For individuals, the free trial includes up to $1,700 in credits; verified enterprises can get up to $8,500. ECS free trial packages can run up to 12 months, while other PAYG product credits typically expire after 60 days, so “worth” depends on what you activate. Practically, it’s enough to run ECS plus common building blocks like OSS and ApsaraDB long enough to validate an MVP architecture. If you’re here mainly for GenAI, Model Studio also has a separate free inference quota for Qwen models that lasts 90 days (Singapore region only).

Yes. Alibaba Cloud requires a credit card and verifies it with a small temporary hold (under $1) and a verification code.

ECS trial packages can be valid for up to 12 months, while other PAYG product credits expire after about 60 days.

Yes. If you have Alibaba Cloud credits you won’t use before they expire, you can list them on AI Credit Mart and sell them at up to 70% of face value. Companies regularly list surplus credits from startup programs and enterprise agreements.

AI Credit Mart has discounted Alibaba Cloud credits available from companies with surplus allocations. Prices are typically 30-70% below retail.

ECS trial packages won’t auto-bill after expiration, but PAYG products can start charging at standard rates if you keep using them or exceed the free credits. If you do not upgrade after the trial ends, Alibaba Cloud may delete your data.

No. Individual and Enterprise trials are mutually exclusive, so you can’t switch the same trial after signup.

No. The free inference quota for Model Studio is available only in the Singapore region, and the quota covers real-time inference only (not batch calls or context cache). Usage in the console updates hourly, which means you should leave some buffer if you’re trying to stay strictly within the free tier. Also, your Alibaba Cloud account and RAM users share the same free quota, so one noisy test script can burn it for everyone.

Up to $200 total: $100 is applied at signup, and you can earn another $100 by completing five onboarding tasks worth $20 each. You can spend the credits across eligible AWS usage, including Amazon Bedrock prompts (which are billed per token and deducted from your credits). Practically, it’s enough to build a small demo stack and run a meaningful Bedrock evaluation across multiple model families. It’s not meant to cover long-running production workloads, so treat it like a 12-month evaluation budget with a 6-month “no-billing” safety mode if you pick the Free plan.

Yes. AWS requires a valid credit or debit card and places a temporary $1 hold (released in about 3–5 days).

All credits expire 12 months from account creation, regardless of plan.

Yes. If you have AWS credits you won’t use before they expire, you can list them on AI Credit Mart and sell them at up to 70% of face value. Companies regularly list surplus credits from startup programs and enterprise agreements.

AI Credit Mart has discounted AWS credits available from companies with surplus allocations. Prices are typically 30-70% below retail.

The credits stop applying to usage after the 12-month expiration, so any continued usage depends on your plan. On the Paid plan, usage continues and you pay standard rates once credits are gone. On the Free plan, AWS does not charge you; when the Free plan period ends (about 6 months, or earlier if credits are exhausted), AWS closes the account and keeps data for about 90 days so you can upgrade and recover it.

You earn $20 each for launching and terminating an Amazon EC2 instance, configuring and launching an Amazon RDS database, building a simple web app with an AWS Lambda function URL, submitting a prompt in the Amazon Bedrock text playground, and setting a budget alert in AWS Budgets. You track completion in the “Explore AWS” widget in the AWS Console.

For most builders, start with the Free plan. AWS’s zero-charge guarantee means you won’t be billed, even if you burn through credits, and the downside is simply that the account is closed when the Free plan period ends. You can upgrade to Paid later and keep whatever credits remain (they still expire 12 months from signup). Be careful, though: once you upgrade you can’t downgrade back, and the Paid plan will bill you automatically after credits are exhausted, so set up Budgets before you flip that switch.

They’re worth $200 of eligible Azure usage for 30 days, plus access to 12-month free services and 65+ always-free services within monthly caps. In practice, that can cover a meaningful Azure OpenAI evaluation (since Azure OpenAI isn’t always-free), some small compute and database experiments, and a bunch of “free forever” AI utilities like Speech to Text (5 hours/month) or Language (5,000 records/month). The big lever is focus: spend the $200 on what isn’t included in free tiers, then lean on always-free limits for ongoing testing. Also remember the timer starts at signup, so don’t activate it and then wait two weeks to build.

