Best offer on record: Prometheus self-hosted (open source). 8 verified findings, checked 2026-10-22.
Offers
Prometheus self-hosted (open source) high confidence
Core offer: Prometheus is 100% open source under Apache 2.0, a CNCF graduated project. Free, unlimited, self-contained time-series DB; no pricing, tiers, or per-metric limits exist for the OSS server. Pairs with Grafana OSS (also free) for dashboards and Alertmanager for alerting. No account, no claim, no expiry; the only cost is the infrastructure you host it on (cloud compute/egress).
Eligibility
Universal: anyone (students, startups, enterprises, noncommercial or commercial). No .edu, no funding cap, no credit card.
How to claim
No claim needed. Download binary/Docker from prometheus.io/download or your package manager; deploy and point Grafana at it. Optionally use k8s (kube-prometheus-stack).
Expiry
None — Apache 2.0 license, indefinite.
Gotchas
Trial-vs-free: there is no trial, it is simply free. Watch your hosting/egress costs, retention (local disk is finite), HA setup (thanos/cortex/remote write adds complexity), and scale limits of a single node. Managed tiers below exist precisely to offload ops.
Grafana Cloud Free plan (managed Prometheus metrics) high confidence
Per grafana.com/pricing (read today): 3 active users; up to 10k active metric series/month; 50 GB ingested/month across logs/traces/profiles; 14-day retention for metrics/logs/traces/profiles; 100k synthetics API executions + 10k browser test executions/month; 500 k6 vUser-hours; community support. No credit card required. Pro starts at $19/mo platform fee + usage (e.g., $6.50/1k series for metrics).
Eligibility
Universal, no education/startup status needed. CC explicitly not required on the free plan.
How to claim
Sign up at grafana.com (Grafana Cloud), choose the Free plan, then configure your Prometheus to remote-write to the Grafana cloud ingestion endpoint — free managed Prometheus with no card.
Expiry
Indefinite free plan; no expiry, no auto-conversion.
Gotchas
Free is capped at 10k active series and 50 GB ingest/month — overage pushes you to paid. Retention is short (14 days; Pro gives 13 months metrics/30 days logs). 'No credit card required' is the page's claim — verify at signup, Grafana has occasionally asked for a card in promos.
Grafana Labs Startup Program (Grafana Cloud credits for Prometheus logs/traces/metrics) high confidence
Per the official blog (read today): up to $100,000 in Grafana Cloud credits for 12 months OR until the next funding round, usable on any Grafana Cloud service (logs, traces, metrics incl. managed Prometheus, k6, synthetics, IRM). Ideal profile: < $10M raised and < 25 employees, but larger startups are encouraged to apply. Admission at sole discretion; accepted startups agree to be a reference customer and possible marketing collaboration. After credits expire: guaranteed 20% discount off list pricing. Announced at ObservabilityCON, 25 Sep 2024.
Eligibility
Early-stage startups (ideal: <$10M raised, <25 employees, open to exceeding guidelines); all new Grafana Cloud customers incl. free-tier users, and Grafana OSS users moving to managed. Not aimed at students/education. Discretionary acceptance.
How to claim
Complete the 4-question application (Typeform link published in the official blog post; program web pages grafana.com/startups and grafana.com/startup-program both 404'd today — use the blog post's link or contact Grafana sales to apply).
Expiry
Credits valid 12 months or until next funding round, whichever first; renewal beyond that is the 20% list-price discount, not more credits.
Gotchas
Trial-vs-free: this is a credits program, not a permanent free tier — after burn, you pay (less). Reference-customer/marketing strings attached. Verify the live application URL before assuming the program is still open (web page 404 today; program is 2+ years old as of 2026).
AWS Managed Service for Prometheus free tier high confidence
Per aws.amazon.com/prometheus/pricing (read today): free tier includes 40M ingested metric samples/month, 200B query samples processed/month, and 10 GB of stored metrics — 'you can get started with Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus for free (in supported AWS Regions)'.
Eligibility
Anyone with an AWS account (new-account free tier terms apply); no student/education or startup status required; no CC claim beyond normal AWS account setup.
How to claim
Create a Prometheus workspace in a supported AWS region; free tier applies automatically, no enrollment.
Expiry
Free tier is ongoing (not a 12-month trial) subject to AWS free-tier policy; limits are monthly.
Gotchas
Only available in 'supported AWS Regions' — check region coverage. Limits are per-sample, so a high-cardinality scrape job can burn 40M samples fast; overage bills per sample/GB, and the 200B query-sample cap can surprise. This sample-based structure differs from the 100 GB/month + custom-label-sets limits third-party trackers historically reported for AMP (see sunset_notes).
Datadog Free plan (including Prometheus monitoring) high confidence
Per datadoghq.com/pricing (read today): Free tier = up to 5 hosts, unlimited user accounts, 100 custom metrics allotted per host, 500 custom events/host, 5 containers per host, out-of-the-box dashboards, unlimited alerts; full-resolution data retention shown as 1 day on the current page. Prometheus is covered via Datadog's Prometheus integration (APM/infrastructure monitoring); Prometheus is not named on the pricing page's free-tier table.
