💰 $25K in Free AI & Cloud Credits — Just Attend One College Event

[SatyamRaj]

Free $25,000 in Cloud & AI Credits — Step-by-Step from Zero to Redeemed

Y Combinator is handing college students the same cloud and AI tools that funded startups pay thousands for. Here’s how to grab yours.

$10K AWS. $10K Azure. $2,500 OpenAI. $2,500 Grok. $500 Anthropic. Plus 20+ YC-backed devtools — voice AI, browser automation, video generation, web crawling.

No application. No startup. No GPA requirement. Just attend one free event and check your email. The entire internet bends over backwards for students — most just don’t know where to look.

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🎯 What's Actually Inside — Full Credit Breakdown

Think of this as a startup-in-a-box. You’re getting the exact same infrastructure real YC companies use — except you didn’t have to pitch anyone, give up equity, or pretend you have a business plan.

Category	Provider	Credits	What It Actually Does
Cloud	Amazon AWS	$10,000	Run servers, train ML models, host apps — the backbone of every tech company
Cloud	Microsoft Azure	$10,000	Same deal, different cloud — VMs, databases, AI services, the works
AI API	OpenAI (GPT)	$2,500	Build with GPT-4, DALL-E, Whisper — no rate limit anxiety
AI API	Grok (xAI)	$2,500	Elon’s AI — real-time web access, less filtered responses
AI API	Anthropic (Claude)	$500	Claude API access — long context, strong reasoning, great for coding
Devtools	20+ YC companies	Varies	Voice synthesis, browser bots, web scraping, video gen, databases

The devtools aren’t filler. These are YC-backed companies building production infrastructure. Some highlights:

Tool	What It Does	Why You’d Care
Firecrawl	Turns any website into clean, structured data via API	Build scrapers, research tools, or feed data into your AI apps
Exa	AI-native search engine for developers	Semantic search that actually understands what you’re looking for
Vapi	Voice AI platform	Build voice assistants, phone bots, call automation
Browser Use	AI browser automation	Let AI control a browser — fill forms, click buttons, extract data
Reducto	Document intelligence	Feed PDFs, invoices, contracts into your AI pipeline
Gumloop	Visual AI workflow builder	Chain AI tools together without writing backend code

What you can actually build with this: A market research tool (Firecrawl + Exa), a voice assistant (Vapi + Browser Use), a legal document analyzer (Reducto + Gumloop), or literally anything that needs cloud compute and AI APIs.

📋 Step-by-Step — From Zero to $25K in Credits

Step 0 — Create a Hacker News Account (Do This First)

You need a Hacker News account to RSVP for events and sign into the deals portal. It’s free — just pick a username and password at the signup page. No email required to create one, but add your email in profile settings so you don’t get locked out.

Heads up: HN sometimes limits new signups during high-traffic periods. If registration fails, wait 24 hours and try again.

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Step 1 — Find a YC University Event Near You

YC runs campus events at universities across the US (and internationally). These aren’t hidden — they’re announced on:

Where to Check	Link
YC Events Blog	ycombinator.com/blog/tag/yc-events
YC Twitter/X	@ycombinator
Hacker News	news.ycombinator.com — event announcements hit the front page
Your campus	CS department mailing lists, startup clubs, engineering newsletters

Universities YC has already visited: Harvard, Yale, MIT, Columbia, Cornell, Cornell Tech (East Coast tour). Plus UK stops at Cambridge, Imperial, and Oxford. More schools are being added continuously through 2026.

Not at a target university? YC said they’re expanding to more campuses. Follow their events page and RSVP the moment something pops up near you. Also check if your school’s startup or CS club can request a YC visit — they’ve done 20+ university trips in the past year.

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Step 2 — RSVP and Attend the Event

RSVP through the event registration link (you’ll use your Hacker News account). Then show up in person. That’s it. No pitch, no application, no interview.

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Step 3 — Check Your Email

After the event, YC sends a confirmation email with access instructions for the deals portal. Keep this email — you need it.

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Step 4 — Sign Into the Deals Portal

Go to deals.ycombinator.com/students and sign in with the same Hacker News account you used to RSVP. Your eligibility gets detected automatically based on event attendance.

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Step 5 — Verify Your Email and Redeem

Verify your email address once signed in. Then browse all available deals and click through to redeem each one individually.

Thing to Redeem	What to Do
AWS $10K	Click deal → Follow AWS signup → Credits applied
Azure $10K	Click deal → Microsoft account → Credits applied
OpenAI $2.5K	Click deal → OpenAI platform account → Credits applied
Grok $2.5K	Click deal → xAI account → Credits applied
Anthropic $500	Click deal → Anthropic console → Credits applied
20+ devtools	Click each → Follow partner signup → Individual redemption

Critical: Re-verify your email every 30 days. If you forget, you lose access to the portal. Set a calendar reminder on day 1. Your total access lasts 1 year from the date of the qualifying event.

