Pre-seed startup credits

Three tiers. Start gives $2,000 self-serve. Scale covers 100% of usage up to $100K, then 20% up to another $100K. AI-First adds $150K on top, reaching $350K for AI-core teams.

The largest ceiling in the database. A small self-serve tier needs just a live product; six-figure tiers route through Activate Providers — accelerators, incubators, VCs. Credits cover third-party models via Bedrock.

Tiered by funding raised. Tier 3: $10,000, no minimum funding. Tier 2: $100,000 under $5M raised with a partner. Tier 1: $350,000 at $5M+ raised, plus priority support.

Works across Azure, GitHub and other Microsoft platforms. Entry tier is self-serve, no funding needed — a real bootstrapped on-ramp. Top tiers need VC backing through Microsoft's investor network.

Two tracks. Self-funded, under $1M raised: $1,000 in credits. VC-backed: up to $200,000 combined with Databricks, plus co-marketing. Decisions land within days.

Amount depends on the partner, up to $10,000 in monthly usage. Includes 15 months of free support and a 15+ company perk bundle. Core credits exclude GPU Droplets and dedicated inference.

A five-week cohort program open to founders at any stage, including pre-idea and pre-product. Participants receive $50,000 in API credits, early access to unreleased tooling and hands-on mentorship from OpenAI staff. This is the largest OpenAI credit allocation a founder can reach without a VC or accelerator relationship, and it is competitive rather than automatic.

OpenAI does not run a broad self-serve credit program. Allocations are routed through partners: a business banking or spend-management relationship commonly unlocks around $2,500, while VC and accelerator partners can nominate startups for more. Direct applications without a partner relationship are rarely accepted, so the practical route is through whoever already banks or backs you.

Up to €30,000 in La Plateforme API credits for selected early-stage startups, plus one-to-one support from Mistral's Solutions and Science teams. Worth applying if any part of your stack can run on open-weight European models — the review is selective but the application does not require a VC introduction.

One of the more generous open-model inference programs, with the allocation scaling by which partner refers you. Useful if you are serving Llama, Qwen, DeepSeek or other open weights and want to move off per-token frontier pricing without standing up your own GPUs.

Twelve months of the full ElevenLabs platform — Conversational AI, text-to-speech, speech-to-text, voice cloning, sound design and music — with 33 million characters included, roughly 680 hours of agent usage. Rolling applications, decisions within about a week. Note the branding condition: recipients display the ElevenLabs Grants logo on their site for at least 12 months.

Free to join, no fees and no equity. The direct value is preferred pricing on select NVIDIA hardware and software, free cloud credits from NVIDIA and its partners, and free self-paced technical training. The indirect value is often bigger: Inception Capital Connect makes investor introductions, and membership is a recognized signal that unlocks better tiers in other programs.

Four tiers — Inspire for bootstrapped teams through Scale for fast-growing ones — with Atlas credits rising at each step. Includes Voyage AI tokens for embedding and reranking models, a one-on-one session with a MongoDB expert, and matching partner credits from Fireworks AI and Temporal for eligible startups. Existing MongoDB users can still apply, which is unusually flexible.

Up to $30,000 as a flexible commitment amount, together with Enterprise-tier platform access and startup-focused support. Vercel does not publish hard eligibility rules on the program page, which in practice means the size of the offer is negotiated — worth going in with traffic numbers and a growth story rather than just filling the form.

Up to six months free on the Business plan with Notion AI included, worth up to about $12,000 for a 100-person team. The eligibility review determines the duration: six months only for startups affiliated with one of Notion's select startup partners, three months for a non-paying customer with a company domain email and a working business website, and one month for teams under ten people or applications with incomplete business information.

The steepest discount curve in go-to-market software: 90% off year one, then 50% off year two and 25% off year three for startups that raised a pre-seed, seed or Series A round and are either partner-affiliated or have venture funding verifiable on Crunchbase or PitchBook. A lower tier gives 30% off year one and 15% off year two through approved entrepreneurial organizations.

