Every Free Credit and Promo Code for Developer Tools (2026)
Last verified: 29 August 2026. Every row below was re-checked on that date against the vendor’s own pricing page or documentation — except where the row says otherwise. Canva blocks automated checking outright, and in several cases the real number lives in a help centre rather than on the pricing page.
Why pay full price when nearly every developer tool gives away free credits? Because half the lists telling you about them are quoting offers that no longer exist.
What the 29 August re-check found, stated plainly. Two programs on this page had ended and were still listed: PlanetScale’s free Hobby tier, retired on 8 April 2024 — over two years before this page was last “refreshed” — and LogRocket’s free plan, which no longer exists at all. Five more figures had moved, including Railway’s ongoing free allowance, which this page overstated by 5x. Both dead rows are removed and every moved figure is corrected below.
That is an uncomfortable thing to publish about your own page, and it is the reason this page is worth reading: free-credit programs get withdrawn silently, nobody emails you, and a list that isn’t re-checked rots faster than almost any other kind of content. Where a vendor blocks automated checking or publishes nothing, this page now says so instead of repeating a number it can’t stand behind.
AI Coding Tools
| Tool | Free Offer | How to Get It |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub Copilot | Free for students + open-source maintainers | education.github.com |
| xAI / SpaceXAI (Grok) | Unconfirmed — widely quoted as $25, but not documented | console.x.ai |
| xAI / SpaceXAI data sharing | Unconfirmed — widely quoted as $150/mo, not documented | console.x.ai |
| Google Gemini API | Free tier exists; Google no longer publishes confirmable RPM/daily-token figures | ai.google.dev |
| Anthropic Claude API | ”New users receive a small amount of free credits to test the API” — no dollar figure published | pricing docs |
| Together AI | Credit offer no longer confirmable from their own docs | together.ai |
| Groq | Free tier — see “Free Plan Limits” | console.groq.com/docs/rate-limits — the marketing site doesn’t mention the free tier at all |
Cloud & Hosting
| Service | Free Offer | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare Pages | Free — 100 projects per account, 500 builds/month, 1 build at a time | Not literally unlimited, as this page used to say — the limits page publishes a cap |
| Vercel | Free tier — hobby projects | Generous limits for personal use |
| Railway | $1/month usage credit on the ongoing Free plan. Separately, a $5 one-time 30-day trial credit, “No credit card required” | railway.com |
| Supabase | Free tier — 2 projects, 500MB DB | supabase.com |
| Neon | Free tier — PostgreSQL, 0.5GB | neon.com |
| ❌ ENDED. No free tier | The Hobby plan was retired 8 April 2024. Every current plan is paid, from $5/mo. Their announcement |
On Railway, because this page had it wrong: the widely-quoted “$5/month free” conflates two different things. Railway’s pricing table lists a Free Trial row — a $5 one-time credit over 30 days, marked “No credit card required” — and a separate ongoing Free row at $0/month with $1/month of included usage. Railway’s docs: “the free trial reverts to the Free plan, which provides $1 of free credit per month”. If you are budgeting a long-running hobby project, $1/month is the number that applies to you. Railway does not state on any of its pricing or docs pages whether the ongoing Free plan requires a card, so don’t assume either way.
