2/5 Easy means you can usually get started with a standard account signup and a few verification steps. You might be asked to confirm your email, enable billing, or add a credit card for fraud prevention, but there’s no multi-page application, manual review, or sales contact. These programs tend to publish clear eligibility rules and deliver credits quickly. They’re ideal when you want to test an AI API, try a cloud platform, or claim a student perk without spending days on setup.

Most 2/5 Easy credits show up immediately after signup or within a few minutes. Some take a few hours, especially if billing verification is involved. Student plans can take longer if you must complete school verification, but they’re still typically same-day once approved.

This level includes programs from Alibaba Cloud, Google, Mistral AI, GitHub, JetBrains, Oracle, IBM, AWS, Anthropic, Microsoft, Perplexity, DigitalOcean, and Lightning AI. The mix spans student perks, always-free tiers, small monthly API credits, and starter compute or GPU access.

If you subscribe to Perplexity Pro, you get about $5 in API credits deposited at the start of each month in your API settings. You can then generate an API key and use the credit on eligible API usage (such as the Sonar model family). The balance does not roll over; any unused amount resets monthly. If you qualify for Perplexity’s Education Plan, you can often get Pro for free and still receive the monthly API credit during the plan period.