70+ Free Subscriptions You Can Get as a Student (Save Over $10,000/Year)
Almost everything is free, and some offer crazy discounts. As a student you have access to an absurd amount of software, cloud credits, and services that would otherwise cost you well over $10,000 a year. Most students don't even know half of these exist.
This post is the full list. Bookmark it.
The King: GitHub Student Developer Pack
GitHub Student Developer Pack is where you start. One application, one verification, 100+ tools unlocked. Every other student subscription saves you money on one thing. The GitHub Student Developer Pack builds your entire development environment for free.
If you do nothing else on this list, do this one. It's the gateway to most of what follows.
Dev Tools & IDEs
These are the tools you'll actually use every day as an AI or CS student.
- Cursor Pro: 1 full year free ($240 value). AI-powered code editor. Verified via SheerID
- GitHub Copilot Pro: free via GitHub Education. AI code completion, normally $10/mo
- JetBrains All Products: all IDEs free (IntelliJ, PyCharm, WebStorm, CLion, DataGrip, etc.). Renewable yearly. ~$250/yr value
- JetBrains Space Pro: via GitHub Pack
- Replit Pro: via GitHub Pack
- GitKraken: 6 months free, then 75-80% off Pro. Via GitHub Pack
- Postman Student Expert: free API certification + digital badge
JetBrains alone is worth 240. That's nearly $500 just from two items on this list.
Cloud & Hosting
Free cloud credits are incredibly useful for ML projects, hosting personal projects, or just learning how infrastructure works.
- AWS Educate: free cloud skills training + hands-on labs. Also check the AWS Free Tier
- Microsoft Azure for Students: $100 free credits per year, no credit card needed. Renewable annually
- Google Cloud Education: ~$50 in credits distributed via faculty. Ask your professors
- DigitalOcean: $200 in cloud credits via GitHub Pack, valid 1 year
- Oracle Cloud Free Tier: $300 trial credits + generous Always Free resources (4 ARM cores, 24 GB RAM). Available to everyone
- Heroku: $13/mo in platform credits for 24 months via GitHub Pack
- Vercel Pro: via GitHub Pack
- Netlify: via GitHub Pack
- Railway: student discount
- Cloudflare Pro: 12 months of developer features via GitHub Pack
That's potentially $600+ in cloud credits across these platforms. More than enough to run ML training jobs, host side projects, or experiment with different providers.
Databases
- MongoDB Atlas: 150 value)
Design & Productivity
You don't have to pay for design or productivity tools. Almost all of them have student plans.
- Figma Education: free Professional plan for 2 years. Unlimited files and collaboration
- Canva for Education: free Canva Pro if your university has Canva for Campus
- Sketch: free Education plan (full workspace, Mac + web app). 1 year, renewable
- Autodesk: free 1-year licenses for AutoCAD, Fusion, Maya, etc. Renewable
- Miro: free Education plan
- Blender: completely free and open source (GPL). Not student-specific but worth knowing
- Notion Education: free Plus plan ($10/mo value). Unlimited pages, file uploads
- Microsoft 365 Education: free Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams with school email
- Grammarly EDU: via university
- Obsidian: free for students
- Todoist Pro: discount via Student Beans
- Airtable Education: free Team plan for 6-24 months with .edu email
- Loom: free Education plan
- Linear: student plan
- ClickUp: free Education plan
- Asana: student access
Learning Platforms
If you want to learn beyond your coursework, there's a lot available for free or nearly free.
- Educative: 6 months free access to 60+ courses via GitHub Pack, then 30% off
- Frontend Masters: 6 months free membership (one-time) via GitHub Pack
- LinkedIn Learning: free via university (check if VU provides access)
- Coursera Financial Aid: apply for free access to any course (two short essays, ~16 days processing)
- edX Audit: audit most courses for free (no certificate, limited time access)
- Udemy: free courses periodically
- Pluralsight: student plan
- IBM SkillsBuild: free
- Meta Blueprint: free certifications
- Microsoft Learn: free challenges with periodic free certifications
- Google Developer Student Clubs: free access
- Hack The Box: student labs
- TryHackMe: student plan
- Kaggle: 30 hours/week free GPU compute (Tesla P100/T4), 50,000+ datasets. Free for everyone
- LeetCode: student discount
- HackerRank: free certifications
- Red Hat Developer: free developer subscription with up to 16 RHEL nodes
- SAP Learning Hub: student access
Domains & SSL
Want to host a personal portfolio? You can do it completely free.
- Namecheap: free .me domain + SSL for 1 year via GitHub Pack
- Let's Encrypt: free SSL certificates for any website. Forever. Available to everyone
AI Tools
- Perplexity Pro Student: 50% off (4.99/mo Education plan
- Google Gemini: via Google One Education
- OpenAI API Credits: via partner student programs
Music & Entertainment
- Spotify Student: ~50% off Premium. Verified via SheerID
- Apple Music Student: 10.99) + free Apple TV+. Up to 48 months
- YouTube Premium Student: ~43% off ($7.99/mo). Annual reverification required
- Amazon Prime: 6 months free for students
Deals & Discount Platforms
These aggregate discounts across hundreds of brands:
- UNiDAYS: free platform with up to 50% off across fashion, tech, food, travel. 1000+ brands
- Student Beans: 10,000+ stores, includes digital student ID for in-store discounts
- Apple Education Pricing: up to EUR 200 off Macs, EUR 100 off iPads
- Samsung Student Store: device discounts
Payments & DevOps
- Stripe: no fees on first $1,000 via GitHub Pack
- Nvidia: student resources & credits
- Intel Developer Zone: free access
Communication
- Zoom: free Education plan via university
- Slack: free Education plan
NL-Specific
If you're studying in the Netherlands, there's one more worth knowing:
- Surfspot: discounted software for Dutch university students (Microsoft Office, Adobe, etc.). Log in with your VU credentials
And don't forget the Museumkaart (~EUR 69/year for free entry to 400+ museums across the Netherlands). Not a subscription, but it pays for itself after a few visits.
Where to Start
If you're feeling overwhelmed, here's the order I'd recommend:
- GitHub Student Developer Pack — do this first, it unlocks most of the dev tools
- JetBrains — you'll use an IDE every day
- Azure/DigitalOcean credits — useful for ML projects and hosting
- Figma + Notion — even if you're not a designer, these are useful for project planning
- Spotify/YouTube Premium student pricing — might as well save money on what you already pay for
- UNiDAYS + Student Beans — install these and check them before buying anything
The total value of everything on this list is conservatively over $10,000 per year. Most of it takes less than 5 minutes to set up. There's really no reason not to.
Check out our Free Stuff guide for even more details on student freebies and how to set them up.