App Store & Marketing
| Tool | Free Offer | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Apple Ads (formerly Apple Search Ads) | $100 USD credit, new accounts | Apple: “Try ads on the App Store for free with a 100 USD credit.” The programme was renamed from Apple Search Ads to Apple Ads in April 2025 — ads.apple.com, credit terms |
| Google Ads | Varies — and the $500 you’ve seen is a spend requirement, not a credit | Google’s example: “You spend the required amount (for example, $500 USD)…” and “Criteria for promotions varies, so review your offer for details on the spend requirement and the potential credit amount.” Support |
| Bing / Microsoft Ads | Amount unverified. Microsoft publishes the mechanism but not a figure we could confirm — and the mechanism is not “free money” | Microsoft’s own coupon help page: “A minimum qualifying amount on advertising charges (excluding taxes) may be required before the promotional credit is applied to your account,” and “Any remaining credit not used by its expiration date will be forfeited.” It names no amount, so the widely-quoted $500 stays unverified here. Coupon offer details |
Analytics & Monitoring
| Tool | Free Offer | Details |
|---|---|---|
| TelemetryDeck | 50K events/month for accounts created on or after 1 July 2026. 100K if you signed up before that | Privacy-first analytics. Their pricing update |
| Sentry | 5K errors/month free | Crash reporting |
| PostHog | 1M events/month free | Product analytics |
| ❌ ENDED. No permanent free plan | A 14-day trial only. Cheapest paid tier is ~$176/mo for 25K sessions. Pricing |
If you’re signing up for TelemetryDeck now, the number you’ll see is 50,000, not the 100,000 this page used to quote. TelemetryDeck cut it on 1 July 2026 and grandfathered existing accounts: “All accounts created with us before July 1, 2026, will retain the limit of 100,000 free events per month.” That cut landed five weeks before this page’s previous refresh and this page missed it.
Design & Content
| Tool | Free Offer | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Canva | Unverified — free tier exists, but we could not confirm its limits | canva.com/pricing returned HTTP 403 to our checks, twice. The “unlimited designs” claim this page used to make is not something we can stand behind |
| Figma | Free tier — one folder containing 3 files, not 3 projects | Figma plans and features. The pricing page itself never states the number; only the help centre does. Figma renamed this help article’s slug from “Starter plan features” and broadened its scope to all plans; the free-tier figure is unchanged. Re-checked 5 September 2026 |
| ElevenLabs | 10K credits/month free — not 10K characters | Pricing. Credits are consumed at different rates per feature, so this buys less plain text-to-speech than a flat character count implies |
| Pexels | Free API — 200 requests/hour and 20,000/month, and attribution is required | Unlimited is available on request, after demonstrating correct attribution. Their API docs ask you to credit the photographer and “show a prominent link to Pexels.” This page previously said no attribution was needed, which was wrong |
Domain & Email
| Service | Free Offer | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare Email Routing | Free — custom domain email | Forward to Gmail |
| ImprovMX | Free tier — email forwarding | Simple setup |
The Pro Move
Stack these together and you can run a full SaaS product for $0/month:
- Hosting: Cloudflare Pages (free, up to 100 projects)
- Database: Supabase free tier (2 projects, 500MB)
- Auth: Supabase Auth (included)
- Analytics: TelemetryDeck free tier (50K events/month on a new account)
- Monitoring: Sentry free tier (5K errors/month)
- AI API: Gemini free tier + Groq free tier
- Email: Cloudflare Email Routing
Total: $0/month, and every figure in that list was checked on 29 August 2026. Note what’s not in it any more: this page used to put PlanetScale in the database slot, on a free tier that had been dead since April 2024.
Know a deal we missed, or spot one on this page that has quietly ended? Email stackwrite@beatroot.dev. This page is re-verified against every vendor’s own pricing page on a rolling basis, and the date at the top is the last time that happened — not the last time a word was changed.
Keep reading:
Frequently Asked Questions
How can I get free credits for AI coding tools?
GitHub Copilot is free for students and verified open-source maintainers. The widely-quoted $25 xAI/SpaceXAI signup credit could not be confirmed in their own documentation, so treat it as unverified.
What are some free cloud hosting options for developers?
Cloudflare Pages is free up to 100 projects per account, Vercel has a free tier for hobby projects, and Railway's ongoing Free plan includes $1 of monthly usage credit. Railway's $5 credit is a separate one-time 30-day trial that requires no credit card, not a recurring allowance.
Are there any free analytics tools for developers?
Yes. Sentry offers 5K errors/month free and PostHog offers 1M events/month free. TelemetryDeck gives 50,000 free events/month to accounts created on or after 1 July 2026; accounts created before that date keep the old 100,000.
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