Best offer on record: Koyeb Startup Program — up to $30,000 in free compute credits. 4 verified findings, checked 2026-10-22.
Offers
Koyeb Startup Program — up to $30,000 in free compute credits high confidence
Up to $30,000 in free credits usable on Standard CPU and GPU instances (the application form also mentions Postgres databases per third-party trackers). Extras: solutions-engineer onboarding, dedicated Slack channel for priority support, white-glove migration, early access to new features, and extra resources/features/regions for startup accounts; the 2024 launch post also listed exclusive swag. Launched 2024-06-21 (Day 5 of Koyeb Launch Week). Still advertised on the official pricing page as of 2026-10-22 ('Early stage startup: Get up to $30k in credits...').
Eligibility
Seed-stage companies. Prioritized: (a) part of a Koyeb partner accelerator (new cohorts onboarded regularly) or (b) raised $1M-$5M from VCs. Bootstrapped / just-started companies are encouraged to apply and are reviewed case-by-case. No .edu requirement, no age cap, no stated region limit (global). No credit card required to apply; however, to use credits you need a Koyeb account, and new Koyeb signups must have a valid payment method and subscribe to a paid plan (Pro/Scale/Enterprise) since Feb 2026.
How to claim
1) Open the official program page (linked from koyeb.com/pricing) and click apply; the application form is at tally.so/r/w4kzad. 2) Fill in company website, founding year, funding, region, and how you plan to use Koyeb. 3) Koyeb's Startup Program team reviews and responds 'within the week.' 4) On approval, credits are applied to your Koyeb account for Standard CPU/GPU instances; you get solutions-engineer onboarding and a dedicated Slack channel.
Expiry
One-time credit grant on approval; the official page states no credit validity period or expiry date; program is ongoing and was verified still advertised on the official pricing page on 2026-10-22.
Gotchas
$30,000 is a ceiling — the actual amount is decided case-by-case after review. Program launched under standalone Koyeb (June 2024); Koyeb entered a definitive agreement to join Mistral AI on 2026-02-17, so terms/partners may change — re-check the official page before applying. Third-party trackers state new Koyeb users must be on a paid plan (Pro or above), i.e. credits ride on a paid account; the official post does not state this. No published credit expiry — rely on terms received at approval.
Free Starter plan + 1 free 512 MB instance — grandfathered to existing organizations only high confidence
One free web Service per organization: 512 MB RAM, 0.1 vCPU, 2 GB SSD, deployable only in Frankfurt or Washington, D.C. It auto-scales to zero after 1 hour of no traffic (wakes in seconds on next request). Restrictions: cannot be used as a Worker Service, no custom scaling configuration, no persistent Volumes. The Starter plan itself is $0 pay-per-use: you're charged only for resources used beyond the free allowances (FAQ: outbound bandwidth 'not charged yet', 100 GB/mo free, then $0.04/GB — billing 'ahead of time' notice promised; custom domains free on paid plans). Since the Feb 2026 Mistral AI agreement, the Starter plan is closed to new signups; the pricing page lists only Pro ($29/mo + compute), Scale ($299/mo), and Enterprise ($1,000/mo+); new users sign up on Pro with a credit card and pro-rated charge. Existing Starter organizations keep their current terms.
Eligibility
Existing Koyeb organizations already on the free/Starter plan (grandfathered). NOT available to new accounts as of Feb 2026 — new signups require a credit card/payment method and a paid plan (Pro/Scale/Enterprise). No .edu requirement. Region-limited: free instance only in Frankfurt or Washington, D.C.
How to claim
Nothing to claim — existing Starter orgs keep their free instance automatically. New users cannot obtain it: sign-up defaults to Pro with a $29 pre-authorization card hold plus pro-rated Pro charge; the docs FAQ still says Pro 'can be downgraded to the Starter plan at any time', but the post-Mistral FAQ flow restricts new signups to paid plans.
Expiry
No published sunset date for grandfathered free instances. Koyeb's own announcement says the platform will transition into a core component of Mistral Compute 'in the coming months'; third-party reporting (Aug 2026) quotes the FAQ as saying the Starter plan will be 'removed soon / in the coming months'. Export anything you'd miss; do not build long-term dependency.
Gotchas
Free instance limits: 1 per org, 1 of 2 regions, 512 MB RAM / 0.1 vCPU / 2 GB SSD, scale-to-zero after 1h idle, no Workers/volumes/custom scaling. Free outbound egress is 'not charged yet' (100 GB/mo allowance; $0.04/GB after) — can start with notice. Paid-plan extra bandwidth: $0.02/GB EU/US, $0.04/GB Asia. New signups: credit card mandatory ($29 pre-auth, immediate pro-rated Pro charge) — so the free tier is effectively no longer free-to-start for anyone new. Many 2024-2025 articles still describe a sign-up-able 'Hobby' free tier: stale. The old $5.50/mo free credit was already removed 2024-02-01.
