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AI CreditLadder
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Free Credits for solo founders.

A verified index of AI and cloud programs, organized around what you’re building — built for solo founders who want clarity, not hype.

Start withyour stack→Browse all 55 →
  1. Start here · Free to start

    Groq
    Get credits↗
  2. Level up · $2.5K credits

    Neon
    Get credits↗
  3. Go big · Up to $350K

    Google Cloud
    Get credits↗

What are you building?

Each tile opens the credits tagged for that stack. Real programs, verified at the source — not a perk dump.

See every program →
  • 01
    AI coding tool6 →

    Every major AI IDE and copilot ships a free tier worth using. Here's what to install this weekend — no credit card, no waitlist

  • 02
    Chatbot / assistant37 →

    Credits that stack for general-purpose conversational apps

  • 03
    Voice app10 →

    TTS, STT, and realtime voice agent credits

  • 04
    Video app11 →

    Credits for video generation, editing, and analysis

  • 05
    Image app12 →

    Credits for image gen, editing, and vision

  • 06
    Workflow automation11 →

    Credits for automations, integrations, and ops

  • 07
    RAG app37 →

    Credits that stack for retrieval-augmented apps on your data

  • 08
    Agent product47 →

    Credits for multi-step autonomous agents

  • 09
    B2B internal AI24 →

    Credits for internal productivity and knowledge tools

Every program, sequenced by claim path.

55programs·Sign up → startup program → partner path

Sort & filter →

Sign up & start.

Product signup, free tier, or trial — usually minutes, no entity.

30 programs →

Browserbase — Free Browser Automation Credits

Browserbase·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Free starter browser-session minutes for AI automations

Claim ↗

Cerebras Inference — Free Developer Tier

Cerebras·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Free inference on Llama + Qwen — fastest tokens/sec available

Claim ↗

Codeium — Individual Free

Codeium·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Free forever — unlimited autocomplete + chat

Claim ↗

Cohere — Trial API Key

Cohere·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Free trial API key — rate-limited model + embeddings access

Claim ↗

Cursor — Free & Pro Trial

Cursor·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Free Hobby tier + 14-day Pro trial

Claim ↗

Exa — Free Search API Credits

Exa·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Free monthly search credits — neural + keyword web search

Claim ↗

Firecrawl — Free Crawl Credits

Firecrawl·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Free monthly crawl + scrape credits — LLM-ready markdown output

Claim ↗

GitHub Copilot — Free Tier

GitHub·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Free tier — 2,000 completions / 50 chat / month

Claim ↗

Google AI Studio — Gemini API Free Tier

Google·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Free Gemini API access with daily rate-limited quota

Claim ↗

Groq Developer Free Tier

Groq·Verified

  • Curated
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Free tier — Llama, Mixtral inference on LPU

Claim ↗

Hugging Face Inference — Free Tier

Hugging Face·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Free serverless inference with monthly quota

Claim ↗

Jina AI — Free API Tokens

Jina AI·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Free API tokens across embeddings, reranker, reader, and search

Claim ↗

Lightning AI — Free Studios Credits

Lightning AI·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Free monthly Studios credits — CPU always-on, GPU by the minute

Claim ↗

Mistral — API Free Tier

Mistral AI·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Free experiment tier — rate-limited API (see console)

Claim ↗

NVIDIA Build — Free NIM API Credits

NVIDIA·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Free API credits across NIM-hosted open models

Claim ↗

OpenAI Free Evaluation Credits

OpenAI·Verified

  • Curated
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

$5

API credit on signup (subject to change)

Claim ↗

OpenRouter — Starter Credits

OpenRouter·Verified

  • Curated
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

$1

starter credits + free-model routing (verify in dashboard)

Claim ↗

Perplexity API — Free Monthly Credit

Perplexity·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

$5

/month API credit on Pro — web-grounded model access

Claim ↗

Qdrant Cloud — Free 1GB Cluster

Qdrant·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Free 1GB managed Qdrant cluster — no credit card required

Claim ↗

Railway Trial

Railway·Verified

  • Curated
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

$5

trial + Hobby plan for solo projects

Claim ↗

Replicate — Free Tier + Pay-As-You-Go

Replicate·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Free runs on many public models — usage-billed hosting after

Claim ↗

SambaNova Cloud — Free Developer Tier

SambaNova·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Free developer access to hosted Llama, Qwen, and DeepSeek

