GPU, ML training & notebooks
21 providers and 310 verified findings for this front, as of 2026-10-22.
Mapping summary. GPU, ML training & notebooks — free tiers, trial credits, student offers and startup programs, verified against official pages (checked 2026-10-22). Verified live: Kaggle 30h/wk GPU quota, Colab free T4 (dynamic limits, 12h sessions), HF Spaces free ZeroGPU (5 min/day; as of July 2026 all new compute Spaces incl. CPU Basic are paywalled, free accounts keep only 2 ZeroGPU Spaces + free Static), Paperspace free M4000 notebooks, Modal $30/mo Starter, GCP $300/90d trial + e2-micro, Azure $200/30d + B1s 750h/mo x12mo, AWS new $200/6mo free plan (old p3 12h/mo free tier ended July 2025). NOT free (checked 2026-09/10, official pages show nothing free): TensorDock (no free credit), Vast.ai (no free credit), DataCrunch — now rebranded Verda (pure pay-as-you-go, no free tier/credit), Spheron (paid per-minute marketplace, H100 ~$2.98/hr; only sporadic community token giveaways), RunPod for ordinary users (no free tier; only a $1,000 startup-tier credit and enterprise/academic programs). Also closed: AWS SageMaker Studio Lab (free Jupyter+GPU) and Colab Pro for Education, both closed to new signups 2026-07-30. Lambda has no signup credit — only its competitive up-to-$5,000 Research Grant for academic researchers. Local open-source runtimes (Ollama, llama.cpp, LM Studio, GPUStack, SGLang) remain free-for-all on your own GPU.
Comparison table
| Provider | Best offer | Audience | Findings H / M / L | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AWS (Amazon Web Services) | AWS Free plan (new-account credits: $100 base + up to $100 earned, 6-month window) | startup, free-for-all, student | 68 / 18 / 4 | aws.amazon.com |
| Baseten Startup Program | Baseten AI Startup Program ("Baseten for Startups") — up to $25,000 credits (Dedicated Inference/Training) + up to $2,500 (Model APIs) | startup | 2 / 1 / 0 | baseten.co |
| Camber | Camber Student plan via GitHub Student Developer Pack (monthly free compute) | student | 3 / 1 / 0 | education.github.com |
| Google Cloud | Google Cloud Free Trial — $300 welcome credit (90 days) | startup, free-for-all, student | 51 / 13 / 1 | docs.cloud.google.com |
| Google Colab Free Tier | Colab Free Tier (Notebooks) — free CPU/GPU/TPU runtimes | free-for-all | 2 / 0 / 1 | research.google.com |
| GPUStack | Free open-source self-hosted runtime (the only real free offer; available to students and startups alike) | free-for-all | 1 / 1 / 0 | gpustack.ai |
| Hugging Face | Inference Providers free account: NO monthly credits (as of Oct 2026) | free-for-all | 10 / 2 / 3 | huggingface.co |
| Kaggle Notebooks | Kaggle Notebooks free GPU weekly quota (30 h/week, P100 or T4) | free-for-all | 1 / 3 / 0 | kaggle.com |
| Lambda Research Grant | Lambda Research Grant (up to $5,000 GPU cloud credits for researchers) | student | 2 / 0 / 0 | lambda.ai |
| Lightning AI Studios | Free plan: 1 free CPU Studio + up to 30 one-time free credits (~80 GPU hours on interruptible machines) | free-for-all | 2 / 1 / 0 | lightning.ai |
| llama.cpp | llama.cpp itself — free open-source local engine (no hosted offer) | free-for-all | 2 / 1 / 0 | github.com |
| LM Studio | Free desktop app (LM Studio + Bionic) — unlimited local inference at $0 | free-for-all | 3 / 1 / 0 | lmstudio.ai |
| Microsoft Azure | Azure Free Account — $200 credit + 12 months of free services | startup, student, free-for-all | 49 / 14 / 4 | azure.microsoft.com |
| Modal | Modal Starter Plan — $30/month free compute credits (free tier) | free-for-all, student | 6 / 2 / 0 | modal.com |
| NVIDIA | Free rate-limited NIM hosted inference (NVIDIA Developer Program) | free-for-all, startup | 7 / 9 / 0 | build.nvidia.com |
| Ollama | Ollama local inference runtime (free, open source) | free-for-all | 3 / 0 / 0 | ollama.com |
| OVHcloud Free Trial | Public Cloud Free Trial (global, www.ovhcloud.com) — US$200 / 1 month | free-for-all | 3 / 2 / 1 | ovhcloud.com |
| Paperspace | Gradient Free plan — free GPU notebook (M4000) for any new user | free-for-all | 2 / 2 / 0 | paperspace.com |
| RunPod Startup Program | Startup Program — Starter Tier: $1,000 free credits for pre-Series A startups | startup | 3 / 1 / 0 | runpod.io |
| SGLang | SGLang open-source inference engine (Apache-2.0) — permanently free | free-for-all | 1 / 1 / 0 | github.com |
| Thunder Compute | Student Credits — $20 free credit (A6000/L40 only) | student | 2 / 0 / 0 | thundercompute.com |
Other service fronts
- LLM & AI model APIs, inference and agent platforms
- Startup cloud-credit programs (VC / accelerator funded)
- Managed databases & data platforms
- Frontend hosting, PaaS & app deployment
- VPS, bare-metal & dedicated servers
- Dev tools, IDEs, Git & CI/CD
- Observability, monitoring, uptime & CDN
- Auth, security, product analytics & feature flags
- Email, SMS, push & chat APIs
- API marketplaces, free public APIs, search & CMS
- Payments & fintech dev tools
- University & education-only programs (.edu / student email)
- Self-hosted open-source alternatives that replace paid SaaS
- Extras: gap-fill finds and providers outside the 14 fronts