Series A+ 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.

Free Claude API credits plus priority rate limits so you can run production traffic without throttling. Anthropic does not publish the credit amount. Joining the program is open, but the credits specifically require institutional equity funding. Members get early notice of model releases and access to Builder Days, hackathons and Founder Days.

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.

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.

Serverless GPU credits as a one-time grant, with direct access to Modal's engineering team and go-to-market help around launches and fundraising. Modal does not publish amounts. The Seed to Series A track needs either a partner-network VC or more than $1M raised from any fund; the Series B+ track needs $30M+ raised and a partner-network investor.

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.

Observability credits distributed largely through accelerators and VC partners. Worth claiming before you scale rather than after: Datadog bills grow with host and container count, and startups routinely discover the cost only once the credit window has closed.

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 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.

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.

Aimed at funded companies migrating real workloads rather than at first-time builders: up to $100,000 in credits for the migration itself, then long-term discounts of up to 35%, executive sponsorship, architecture reviews and a dedicated account manager. Relevant specifically because GPU access is carved out of several larger cloud programs — if you need sustained GPU time rather than API calls, a GPU-friendly provider often beats a bigger credit you cannot spend on accelerators.

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.