Civo free credits: $250

Civo gives new accounts a $250 signup credit. The legal terms state 31 calendar days; the marketing copy says “a full month”. A valid payment method must be on file at all times, and resources are blocked until the card is verified; virtual and prepaid cards are not accepted (Visa, Mastercard, and Amex via Stripe). One trial per customer. All figures come from Civo’s official pages, checked on 2026-09-02.

The biggest signup number in this set

$250 over a month beats the Azure $200, though the Google Cloud $300 and Oracle’s $300 trial are larger. The trade-off is the clock: 31 days is firm, so the credit rewards a planned evaluation, not an account you warm up slowly. Note the two official phrasings, 31 calendar days in the terms and a full month in marketing; I quote both rather than picking one.

GPU on the credit

Civo lists L40S, A100, H100, H200, and B200 GPU instances on its public pricing, and the trial text does not exclude GPU from credit eligibility. That puts Civo alongside Scaleway in the small group where official pages leave GPU-on-credit open. I will not promise a specific number of GPU hours, because no official page states one.

Payment enforcement

The card requirement is stricter than most: a valid payment method on file at all times, verified before resources unlock, no virtual or prepaid cards. After the trial, unpaid invoices risk suspension from day 8, so a dead card can take down running workloads fast.

There is also a clock on claiming the credit itself, rechecked 2026-08-26, and Civo’s own pages state two windows: the docs FAQ says the $250 requires adding a valid credit/debit card within 21 days of signing up, while the offer terms on the signup page give 3 months from sign up to add a card. As with the trial length, I quote both rather than picking one; the 21-day figure is the safe one to plan around.

The startup program above it

Civo also runs an application-based startup program from $1,000 up to $50,000 in credits. That is a gated grant with its own criteria, so it stays out of the headline number here.

What I have done with it

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

Choose Civo if you can concentrate an evaluation into one month and want GPU options on the table; skip it if you need a credit that idles safely. For a longer-lived small grant, see the DigitalOcean free credits; for how these platforms differ structurally, read how to choose between a VPS, GPU cloud, serverless, or a sandbox. Every grant I track is on the credits index.