The ladder
Credits for RAG and retrieval-heavy apps — embeddings, vector stores, and inference priced for experiments, not demos.
Credits that stack for retrieval-augmented apps on your data.
37 curated17 free tiersVerified weekly
Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub
MicrosoftVerified
- Official source
- Solo founder OK
- No VC needed
Up to
$150,000
Azure + OpenAI
Neon for Startups
NeonVerified
- Official source
- Solo founder OK
- No VC needed
Up to
$2,500
credits
Modal Startup Credits
ModalVerified
- Curated
- Solo founder OK
- No VC needed
Compute credits for AI startups
OpenAI Free Evaluation Credits
OpenAIVerified
- Curated
- Solo founder OK
- No VC needed
$5
API credit on signup (subject to change)
Groq Developer Free Tier
GroqVerified
- Curated
- Solo founder OK
- No VC needed
Free tier — Llama, Mixtral inference on LPU
Hugging Face Inference — Free Tier
Hugging FaceVerified
- Official source
- Solo founder OK
- No VC needed
Free serverless inference with monthly quota
AWS Activate
Amazon Web ServicesVerified
- Official source
- Solo founder OK
- No VC needed
From
$1,000
Founders · up to $100,000 with accelerator/VC partner · 2 years
Google for Startups Cloud Program
Google CloudVerified
- Official source
- Solo founder OK
- No VC needed
Up to
$350,000
over 2 years
MongoDB for Startups
MongoDBVerified
- Official source
- Solo founder OK
- No VC needed
Up to
$5,000
Atlas
Pinecone for Startups
PineconeVerified
- Official source
- Solo founder OK
- No VC needed
Up to
$2,500
Pinecone
Together AI Startup Credits
Together AIVerified
- Curated
Inference credits for early-stage
PostHog for Startups
PostHogVerified
- Official source
- Solo founder OK
- No VC needed
$50,000
PostHog credits + Teams plan
Anthropic for Startups
AnthropicVerified
- Official source
$5,000
API
Vercel for Startups
VercelVerified
- Official source
Credits + Enterprise features
NVIDIA Inception
NVIDIAVerified
- Official source
- No VC needed
GPU cloud credits + DGX discounts + NVIDIA tech access
Oracle for Startups
OracleVerified
- Official source
- No VC needed
Up to
$500,000
OCI credits (tiered)
Deepgram — Startup Program
DeepgramVerified
- Official source
- Solo founder OK
- No VC needed
Up to
$100,000
credits over 12 months (tiered)
AssemblyAI — Startup Program
AssemblyAIVerified
- Official source
- Solo founder OK
- No VC needed
200,000 hours speech-to-text credits (approved startups)
Fireworks — For Startups
Fireworks AIVerified
- Official source
- Solo founder OK
- No VC needed
Build credits + higher rate limits (application required)
Baseten — AI Startup Program
BasetenVerified
- Official source
- Solo founder OK
- No VC needed
Up to
$27,500
credits (inference + model APIs, tiered)
LangSmith — For Startups
LangChainVerified
- Official source
- Solo founder OK
- No VC needed
Up to
$10,000
LangSmith credits on Scale tier (eligibility applies)
Upstash — Free Tier
UpstashVerified
- Official source
- Solo founder OK
- No VC needed
Free tier — Redis, vector search, QStash within published limits
Mistral — API Free Tier
Mistral AIVerified
- Official source
- Solo founder OK
- No VC needed
Free experiment tier — rate-limited API (see console)
OpenRouter — Starter Credits
OpenRouterVerified
- Curated
- Solo founder OK
- No VC needed
$1
starter credits + free-model routing (verify in dashboard)
Google AI Studio — Gemini API Free Tier
GoogleVerified
- Official source
- Solo founder OK
- No VC needed
Free Gemini API access with daily rate-limited quota
Cohere — Trial API Key
CohereVerified
- Official source
- Solo founder OK
- No VC needed
Free trial API key — rate-limited model + embeddings access
Cerebras Inference — Free Developer Tier
CerebrasVerified
- Official source
- Solo founder OK
- No VC needed
Free inference on Llama + Qwen — fastest tokens/sec available
Perplexity API — Free Monthly Credit
PerplexityVerified
- Official source
- Solo founder OK
- No VC needed
$5
/month API credit on Pro — web-grounded model access
Voyage AI — Free Embedding Tokens
Voyage AIVerified
- Official source
- Solo founder OK
- No VC needed
Millions of free embedding tokens per model on signup
Jina AI — Free API Tokens
Jina AIVerified
- Official source
- Solo founder OK
- No VC needed
Free API tokens across embeddings, reranker, reader, and search
NVIDIA Build — Free NIM API Credits
NVIDIAVerified
- Official source
- Solo founder OK
- No VC needed
Free API credits across NIM-hosted open models
SambaNova Cloud — Free Developer Tier
SambaNovaVerified
- Official source
- Solo founder OK
- No VC needed
Free developer access to hosted Llama, Qwen, and DeepSeek
Tavily — Free Search API Credits
TavilyVerified
- Official source
- Solo founder OK
- No VC needed
Free monthly search API credits — built for LLM agents
Exa — Free Search API Credits
ExaVerified
- Official source
- Solo founder OK
- No VC needed
Free monthly search credits — neural + keyword web search
Firecrawl — Free Crawl Credits
FirecrawlVerified
- Official source
- Solo founder OK
- No VC needed
Free monthly crawl + scrape credits — LLM-ready markdown output
Qdrant Cloud — Free 1GB Cluster
QdrantVerified
- Official source
- Solo founder OK
- No VC needed
Free 1GB managed Qdrant cluster — no credit card required
Weaviate Cloud — Free Sandbox
WeaviateVerified
- Official source
- Solo founder OK
- No VC needed
Free 14-day sandbox cluster for evaluation