🆓Free Stuff
A collection of free stuff you really should check out.
Most of these require verification with your university email or student ID. Start with the GitHub Student Developer Pack since it unlocks many of the tools below automatically.
GitHub Student Developer Pack
Sign up for the GitHub Student Developer Pack
The gateway to 100+ free tools. Once verified, you automatically unlock many of the benefits listed below. Requires enrollment in a degree-granting institution.
Included in the Student Pack
- GitHub Copilot Pro: AI code completion, normally $10/mo. Full Pro with no feature limits
- GitHub Pro: unlimited private repos, advanced CI/CD minutes, 2 GB Packages storage
- DigitalOcean: $200 in cloud credits, valid 1 year
- Heroku: $13/mo in platform credits for 24 months
- MongoDB Atlas: $50 credits + free certification ($150 value)
- Namecheap: free .me domain + SSL for 1 year (US/UK/CA/AU)
- Educative: 6 months free access to 60+ courses, then 30% off
- Frontend Masters: 6 months free membership (one-time)
- GitKraken: 6 months free, then 75-80% off Pro
- Postman Student Expert: free API certification + digital badge (also available standalone)
AI & Development Tools
- Cursor Pro: 1 full year free ($240 value). AI-powered code editor. Verified via SheerID
- Perplexity Pro Student: 50% off ($10/mo) or $4.99/mo Education plan
- JetBrains All Products: all IDEs free (IntelliJ, PyCharm, WebStorm, CLion, DataGrip, etc.). Renewable yearly. ~$250/yr value
- Microsoft 365 Education: free Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams with school email
- Autodesk: free 1-year licenses for AutoCAD, Fusion, Maya, etc. Renewable
- Unity Student: free professional Unity license for students 16+
- Sketch: free Education plan (full workspace, Mac + web app). 1 year, renewable
Design & Productivity
- 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
- Notion Education: free Plus plan ($10/mo value). Unlimited pages, file uploads
- Adobe Creative Cloud: 65% off ($19.99/mo first year). All apps: Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, etc.
- Airtable Education: free Team plan for 6-24 months with .edu email
Cloud & Infrastructure
- Microsoft Azure for Students: $100 free credits per year, no credit card needed. Renewable annually
- AWS Educate: free cloud skills training + hands-on labs. Also check the AWS Free Tier
- Google Cloud Education: ~$50 in credits distributed via faculty. Ask your professors
- Oracle Cloud Free Tier: $300 trial credits + generous Always Free resources (4 ARM cores, 24 GB RAM). Available to everyone
- Cloudflare for Students: 12 months of developer features (US only)
- Red Hat Developer: free developer subscription with up to 16 RHEL nodes. Available to everyone
Data Science & ML
- Kaggle: 30 hours/week free GPU compute (Tesla P100/T4), 50,000+ datasets. Free for everyone
- Microsoft Learn Challenges: periodic AI/cloud challenges with free certifications
Learning Platforms
- 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)
Software Discounts (NL-specific)
- Surfspot: discounted software for Dutch university students (Microsoft Office, Adobe, etc.). Log in with your VU credentials
Entertainment & Subscriptions
- Spotify Student: ~50% off Premium. Verified via SheerID
- Apple Music Student: $5.99/mo (vs $10.99) + free Apple TV+. Up to 48 months
- YouTube Premium Student: ~43% off ($7.99/mo). Annual reverification required
Discount Platforms
- UNiDAYS: free platform with up to 50% off across fashion, tech, food, travel
- 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
Culture
- Museumkaart: ~EUR 69/year for free entry to 400+ museums across the Netherlands. Pays for itself after a few visits
Free for Everyone (No Student ID Needed)
These are not student-specific but worth knowing about:
- Blender: professional 3D creation suite, completely free and open source (GPL)
- Oracle Cloud Free Tier: generous always-free compute resources
- Red Hat Developer: free RHEL developer subscription
- Kaggle: free GPU compute + datasets for ML projects
- Let's Encrypt: free SSL certificates for any website