Claim ↗

Sourcegraph Cody — Free

Sourcegraph·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Free tier — monthly autocomplete + chat quota

Claim ↗

Tavily — Free Search API Credits

Tavily·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Free monthly search API credits — built for LLM agents

Claim ↗

Upstash — Free Tier

Upstash·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Free tier — Redis, vector search, QStash within published limits

Claim ↗

Voyage AI — Free Embedding Tokens

Voyage AI·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Millions of free embedding tokens per model on signup

Claim ↗

Weaviate Cloud — Free Sandbox

Weaviate·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Free 14-day sandbox cluster for evaluation

Claim ↗

Windsurf — Free Tier

Windsurf·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Free Cascade agent with monthly premium-model quota

Claim ↗

xAI — Developer API Credits

xAI·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Developer credits via x.ai console — amount varies by promotion

Claim ↗

Zed — Free Editor + AI

Zed·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Free editor with built-in agent (BYO key or hosted)

Claim ↗
Sponsored · Google AdSense · Homepage · inlineDirect sponsor →

Reach builders before funding. Reach AI founders the week they pick their stack. One native slot, week-clean reporting.

Inquire →AdSense not configured

Startup programs.

Vendor startup hubs & bundles — apply as a builder or company.

20 programs →

Linear for Startups

Linear·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

50% off Business plan for 1 year

Claim ↗

Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub

Microsoft·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Up to

$150,000

Azure + OpenAI

Claim ↗

Neon for Startups

Neon·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Up to

$2,500

credits

Claim ↗

AWS Activate

Amazon Web Services·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

From

$1,000

Founders · up to $100,000 with accelerator/VC partner · 2 years

Claim ↗

DigitalOcean Hatch

DigitalOcean·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Up to

$5,000

credits

Claim ↗

Google for Startups Cloud Program

Google Cloud·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Up to

$350,000

over 2 years

Claim ↗

LiveKit Cloud — Startup Program

LiveKit·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Discounted or free LiveKit Cloud for approved early-stage startups

Claim ↗

Modal Startup Credits

Modal·Verified

  • Curated
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Compute credits for AI startups

Claim ↗

MongoDB for Startups

MongoDB·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Up to

$5,000

Atlas

Claim ↗

Notion for Startups

Notion·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Up to

$6,000

Plus/AI

Claim ↗

Pinecone for Startups

Pinecone·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Up to

$2,500

Pinecone

Claim ↗

PostHog for Startups

PostHog·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

$50,000

PostHog credits + Teams plan

Claim ↗

AssemblyAI — Startup Program

AssemblyAI·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

200,000 hours speech-to-text credits (approved startups)

Claim ↗

Deepgram — Startup Program

Deepgram·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Up to

$100,000

credits over 12 months (tiered)

Claim ↗

Fireworks — For Startups

Fireworks AI·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Build credits + higher rate limits (application required)

Claim ↗

LangSmith — For Startups

LangChain·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Up to

$10,000

LangSmith credits on Scale tier (eligibility applies)

Claim ↗

Baseten — AI Startup Program

Baseten·Verified

  • Official source
  • Solo founder OK
  • No VC needed

Up to

$27,500

credits (inference + model APIs, tiered)

Claim ↗

ElevenLabs Startup Grant

ElevenLabs·Verified

  • Curated
  • No VC needed

Voice API credits for startups

Claim ↗

NVIDIA Inception

NVIDIA·Verified

  • Official source
  • No VC needed

GPU cloud credits + DGX discounts + NVIDIA tech access

Claim ↗

Oracle for Startups

Oracle·Verified

  • Official source
  • No VC needed

Up to

$500,000

OCI credits (tiered)

Claim ↗

Partner & investor paths.

Referral, accelerator, or VC gates — unlock when you have the signal.

5 programs →

Anthropic for Startups

Anthropic·Verified

  • Official source

$5,000

API

Claim ↗

Cloudflare for Startups

Cloudflare·Verified

  • Official source

Free Pro/Business plans + credits

Claim ↗

Lambda — GPU Cloud for Startups

Lambda·Verified

  • Official source

GPU credits for approved AI startups (varies by partner path)

Claim ↗

Together AI Startup Credits

Together AI·Verified

  • Curated

Inference credits for early-stage

Claim ↗

Vercel for Startups

Vercel·Verified

  • Official source

Credits + Enterprise features

Claim ↗

Sunday digest

One email, every Sunday. Three to five freshly verified programs. No pitch decks, no hot takes, no other days.