Yes. Microsoft requires a non-prepaid credit/debit card for verification, and you may see a temporary ~$1 hold that disappears within 3–5 days.

The $200 credit lasts 30 days.

Yes. If you have Microsoft credits you won’t use before they expire, you can list them on AI Credit Mart and sell them at up to 70% of face value. Companies regularly list surplus credits from startup programs and enterprise agreements.

AI Credit Mart has discounted Microsoft credits available from companies with surplus allocations. Prices are typically 30-70% below retail.

After 30 days or credit exhaustion, you must upgrade to pay-as-you-go to keep free-tier services, and after 12 months there’s no auto-shutoff so some services can transition to paid rates.

Most Azure OpenAI models are available to all Azure customers without a separate registration form, and you can deploy models like GPT-4o and GPT-4.1 right away once you create an Azure OpenAI resource. Some models are limited-access, though. For GPT-5 (full), GPT-5.1, GPT-5.2, and a few related variants (including “codex” versions and o3 streaming), you may need to apply and wait about 4 days to 1 week for approval via aka.ms/oai/access. One more wrinkle: extra approval is also required if you want to modify content filters or abuse monitoring, and that typically requires a Microsoft account team relationship.

No.

There’s no fixed dollar amount. Google Cloud Always Free is a bundle of monthly quotas (like 1 e2-micro VM, 2 million Cloud Run requests, and 1 TB of BigQuery queries) that reset each billing cycle, which can be worth anywhere from “a small bill” to “meaningful savings” depending on what you run. For AI, Gemini API access via AI Studio is rate-limited (requests per minute, tokens per minute, and requests per day) rather than budget-limited, so the value is really “how many calls you can make” for free. If you’re building a lightweight backend plus a small demo UI, Always Free can cover hosting and basic usage for a long time. If you’re pushing heavy traffic or large data scans, you’ll hit the caps fast.

Yes for the GCP Always Free tier (billing account creation requires a credit/debit card), but Gemini API via Google AI Studio does not require a card.

The Always Free tier never expires; the quotas reset every billing cycle.

Yes. If you have Google credits you won’t use before they expire, you can list them on AI Credit Mart and sell them at up to 70% of face value. Companies regularly list surplus credits from startup programs and enterprise agreements.

AI Credit Mart has discounted Google credits available from companies with surplus allocations. Prices are typically 30-70% below retail.

Always Free quotas don’t expire, but if you exceed them on a paid billing account you are billed automatically at standard rates.

Yes. Use Google AI Studio to get an API key without a billing account or credit card, and you’ll be limited by free-tier rate limits (overages return HTTP 429 errors, not charges).

The Gemini API free tier includes daily request caps (RPD) that reset at midnight Pacific Time, plus per-minute limits like RPM and TPM. Limits are per GCP project, not per API key, which means generating extra keys won’t increase your quota. If you suddenly start hitting rate limits more than you used to, you’re not imagining it: Google reduced Gemini free-tier quotas by about 50–80% in December 2025. Also note that Gemini 2.0 Flash is scheduled to retire on March 3, 2026, so plan to migrate to Gemini 2.5 Flash or newer if you’re still on the legacy model.

They’re worth $300 in usage across most Google Cloud services for 91 days, including core GCP products like Compute Engine, BigQuery, Cloud Storage, and Vertex AI (for example, Vertex AI Studio with Gemini models). The practical value depends on what you run: you can build a real prototype, deploy an API, and test data workflows. The biggest caveat is that some high-demand resources are restricted on the trial (notably GPUs). If you need GPUs immediately, you’ll need a different path.

Yes, but it’s for identity verification only, with a temporary $0–$1 authorization hold.

The $300 Google Cloud Free Trial credits last 91 days from the day you sign up.

Yes. If you have Google credits you won’t use before they expire, you can list them on AI Credit Mart and sell them at up to 70% of face value. Companies regularly list surplus credits from startup programs and enterprise agreements.

AI Credit Mart has discounted Google credits available from companies with surplus allocations. Prices are typically 30-70% below retail.

If you don’t upgrade, your trial billing account auto-closes, workloads are stopped, and you get a 30-day grace period before resources are permanently deleted.

