 20, 2026 | AWS | AWS WorkSpaces Thin Client end of availability. AWS stopping sales of Thin Client devices. Existing devices continue working but no new hardware can be purchased. Source ↗ | LOW |
| discovered Apr 13, 2026 · effective date unknown | Amazon Kiro (AWS Startups) | AWS Startups offers up to 1 year of free Kiro Pro+ (worth $480/year). Three tiers: Starter (up to 2 users), Growth (up to 50 users), Scale (up to 100 users). Eligible: early-stage to Series B companies. Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| effective Apr 7, 2026 | DigitalOcean | DigitalOcean's new-account credit fell from $200 for 60 days to $5 for 90 days. Its pricing page changed between the Internet Archive's 2026-04-05 and 2026-04-07 captures. The $200 offer page (try.digitalocean.com/freetrialoffer/) was still up on 2026-05-15 and now redirects to the homepage. Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| effective Mar 30, 2026 | Standalone Google Developer Program Premium stopped renewing on personal (@gmail.com) accounts: annual plans after 2026-03-30, monthly plans after 2026-06-30. Google had moved its developer benefits into Google AI Pro and AI Ultra on 2026-01-27. Premium on Workspace accounts did not change. Source ↗ | HIGH | |
| effective Feb 4, 2026 | Cloudflare | Queues added to Workers free plan — message queuing now free Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| effective Feb 1, 2026 | Stripe | Managed Payments (Merchant of Record) service entering general availability — Stripe handles tax, billing, fraud, and disputes Source ↗ | HIGH |
| effective Feb 1, 2026 | Cloudflare Startup Program | Startup program revamped to 4 tiers with up to $250,000 in credits (previously lower). Tiers: Bootstrapped $5K, Up-and-Coming $25K, Seed-Funded $100K, High Growth $250K. Credits expire within 1 year Source ↗ | HIGH |
| effective Jan 27, 2026 | Google Developer Program Premium merged into Google One AI Pro ($19.99/mo, includes $10 Cloud credits) and AI Ultra ($100 Cloud credits). Developer benefits now bundled into consumer AI subscriptions Source ↗ | MEDIUM | |
| effective Jan 4, 2026 | AWS | EC2 Capacity Blocks for ML GPU prices increased ~15% across regions. p5e.48xlarge went from $34.61 to $39.80/hr (US East) and $43.26 to $49.75/hr (US West N. California) Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| effective Jan 1, 2026 | DigitalOcean | Droplets moved from hourly to per-second billing (with a minimum charge of 60 seconds or $0.01, whichever is higher) Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
| effective Jan 1, 2026 | Google Cloud | Google for Startups Cloud Program now offers up to $350K GCP credits for AI-first startups, plus $10K Anthropic (Claude) partner credits via Model Garden Source ↗ | HIGH |
| effective Sep 4, 2025 | Segment | Segment ended its Startup Program, which gave early-stage startups Segment free for up to two years. segment.com/industry/startups described it in the Internet Archive's capture of 2025-07-09; by the capture of 2025-09-04 the address redirected to Twilio's startups page, which says "We do not offer additional credits to startups at this time." Source ↗ | HIGH |
| effective Jan 22, 2025 | DigitalOcean | Hatch startup program expanded to up to $100K compute credits plus up to 3 months free H100 GPU access for AI/ML startups Source ↗ | MEDIUM |
Compare startup credit programs, check eligibility, and plan your stacking strategy — all from your AI coding assistant.
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