02 / Credits
Checked 2026.09.18
AI compute free credits and tiers, read from official pages
38/55verified offers of entries checked
Each entry states the amount, expiry, and payment requirement exactly as the provider's official pages put it, with the date I last checked. Anything the official pages leave open is listed as "Not stated officially", and anything I have not run myself is "Not tested yet". The dataset is open as JSON and as CSV, generated from the same entries shown on this page.
The ledger below covers 55 providers across VPS, GPU cloud, serverless, and sandboxes: 38 publish a real free credit, free tier, or trial, and 17 publish no free credit at all. The largest card-free grants right now are Daytona $200, E2B $100, and Novita AI $100. The newest check in the set is 2026.09.18.
ArchiveSeptember 2026 archive
Top listed amounts
Ordered by listed figure, as official pages word it
- $500 / €500 for 30 daysUpCloudFree trialChecked 2026.09.02
- $300Google CloudSignup creditChecked 2026.09.02
- US$300Oracle CloudFree trialChecked 2026.08.29
- $250CivoSignup creditChecked 2026.09.02
- up to $200AWSSignup creditChecked 2026.09.02
17providers checked with no verified credit. Documented in the ledger below as findings, not offers.
Full ledger
55 entries
Category
FilterShowing 55 of 55
| Expiry | Payment method required | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anthropic | Not quantified officially | Signup credit | Not stated for the signup credits; purchased credits expire one year from purchase | Not stated officially | |
| Beam | No free credit | No free credit | No credit exists to expire; the $30 monthly allowance was off every official page by 2026-09-09 | Not stated officially | |
| Cerebrium | Free plan, compute billed | Monthly free tier | No credit exists to expire; the Hobby plan itself has no stated time limit | Not stated officially | |
| Contabo | No free credit | No free credit | Not applicable | Yes | |
| DeepInfra | No free credit | No free credit | Not stated officially | Yes | |
| Exoscale | No free credit | No free credit | Not applicable | Yes | |
| fal.ai | No free credit | No free credit | No standard credit exists; occasional free credits or coupons last 1 week to 1 year, purchased credits 365 days | Not stated officially | |
| Fly.io | 2machine hours or 7 days | Free trial | 2 hours of machine runtime or 7 days of access, whichever comes first | No | |
| Hetzner | No free credit | No free credit | Not applicable; promo codes apply to future billing periods | Not stated officially | |
| Koyeb | One free web Service, no cash credit | Monthly free tier | No cash credit to expire; the free Instance and database are an ongoing allowance | Yes | |
| Lambda | No free credit | No free credit | No signup credit exists; research grant expiry not stated officially | Not stated officially | |
| Linode (Akamai Cloud) | No free credit | No free credit | Not applicable; promo code amounts and terms are per code | Yes | |
| Mistral | Not stated officially | Always-free tier | Not stated officially | Not stated officially | |
| Nebius | No free credit (trial suspended) | No free credit | Trial suspended as of July 13, 2026; no new sign-ups accepted | Yes | |
| Northflank | No cash credit; free Developer Sandbox plan | Always-free tier | Not stated officially | Yes | |
| OpenAI | No free credit | No free credit | Not applicable: no free credit is offered | Not stated officially | |
| OpenRouter | 50free-model requests/day | Always-free tier | Free-model limits reset daily; unused purchased credits may expire after one year | No | |
| Paperspace | Free GPU (M4000) notebooks | Monthly free tier | Ongoing free plan; free machines auto-shutdown after 12 hours per session | Not stated officially | |
| Prime Intellect | No free credit | No free credit | No free credit exists | Not stated officially | |
| Replicate | Free for a limited number of runs | Signup credit | Free-run quota not quantified officially; purchased credit is valid for 1 year from purchase | Not stated officially | |
| RunPod | No free credit | No free credit | Not stated officially | Not stated officially | |