Free Serverless Postgres tier ('Free 5h'): $0/hr, 0.25 vCPU / 1 GB RAM / 1 GB storage, ~5 h active per day high confidence
Koyeb's Serverless Postgres has a free option priced $0/hr and $0/mo: 0.25 vCPU, 1 GB RAM, 1 GB storage. The pricing page's activity schedule for it is 'Dev/Staging/CI environments (4h/day)' with scale-to-zero on inactivity; the docs FAQ describes it as 'one free PostgreSQL database limited to 5 hours of active time and 1 GB of storage.' 100% Postgres-compatible. Additional storage billed at $0.50/GB/month (the 1 GB attached to the free tier is included). One free Postgres is listed as included with plans.
Eligibility
Available with Koyeb plans (FAQ: free Postgres 'included with all plans'). In practice, new accounts today must sign up for a paid plan (Pro $29/mo + compute at minimum) with a valid credit card/payment method, so the free Postgres is effectively gated behind a Pro account for new users. No .edu requirement, no region limit stated.
How to claim
1) Sign up for Koyeb (GitHub/Google SSO, passkey, or email; add a credit card — $29 pre-auth hold, pro-rated Pro charge). 2) Create a Serverless Postgres database and select the free / 'Free 5h' option ($0/hr). 3) Set the activity schedule to Dev/Staging/CI (4 h/day) so it pauses outside active hours.
Expiry
Ongoing as of 2026-10-22; no expiry stated on official pages. The database auto-pauses after the daily active hours (4-5 h/day); you get one free Postgres per org.
Gotchas
Explicitly for dev/staging/CI, not production: only ~4-5 hours of active time per day. New users need a credit card and pay the Pro base fee ($29/mo + compute) even to use the $0 Postgres — it is not a no-card, no-cost onboarding path for new accounts. Egress beyond plan allowance is billed ($0.02/GB EU/US; $0.04/GB Asia). The 0.25 vCPU/1 GB tier is small — heavy dev DBs will be latency-bound.
Koyeb has no education license, student program, or .edu-based offer. The official pricing page, pricing FAQ, and docs contain no education section or student discount; student-perks trackers (e.g., freEDU) do not list any Koyeb student offer. Students get the same terms as any user: new accounts require a credit card and a paid plan (Pro/Scale/Enterprise); the only zero-cost options are the grandfathered free 512 MB instance (existing orgs only) and the $0 Postgres tier (requires CC + paid plan for new users). The Startup Program is the only real free credit program, and it is company-level (early-stage startups), not school-affiliated.
Eligibility
N/A — no student offer exists. .edu email confers nothing at Koyeb.
How to claim
N/A — nothing to claim.
Expiry
N/A.
Gotchas
Anyone advertising 'Koyeb free for students' is citing stale or fabricated terms; verify only against koyeb.com official pages.
2025-2026 changes: (1) 2026-02-17: Koyeb entered a definitive agreement to join Mistral AI (Mistral's first acquisition, undisclosed price; Koyeb's 3 co-founders + 13 employees joined Mistral's engineering team in March 2026). The Koyeb platform continues operating and is transitioning to become a core component of 'Mistral Compute'. Material consequence: new users can only sign up for paid plans (Pro $29/mo + compute, Scale $299/mo, Enterprise $1,000/mo+) with a valid payment method; the free Starter plan was closed to new signups and Koyeb's FAQ says it will be removed 'soon / in the coming months' (no date published). Grandfathered free instances for existing orgs remain in effect as of 2026-10-22, but the official wording ('in the coming months') makes this a sunset-pending offer — export workloads. (2) 2025-03: free instances changed to automatically scale to zero after 1 hour of inactivity (cost-sustaining change). (3) The $30k Startup Program has NOT been publicly sunset; it was verified still advertised on the official pricing page on 2026-10-22, but its terms (partner accelerators, credit amounts, response SLAs) were set pre-acquisition and may change under Mistral AI — treat as at-risk. (4) Context from before 2025: the old $5.50/month free credit was removed from all accounts 2024-02-01 and replaced by the free instance type; GPU prices were cut up to 24% on Nov 7, 2025 (A100/H100/L40S). Sources: https://www.koyeb.com/blog/koyeb-is-joining-mistral-ai-to-build-the-future-of-ai-infrastructure , https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/17/mistral-ai-buys-koyeb-in-first-acquisition-to-back-its-cloud-ambitions/ , https://www.koyeb.com/changelog , https://www.koyeb.com/blog/koyeb-for-startups-accelerate-with-credits-for-high-performance-infrastructure , https://www.koyeb.com/pricing , https://www.koyeb.com/docs/faqs/pricing , https://www.koyeb.com/docs/reference/instances
Critic corrections
Koyeb (Startup program): Free tier closed to new users (secondary source). AgentDeals (checked Sept 30, 2026) reports Koyeb has had no free plan for new users since February 2026; Pro starts at $29/month. The startup-program credit figures were not re-verified.