Eligibility
Universal (students/startups/anyone); no .edu requirement. Credit-card policy is not stated on the page — Datadog's signup historically asks for a payment method even for the free plan, so do not assume no-CC.
How to claim
Sign up at datadoghq.com, select the Free plan, install the Datadog agent or point Prometheus at Datadog's endpoint.
Expiry
Free plan is perpetual; no expiry.
Gotchas
Current page states 1-day full-resolution retention on Free (historically 14 days) — materially thinner than older marketing. The 'Start Free Trial' CTA wording conflates the Free plan with a trial; verify you're on the Free plan, not a trial with clock. CC policy unverified on the page.
Cloudflare for Startups (CDN/uptime front; credits + free tier) high confidence
Per cloudflare.com/startups (read today): up to $350,000 in credits, valid 1 year or until consumed (no extensions), across three tiers — Tier 3: $10,000 (bootstrapped or <$1M raised, no partner needed); Tier 2: $100,000 (<$5M raised, funded by an affiliated partner, gets an account manager); Tier 1: $350,000 ($5M+ raised, partner-funded, bi-weekly architect hours + priority support). Credits cover usage-based services (Workers, Durable Objects, Workflows, Workers AI [AI capped at $50k in T1], R2/KV/D1/Queues/Vectorize [R2 capped at $10k], Pages, Images/Stream, Cache Reserve, Argo Smart Routing). Core CDN/DNS/SSL/DDoS/WAF/load-balancing are free-included in every tier regardless.
Eligibility
Startups: incorporated within last 10 years, funded up to Series B within the last 12 months, building a tech product with a live public website, active on at least one public social channel, for-profit company email matching the domain; first-time applicants only. Excludes educational institutions, consultancies, MSPs, resellers, personal blogs — not a student offer.
How to claim
Apply via the program's application page at cloudflare.com/lp/startups; review typically within 48 hours; email startups@cloudflare.com for case-by-case tier upgrades (existing members under old caps).
Expiry
Credits: 12 months or until consumed, whichever first; not extendable; upgrades don't reset the clock. Free CDN/uptime tier itself is indefinite.
Gotchas
Overages bill the card on file after credits run; AI Gateway is temporarily not credit-eligible; premium products (Magic Transit, China Network, etc.) need separate contracts. Students get nothing here — Cloudflare's plain Free plan (CDN/DNS/SSL for 100 zones) is the indefinite, no-CC, free-for-all baseline.
Google Cloud Startup Program credits (usable on Managed Service for Prometheus) medium confidence
Per cloud.google.com/startup/ai content surfaced in search today: up to $350,000 GCP credits over 2 years — Year 1: 100% of first $100,000 (up to $250,000 for AI-first startups), Year 2: 20% of up to an additional $100,000; includes Gemini/Gemma access and expert webinars. These general credits cover GCP's Managed Service for Prometheus ingest/query costs, which is the closest thing to a GCP 'managed Prometheus' free offer.
Eligibility
VC-funded startups: pre-seed/seed raised within last 5 years, Series A within last 12 months, founded within last 5 years, not yet received more than $5,000 in GCP credits; eligibility at Google's discretion. Not a student offer (Google Cloud's $300/60-day free trial is the general alternative).
How to claim
Apply via Google Cloud's startup program application (cloud.google.com/startup) or an affiliated YC/accelerator partner; credits land as GCP billing credits usable on any service incl. Cloud Monitoring / Managed Prometheus.
Expiry
Credits structured over 2 years (Y1 100%, Y2 20%); GCP free-trial alternative: 60 days.
Gotchas
Third-party models billed directly, not covered by credits; 'up to $5,000 in GCP credits already received' gate; Y2 discount rate drops to 20%. Specific GCP Managed-Prometheus free-tier numbers could NOT be verified today (pricing pages truncated/redirecting/404) — treat any per-sample free allowance figures as unconfirmed.
No student/education license exists for Prometheus (negative finding) medium confidence
Prometheus has no education license, student program, or .edu offer: prometheus.io (read today) carries no pricing, education, or partner pages at all — it is an Apache-2.0 CNCF project, so the 'student offer' is simply that the software is free and unlimited for students. No Grafana, AWS AMP, Datadog, or Cloudflare education-specific tier tied to Prometheus was found on the official pages read today. Azure's Managed Prometheus service exists (GA 2025) but its pricing page would not load today, so any Azure free-tier figures are unverified rather than reported.
Eligibility
n/a — absence finding. Anything claiming a 'Prometheus education discount' (e.g., boilerplate rows on discount-tracker sites) is generic vendor-template content, not a real offer.
How to claim
n/a. For students: just self-host Prometheus OSS (free) or use Grafana Cloud Free / Cloudflare's no-CC Free plan.
Expiry
n/a
Gotchas
Discount-aggregator pages (e.g., costbench) publish 'Education Discount / Startup Program' boilerplate for Prometheus that they themselves mark as unverified — do not treat those as real programs.