Direct link. No credit card. $100 in compute.
What You Get
- $100 Azure credit — usable across all Azure services
- No credit card required — just your school email
- 12 months of popular free services on top of the credit
- Always free services — 750 hours of B1s VM, 5GB blob storage, Azure Functions (1M requests/month)
Fastest Activation Path
- Go to azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free/students
- Click "Start for free"
- Sign in with your school/university email
- Verify student status (instant in most cases)
- Credit appears immediately in your Azure portal
No waiting. No application review. If your .edu email is recognized, you're in.
What to Do With $100
At Azure's lowest VM pricing, $100 gets you roughly:
- B1s VM running 24/7 for ~11 months (enough for a personal server, Docker host, or VPN)
- Or spin up an AI endpoint with Azure OpenAI Service and test GPT-4 calls
- Or host a PostgreSQL database + web app for your portfolio
Renew Every Year
The $100 credit refreshes annually as long as you're still a student. Combined with the Always Free tier services, you can run infrastructure indefinitely at zero cost.
Pass this to any student running projects on their laptop. A free VM means your project stays online even when your laptop is off.