You don’t need to pay for cloud services. Every major cloud provider gives free credits to students and hackathon participants. Here’s how to get them before your next event.
AWS (Amazon Web Services)
AWS Activate for Startups
- Credits: $1,000 – $100,000 (depending on stage)
- How: Apply at aws.amazon.com/activate
- Best for: If your hackathon project might become a startup
AWS Free Tier
- Always free: Lambda (1M requests/month), DynamoDB (25GB), S3 (5GB)
- 12 months free: EC2 (750 hrs t2.micro), RDS, etc.
- Best for: Any hackathon project
AWS Educate
- Credits: Varies by institution
- How: Sign up with .edu email
- Best for: Students wanting to learn AWS
Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
Google Cloud for Students
- Credits: $300 free (no credit card for students)
- How: cloud.google.com/edu
- Best for: AI/ML projects (Vertex AI, BigQuery)
Google Cloud Free Tier
- Always free: Cloud Functions (2M invocations), Firestore (1GB), Cloud Run (2M requests)
- Best for: Serverless hackathon backends
Microsoft Azure
Azure for Students
- Credits: $100 (no credit card needed)
- How: azure.microsoft.com/free/students
- Best for: .NET projects, Azure OpenAI, Cognitive Services
GitHub Student Developer Pack
- Includes: Azure credits + DigitalOcean $200 + many more tools
- How: education.github.com/pack
- Best for: EVERYTHING – this single pack gives you 20+ free tools
AI-Specific Credits
- OpenAI – $5 free credit on signup (enough for a hackathon demo)
- Anthropic – Free tier via console.anthropic.com
- Google AI Studio – Free Gemini API access (generous limits)
- Hugging Face – Free inference API for open source models
- Replicate – Free tier for image/video/audio AI
Other Free Platforms
- MongoDB Atlas – 512MB free forever (perfect for hackathons)
- PlanetScale – 5GB free MySQL database
- Supabase – Free PostgreSQL + auth + storage
- Vercel – Unlimited frontend deploys + serverless functions
- Railway – $5/month free credit
Hackathon-Specific Credits
Many hackathons on Reskilll come with sponsor-provided credits:
- Corporate-sponsored hackathons often give AWS/GCP credits to all participants
- AI hackathons frequently provide OpenAI/Anthropic API keys for the event
- Check the hackathon’s resources page after registering
Pro Tips
- Sign up for GitHub Student Pack first – it unlocks credits across 20+ platforms
- Don’t use credits for learning – use free tiers for learning, save credits for hackathon projects
- Set billing alerts – even with free credits, set alerts at $1 to avoid surprises