Microsoft Azure free credits: $200

Azure’s free account gives new customers a $200 credit to use on Azure services within 30 days, plus 20 plus services free for 12 months and 65 plus always-free services. A credit card or debit card (non-prepaid) is required at signup, with a $1 temporary authorization, not a charge. Unused credit does not carry over past day 30. All figures come from Microsoft’s official pages, checked on 2026-09-02.

The GPU catch: quota is zero

This is the single most important thing about the Azure $200 for AI work. Microsoft’s own GPU documentation for the NC family says some GPU SKUs have a vCPU quota that is initially 0 and that quota increases “aren’t available to trial subscriptions.” For those documented SKUs, the trial cannot get GPU quota, so the $200 cannot buy that GPU time. Whether every GPU SKU is quota-0 on trial is not stated officially in one place; the pattern Microsoft documents for the NC family is a per-SKU quota gate, so treat any “burn the Azure trial credit on GPU VMs” advice as unverified until you see quota in your own subscription. Google Cloud’s trial has the same restriction with different mechanics: no GPUs until you upgrade to paid.

What else the credit cannot buy

The offer terms exclude several categories: Azure Marketplace purchases, support plans, Azure DevOps, ExpressRoute, and Spot VMs cannot be paid for with the $200. The credit is for Azure service usage inside the trial subscription.

Card and eligibility details

Official wording is credit card or debit card, and prepaid cards are not accepted. In Hong Kong and Brazil, only credit cards work. The offer is one free account per new customer. When the 30 days or the $200 run out, you must upgrade to pay-as-you-go to keep your resources running; otherwise the subscription is disabled.

Microsoft for Startups, the gated tier

Beyond the signup credit, Microsoft for Startups is a separate application-based program. Self-apply gets $200 immediately, then $5,000 after business verification of a registered legal entity, then $25,000, $50,000, and $150,000 tiers unlocked by sustained Azure usage milestones (roughly 60 days at $1 or more per workload per day). An investor referral code is optional and may unlock higher tiers earlier. The lifetime cap is $350,000 in free Azure credits. Note a stale claim worth correcting: the idea that self-apply stops at $5,000 and $150,000 is investor-only is outdated; the official docs describe a self-apply path that reaches $150,000 via milestones. Gotchas: you need a personal Microsoft account (work and school emails are rejected), the country cannot be changed later, and crypto mining is excluded.

What I have done with it

Not tested yet. This page reports only what the official pages state.

For the neighboring hyperscaler offers, see the AWS Free Tier credits and the Oracle Cloud free trial, or read how to choose between a VPS, GPU cloud, serverless, or a sandbox. Every grant I track is on the credits index.