⚠️ What Can Go Wrong — Gotchas & Fixes

Problem	Fix
No YC event at your school	Check the events blog weekly — new schools added regularly. Ask your CS department to request one. Look for events at nearby campuses.
HN account creation blocked	Rate limit on new signups. Try again in 24-48 hours. Don’t use VPN during signup.
Didn’t get confirmation email	Check spam. Wait 48 hours after the event. If nothing, email [email protected]
Portal says ineligible	Wrong HN account (used a different one to RSVP). Or email not verified.
Lost access mid-year	Forgot the 30-day email re-verification. Re-verify immediately to restore.
Credits not applying	Some partner platforms require a new account. Don’t try to stack on existing paid plans.
Credits expiring	1 year from event date. Plan your projects accordingly — don’t let $25K sit unused.

🔄 Can't Attend a YC Event? — Fallback Methods for Free Credits

Not every student can get to a YC campus event. Here’s how to build a nearly identical stack for free — no YC required.

GitHub Student Developer Pack — The Universal Fallback

If you have a .edu email or student ID, the GitHub Student Developer Pack is the single best collection of free dev tools on the internet. Over 100 partner offers — cloud credits, domains, CI/CD, databases, design tools.

What You Get (relevant to this stack)	Value
Azure for Students	$100 credit + free services (no credit card)
DigitalOcean	$200 platform credit for 1 year
Namecheap	Free .me domain + SSL
JetBrains	Full IDE suite (IntelliJ, PyCharm, WebStorm) — free
Canva Pro	Free while enrolled
LocalStack	Free Pro — emulate AWS locally without paying

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Direct Cloud Student Programs (Stack These)

Program	Credits	Requirements	Link
Azure for Students	$100/year (renewable)	.edu email, no credit card	azure.microsoft.com/free/students
Google Cloud for Students	Varies by program	Student verification	Check through your university
AWS Educate	Learning credits + free labs	Student email	aws.amazon.com/education/awseducate
AWS Free Tier	12 months of limited free services	Any account (no student status needed)	aws.amazon.com/free

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YC Summer Fellows Grants (The Big One)

Separate from the Starter Pack — and way more lucrative. YC gives selected undergrad CS/engineering students $20,000 cash + $90,000 in cloud credits (AWS, Azure, GCP) to work on technical projects over summer. Plus additional credits from Fly.io ($50K), Supabase ($10K), Replicate ($10K), and Resend ($3K).

Detail	Info
Total value	$20K cash + $90K compute + $73K partner credits = ~$183K
Who qualifies	Undergrad CS/engineering students (any country)
What you do	Work on a technical project full-time for a summer
Application	Short form + 1-minute video + interview
Perks	AI Startup School invite, co-working at YC office, Demo Day presentation
Link	ycombinator.com/blog/summer-fellows

This is competitive (20-50 spots) but the payout dwarfs the Starter Pack. If you’re serious about building, apply for both.

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AI-Specific Free Tiers (No Student Status Needed)

Most AI platforms have generous free tiers anyone can use right now:

Platform	Free Tier
OpenAI	Free ChatGPT + limited API credits on signup
Anthropic	Free Claude access via claude.ai
Google Gemini	Free tier + students get Gemini Advanced free for 12-15 months
Hugging Face	Free model hosting, inference API, Spaces
Replicate	Free tier for running open-source models
Google Colab	Free GPU notebooks for ML experiments

💡 Pro Moves — How to Actually Use $25K Without Wasting It

Most students redeem the credits and never touch them. Don’t be that person.

Use the cloud credits to build something real:

• Spin up GPU instances for ML training (this alone eats thousands normally)
• Host a SaaS project on AWS/Azure instead of toy localhost demos
• Deploy AI agents that run 24/7 using the API credits
• Build a portfolio project that actually costs money to run — interviewers notice

Use the AI API credits strategically:

• $2,500 in OpenAI credits = roughly 50 million GPT-4o-mini tokens or 2.5 million GPT-4o tokens
• Build something that calls the API programmatically — a research assistant, a code reviewer, a content pipeline
• Don’t burn credits on manual ChatGPT conversations — use the API, build tools

Use the devtools to skip months of setup:

• Firecrawl replaces building your own web scraper
• Vapi replaces building voice infrastructure from scratch
• Browser Use replaces writing Selenium scripts

The real play: Build a project using these free credits → deploy it → put it on your resume → talk about it in interviews. “$25K in cloud infrastructure running my AI project” hits different than “I completed a tutorial.”

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Quick Hits

Want	Do
Fastest path to $25K	Find a YC event → attend → check email → redeem at deals.ycombinator.com/students
Find YC events	ycombinator.com/blog/tag/yc-events
No event near you	GitHub Student Pack + Azure for Students + free AI tiers
Want even more	Apply to YC Summer Fellows ($20K cash + $90K compute)
Don’t lose access	Re-verify email every 30 days — set a reminder

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$25K in credits. Zero strings. The only requirement is showing up — and apparently that’s too much effort for 99% of students. Don’t be the 99%.

[R-K-M]

Attending means? Do we have to travel US to attend the event? If so, we are out.

[king_khan]

Simple question, how it is possible for those outside US and dont want to physically attend, these one onehack created for