| Salad | No free credit | No free credit | No free GPU credit exists | Not stated officially | |
| Shadeform | No free credit | No free credit | No free credit exists | Not stated officially | |
| TensorDock | No free credit | No free credit | No free credit exists | Not stated officially | |
| Together AI | No free credit | No free credit | No free credit exists; purchased credits do not currently have an expiration date | Yes | |
| Vast.ai | No free credit | No free credit | No free credit exists | Yes | |
| Vultr | Not stated officially | Free trial | Up to 30 days | Yes | |
| Alibaba Cloud | USD 90(ECS) | Free trial | ECS free credits valid for 3 months; solution trial points valid 1 year | Yes | |
| AWS | up to $200 | Signup credit | Free plan ends at 6 months or credit exhaustion, whichever comes first; credits expire 12 months from account creation | Yes | |
| Microsoft Azure | $200 | Signup credit | 30 days after signup or credit exhaustion, whichever comes first; unused credit does not carry over | Yes | |
| Civo | $250 | Signup credit | 31 calendar days | Yes | |
| Cloudflare Workers | 100,000requests per day | Always-free tier | Daily limits reset at 00:00 UTC | Not stated officially | |
| Cohere | 1,000API calls per month on a trial key | Free trial | Monthly call cap; no end date stated officially for trial keys | Not stated officially | |
| Crusoe Cloud | $5(serverless only) | Signup credit | Not stated officially | Yes | |
| Daytona | $200in free compute | Signup credit | Not stated officially | No | |
| Deno Deploy | $0per month | Monthly free tier | Monthly; exceeding quotas pauses apps until the next cycle | Yes | |
| DigitalOcean | $5 | Signup credit | 90 days after signup | Yes | |
| E2B | $100(one-time) | Signup credit | Not stated officially | No | |
| Fireworks AI | $1 | Signup credit | Not stated officially | No | |
| Google Cloud | $300 | Signup credit | 90 days after signup (terms also say 3 months) | Yes | |
| Groq | $0rate-limited | Always-free tier | Not stated officially | Not stated officially | |
| IBM Cloud | USD 200 | Signup credit | Available for 30 days after upgrading to Pay-as-you-go | Yes | |
| Modal | $30per month | Monthly free tier | Monthly allowance on the Starter plan; rollover of unused credit is not stated officially | Yes | |
| Neon | $0no time limits | Always-free tier | No time limits; compute suspends when monthly CU-hours or transfer run out, until the next period | No | |
| Netlify | 300credits per month | Monthly free tier | Monthly; sites pause at the limit until the next cycle | Not stated officially | |
| OVHcloud | US$200 | Free trial | One month from creation of your first Public Cloud project | Yes | |
| Scaleway | €100 | Signup credit | Not stated officially | Yes | |
| Thunder Compute | $20(US students only) | Signup credit | Not stated officially for the student credit | Not stated officially | |
| UpCloud | $500 / €500for 30 days | Free trial | 30 days on the current promotion; standard trial is 7 days from activation; the trial must start within 365 days of registration | Yes | |
| Vercel | $0per month Hobby plan | Monthly free tier | No billing cycles on Hobby; exceeding Sandbox quotas pauses creation until 30 days after first use | Not stated officially | |
| Novita AI | $100(Sandbox only) | Signup credit | Valid for 90 days | No | |
| Oracle Cloud | US$300 | Free trial | Trial up to 30 days; unused credits expire on day 30; Always Free tier has no time limit | Yes | |
| Railway | $5for 30 days, then $1 per month | Free trial | Trial credits last 30 days; the later $1 monthly credit does not roll over | No | |
| Render | 750free instance hours per month | Monthly free tier | Hours reset monthly with no rollover; free Postgres expires 30 days after creation | Not stated officially | |
| Supabase | $0per month, two free projects | Always-free tier | Free projects pause after 1 week of inactivity; limit 2 active projects | Not stated officially |
Not sure which kind of compute you need in the first place? The guide on choosing between a VPS, GPU cloud, serverless, or a sandbox covers that decision.