No. GPUs for Compute Engine VMs and GPUs on Vertex AI aren’t available during the free trial; they unlock only after you upgrade to a paid account.

Gemini API via Google AI Studio has its own permanent free tier that’s independent of the $300 trial. Vertex AI usage (like Vertex AI Studio with Gemini models) uses your GCP billing setup and can consume the $300 credits. Rate limits for the AI Studio free tier are roughly 5–15 requests per minute and up to about 1,000 requests per day depending on the model, and limits apply per Google Cloud project. Commercial use is allowed on that free tier.

There’s no single dollar value because Always Free is usage-limited infrastructure you can keep indefinitely, plus a separate $300 trial credit bucket for 30 days. The “worth” depends on what you run, but the standout value is the 4 ARM OCPUs with 24 GB RAM total, 2 Autonomous AI Databases, and 10 TB/month egress. That combination can replace a few small paid servers and a managed DB for many side projects. If you use the Autonomous AI Database features (vector search, hybrid search, APEX), the managed-service value is often higher than the raw VM value.

Yes, Oracle requires a credit/debit card for identity verification, and they state there’s no charge.

The Always Free resources have no time limit, and the $300 trial credits last 30 days.

Yes. If you have Oracle credits you won’t use before they expire, you can list them on AI Credit Mart and sell them at up to 70% of face value. Companies regularly list surplus credits from startup programs and enterprise agreements.

AI Credit Mart has discounted Oracle credits available from companies with surplus allocations. Prices are typically 30-70% below retail.

When the 30-day $300 trial credits expire, you lose the trial balance, but Always Free resources can remain available indefinitely if you stay within the free limits. Oracle states you won’t be charged unless you explicitly upgrade and exceed those limits. Practically, that means your free-tier services can keep running, but anything relying on paid trial usage needs to be resized or shut down.

It’s a region capacity issue: popular home regions often have exhausted free-tier ARM capacity. Oracle recommends selecting a less popular home region (such as Chicago, Montreal, or Frankfurt) to reduce the odds of hitting that wall.

Yes. Oracle may reclaim idle Always Free compute instances, and “idle” is defined over a 7-day window where CPU, network, and (for A1) memory utilization stay very low. They email you about 7 days before reclamation, and the instance is stopped, not deleted. You can restart it later if capacity is available in your region. If you want to avoid this policy entirely, Oracle recommends upgrading to Pay As You Go while still staying within Always Free limits so you pay nothing unless you exceed them.

They’re worth $300 in promotional credit you can spend on eligible OCI services for 30 days, including Compute, OCI Generative AI, Autonomous Database, storage, and networking. In practical terms, that can cover a real prototype: a couple of VMs, a database, and enough managed LLM calls to evaluate latency, quality, and basic RAG workflows. The trick is to treat the 30 days like a deadline, because it is. After that, you either upgrade to Pay As You Go or fall back to Always Free resources only.

Yes for most users; Oracle uses it for identity verification and says you won’t be charged unless you manually upgrade.

The $300 free-trial credits last 30 days, and the timer starts at signup (not first use).

Yes. If you have Oracle credits you won’t use before they expire, you can list them on AI Credit Mart and sell them at up to 70% of face value. Companies regularly list surplus credits from startup programs and enterprise agreements.

AI Credit Mart has discounted Oracle credits available from companies with surplus allocations. Prices are typically 30-70% below retail.

Your account stays active and transitions to Always Free, but paid (non-free-tier) resources enter a 30-day grace period and are then reclaimed (deleted) if you don’t upgrade.

No. Your home region selection is permanent, and Always Free resources can only be provisioned in that region.

Always Free includes AMD Compute VMs (2 VMs, each 1/8 OCPU and 1 GB RAM), Arm Ampere A1 capacity (4 OCPUs and 24 GB RAM total), plus storage (200 GB boot volume and 200 GB block volume). You also get two Autonomous Databases (each 1 OCPU and 20 GB), networking basics (VCN/subnets/security lists), a Load Balancer instance (10 Mbps), and generous outbound transfer (10 TB/month). There are also “ops” essentials like Monitoring & Notifications, Logging (10 GB/month), and Vault (secret/key limits). Availability can be capacity-limited in popular regions, so you may need to retry provisioning later.