Up to six months off Linear's Basic or Business plans. Partner affiliation is required, so this is one to claim through your accelerator or investor rather than directly. If you do not qualify, Linear's free plan still covers unlimited workspace members and 250 issues, which is enough for a pre-launch team.

Incorporating through Atlas unlocks a bundle of partner offers alongside the company formation itself — cloud credits, SaaS discounts and tooling from a rotating partner list. Most valuable at the very start: if you have not incorporated yet, routing the formation through Atlas is one of the cheapest ways to trigger several partner perks at once.

Free access to Retool for 12 months for early-stage companies, which Retool values at up to $60K. It is aimed at teams building internal tools, admin panels and customer portals instead of hiring for them. The program also bundles a large set of partner deals, which makes it a useful single application to reach several smaller offers.

Error tracking, performance monitoring and debugging credits for early-stage teams, most commonly reached through partner packs rather than a direct application. Small in absolute terms, but it offsets a bill you will otherwise pay every month from the day you have real users.

Discounted or free access to Figma's professional design tooling for qualifying startups. Modest on its own, and mostly reached through partner perk lists, but it is one of the few design-side offers that exists at all for pre-seed teams.

Compliance automation for SOC 2 and similar frameworks at a startup rate. The reason to care is deal velocity rather than the discount: if enterprise prospects are asking for a SOC 2 report, this is the line item that unblocks revenue, and the startup tier makes starting early affordable.

Up to 90% off Intercom's AI-first customer service platform for early-stage startups. Similar in structure to the HubSpot offer, so it is worth deciding your support and CRM stack before you claim either — both discounts are one-time and tied to net-new accounts.

Up to two years of Zendesk at no cost for outside-funded startups applying directly, not just the smaller version bundled into some banking and fintech partner perk packs. A straightforward win if you already know you want a ticketing system.

Airtable credits commonly appear inside partner perk bundles — DigitalOcean's startup program lists a $2,000 Airtable credit, and larger amounts show up in accelerator packs. Rarely worth a standalone application; access it through a cloud or banking partner program instead.

Free or heavily discounted JetBrains IDE licenses for young companies, renewable annually. Genuinely self-serve with no investor requirement, which makes it one of the easiest first applications for a bootstrapped team — and a good way to confirm your company documentation is in order before you attempt a six-figure program.

Four credit tiers set by funding stage and investors: $500 for any qualifying startup with seed funding, $2,500 to $5,000 through an enrolled partner, $10,000 to $25,000 on Scale with a top-tier VC in Render's network, and $100,000 on the AI tier for companies with $2.5M or more from such a VC. Credits are valid for one year from approval.

Opening a business account unlocks a bundle of partner credits at once — cloud, AI API and SaaS offers that would each need a separate application otherwise. This is the highest-leverage single action for a pre-seed team: one onboarding, dozens of downstream perks, including AI API credit that has no self-serve path elsewhere.

It works in the same way as Brex: the banking relationship is the key that opens a partner perk catalog. Worth comparing the two catalogs against your actual stack before choosing, since the overlap is partial and each has offers the other does not.

Discounted global hiring and contractor payments, normally surfaced through fintech partner catalogs. Relevant the moment your team spans more than one country, which for most AI-era startups is from the first hire.

Cap table and equity management at a discount, with implementation fees commonly waived through partner routes. It may be the least exciting perk on this list, and the one founders most often wish they had set up before their first priced round rather than during it.

The program page lists $10,000 in flexible platform credits, spendable across GitHub Enterprise, Copilot, Advanced Security and Actions, with 50,000 included Actions minutes, tailored onboarding and office hours. It says to apply through a GitHub for Startups partner, so the way in is a VC, accelerator or startup-support organization rather than a direct application. Check the end date the day you activate and put it in a calendar.

Sonar API credits plus Enterprise Pro seats for startups coming in through an approved accelerator or VC partner. Narrow but genuinely useful if your product needs search with grounded, sourced citations rather than raw generation.