Best offer on record: Developer Sandbox — always-free plan (2 services + 2 cron jobs + 1 database). 3 verified findings, checked 2026-10-22.
Offers
Developer Sandbox — always-free plan (2 services + 2 cron jobs + 1 database) high confidence
Free 'Sandbox' plan (aka Developer Sandbox / Free Developer Projects since Nov 2021): 2 free services, 2 free cron jobs, 1 free database/addon (Postgres, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, RabbitMQ), up to 1 BYOC cluster, always-on compute with no sleeping or cold starts. Includes free SSL + custom domains, UI/API/CLI, logs and metrics, secret management. No cash credit is granted — 'credits' on Northflank are prepaid purchases ($50 minimum), so there is no trial-credit offer. Paid reference rates for what you hit beyond free: $0.01667/vCPU-hr, $0.00833/GB-hr memory, $0.15/GB-month disk, $0.06/GB egress (ingress free); GPUs start at $0.80/hr (L4) and require a $50+ credit purchase to unlock. Docs state the free tier 'should not be used for production applications'.
Eligibility
Open to any user; no .edu, age, funding or region restriction published. A payment method IS required on every plan (docs: 'all users must add a payment method to start creating resources on Northflank, regardless of plan selection') — for the free plan the card is only verified ('when you enter a card we only verify the card'; Northflank states you won't be charged unless you upgrade to a paid plan).
How to claim
1) Sign up at app.northflank.com (GitHub/GitLab/Google/email). 2) Select the free Sandbox plan when creating the team/organization. 3) Add a payment method when prompted (verification only for Sandbox). 4) Create a project and deploy up to 2 services, 2 cron jobs, 1 database add-on (from Git or container image). Free forever; upgrade to Pay-as-you-go any time, keeping existing resources.
Expiry
No expiry or renewal stated — permanently free. Logs/metrics retained ~1 month per docs. If you upgrade and later downgrade, your team must contain no more resources than the target plan allows.
Gotchas
Payment method required even on the free plan (rank risk: card is verified, not charged, on Sandbox; charge only on paid plans, billed at end of billing cycle with configurable billing alerts). Quotas are per account, not per project. BYOC on Sandbox keeps the Northflank orchestration free but your cloud provider (AWS/GCP/Azure/Oracle/CoreWeave/Civo/bare-metal) still bills you for underlying infra. Northflank does not publish free-tier egress/HTTP-request/log/metric quotas — third-party trackers estimate ~10 GB egress but that is unconfirmed by Northflank; not-intended-for-production warning; a third-party atlas notes a project-count discrepancy (pricing lists 2 projects, setup docs list 1). No 15-minute sleep: compute is explicitly always-on, unlike Fly.io/Render-style free tiers.
Student Developer Pack — doubled free tier (4 services) + student support medium confidence
Northflank's education offer: the standard free tier (2 services, 2 cron jobs, 1 database) is increased to 4 services plus student support for verified students. Program has existed since Jan 2022 (announced in changelog). No .edu-exclusive rule is stated in the cached page copy — it asks you to email 'via a valid student email'.
Eligibility
Students (group projects, assignments, side projects). Requires emailing from a valid student/academic email; recognized student address needed for the upgrade to be granted. No region limits published.
How to claim
Email students@northflank.com from your student email requesting the Student Developer Pack (standard offer: 4 services + student support); Northflank 'will be in contact' to verify and apply it. Note: the payment-method requirement of the base Sandbox plan still applies.
Expiry
No official expiry or renewal date published; implicitly valid while a student. Offer terms not officially re-stated on any live Northflank page as of 2026-10-22.
Gotchas
MAJOR: the official page https://northflank.com/student-developer-pack returned HTTP 404 when fetched 2026-10-22 (also /education is 404). The offer text above comes from the search-engine cached copy of that page plus third-party directories (studentoffers.co, open-awesome.com) that still list it, so the program may have been quietly retired or the URL changed in 2025-2026. Verify by emailing students@northflank.com before relying on it. Not part of any GitHub Student Developer Pack-style automated claim — it is manual email review.
Startups: no Northflank-branded startup program or trial credits — BYOC + third-party cloud credits instead medium confidence
Northflank has no published startup program, startup credit grant, or funded-startup discount of its own. The Pay-as-you-go plan is simply marketed toward 'Early stage startups'. Instead Northflank's 2026-03-30 blog documents how startups burn existing third-party credits on BYOC: AWS Activate Founders ($1,000 AWS credits + $350 dev-support credits, <10 employees, <$1M revenue/funding, no VC/accelerator affiliation, no prior Activate credits), YC Startup School ($2,500), Stripe Atlas ($5,000 auto-included for US incorporation), FounderPass (up to $5,000, $99/yr membership), VC/accelerator partner referrals ($10k–$100k+); credits typically last 12 months from issuance. With BYOC, those credits pay the cloud provider; Northflank charges its own flat per-cluster/vCPU/GB platform fees on top (or $0 platform fee within the Sandbox plan's 1 BYOC cluster).
Eligibility
Depends on each third-party program, not Northflank: AWS Activate Founders = bootstrapped, <10 employees, <$1M annual revenue/funding, no VC/accelerator affiliation; YC Startup School = open application; Stripe Atlas = founders incorporating a US entity; credits via accelerator/VC = enrollment in a recognized program. No Northflank-side age/funding cap exists because Northflank grants nothing.
How to claim
1) Obtain credits from AWS Activate / accelerator / Stripe etc. 2) Create a Northflank account (free Sandbox plan, card verified). 3) Connect your AWS/GCP/Azure account as a BYOC cluster. 4) Deploy on Northflank so compute runs on your credit-bearing cloud account; Northflank bills only its platform fee (free for 1 cluster on Sandbox).
Expiry
Underlying cloud credits expire (AWS: typically 12 months from issuance; 'credits last 12 months' per Northflank blog). The BYOC setup and Sandbox plan have no expiry; platform fees apply if you exceed Sandbox's 1 BYOC cluster.
Gotchas
These are not Northflank credits — a directory listing Northflank under 'free credits for startups' would be wrong; Northflank explicitly has 'no cash credit; free Developer Sandbox plan' (third-party tracker, checked 2026-09-02). BYOC still incurs Northflank's flat platform fees per cluster/vCPU/GB unless inside Sandbox. Aifree.dev's 'startups verification required: confirm your company details (age, funding, or website) to claim' refers to the directory's own verification of claims, not a Northflank program. Free Sandbox BYOC includes up to 1 cluster; more clusters requires upgrading.
As of 2026-10-22: (1) The official Student Developer Pack page (northflank.com/student-developer-pack) returns HTTP 404 — the program appears retired or URL-changed in 2025-2026 even though third-party directories still list 'free tier doubled for students' (4 services + student support via students@northflank.com); treat as unconfirmed pending email verification. (2) No Northflank-branded startup program or free trial-credit offer exists or was sunset — the startup route is BYOC with third-party credits (AWS Activate et al.). (3) 2025-2026 pricing changes: 11 Dec 2025 — network pricing cut 60% to $0.06/GB egress and new Tokyo + Melbourne regions (changelog); 2025-2026 releases added GPUs (B200, Granite Rapids), unified jobs, BYOC microVMs/sandboxes, object storage — none changed the free Sandbox quota of 2 services / 2 cron jobs / 1 database / 1 BYOC cluster, which has been stable since the Nov 2021 'Free Developer Projects' launch. No known sunset of the free tier itself; it remains always-on and free with card verification at signup.