Free developer tools for startups (2026)
Free or discounted plans from tools developers use every day: code hosting, CI/CD, error tracking, monitoring, auth, feature flags and incident management. Most are startup plans for young companies under a funding or age limit.
We track 32 programs in this category from 31 providers: all 32 are open now. All are open to startups worldwide. The largest headline value among open programs is Datadog for Startups from Datadog (Up to $100,000 in Datadog credits for one year). Across the 17 open programs with a stated value, the median is $12,000. Most common types: Observability (3), Incident management (3), Auth (2), Code hosting & DevSecOps (2). 5 do not require a registered company.
All 32 programs, open first and largest first
| Program | What you get | Where | Status | Verified |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Datadog for StartupsDatadog | Up to $100,000 in Datadog credits for one year | Worldwide | Open | 2026-10-22 |
| Grafana Labs Startup ProgramGrafana Labs | Up to $100,000 in Grafana Cloud credits for 12 months + 20% ongoing discount | Worldwide | Open | 2026-10-22 |
| Kong for StartupsKong | Up to $100,000 Kong Konnect Plus credits (12 months), then 50% off list price for 2 years | Worldwide | Open | 2026-10-30 |
| Vonage Startup ProgramVonage | Up to $75,000 in Vonage API credits + workshops and PM 1:1s | Worldwide | Open | 2026-10 |
| Retool for StartupsRetool | 100% off Retool Team/Business for year one (up to $60k), 25% off year two | Worldwide | Open | 2026-10-22 |
| Replit for StartupsReplit | Up to $25,000 in Replit credits | Worldwide | Open | 2026-10-22 |
| CircleCI for StartupsCircleCI | Up to $20,000 in CircleCI compute credits + free Starter Support | Worldwide | Open | 2026-10-22 |
| Mergify Startup ProgramMergify | Mergify plan free for up to 12 months and 50 developer seats (worth up to $12,000) | Worldwide | Open | 2026-10-30 |
| Svix for StartupsSvix | $12,000 in Svix credits over 12 months ($1k/month); current YC batch gets $50,000 | Worldwide | Open | 2026-10-23 |
| Algolia for StartupsAlgolia | $10,000 in Algolia credits for 12 months + partner SaaS perks | Worldwide | Open | 2026-10-22 |
| GitHub for StartupsGitHub | $10,000 in GitHub credits (Enterprise Cloud, Copilot, Advanced Security, Actions) | Worldwide | Open | 2026-10-22 |
| Pulumi for StartupsPulumi | Up to $10,000 in Pulumi credits, usable over 12 months | Worldwide | Open | 2026-10 |
| Sanity Startup ProgramSanity | 1 year free of Sanity Growth plan ($9k value) | Worldwide | Open | 2026-10-22 |
| Temporal Cloud for StartupsTemporal | $6,000 in Temporal Cloud credits + onboarding & design reviews | Worldwide | Open | 2026-10-22 |
| Sentry for StartupsSentry | Up to $5,000 in Sentry credits + priority support | Worldwide | Open | 2026-10-22 |
| incident.io for Startupsincident.io | $1,500 off the incident.io Team plan (on top of the free plan) | Worldwide | Open | 2026-10-23 |
| Mux for StartupsMux | $500 in Mux credits (more possible depending on investors) | Worldwide | Open | 2026-10-22 |
| Ansys Startup ProgramSynopsys (Ansys) | Discounted Ansys simulation software bundles, plus technical support and learning resources (price depends on bundle) | Worldwide | Open | 2026-10-30 |
| Auth0 for StartupsOkta (Auth0) | 1 year free of the B2B Professional plan (up to 100,000 MAU); dollar value not stated | Worldwide | Open | 2026-10-22 |
| Clerk for StartupsClerk | Discounted Clerk Pro for up to 1 year (discount % not stated) | Worldwide | Open | 2026-10-22 |
| Cloudinary for StartupsCloudinary | Exclusive startup credits and startup-friendly plans (amount not published) | Worldwide | Open | 2026-10-30 |
| GitLab for Startups — Early StageGitLab | 50% off any GitLab tier in year one, 25% off in year two (up to 20 users) | Worldwide | Open | 2026-10-22 |
| GitLab for Startups — Seed StageGitLab | Free GitLab Ultimate for 1 year (up to 20 seats), then 50% off in year two; dollar value not stated | Worldwide | Open | 2026-10-22 |
| ImageKit Startup ProgramImageKit | Usage-only pricing with discounted rates (e.g. $0.10/GB bandwidth, $8/100GB DAM storage) + dedicated CSM; credit amount not stated | Worldwide | Open | 2026-10 |
| JetBrains Startup ProgramJetBrains | 50% off up to 10 IDE, 10 team-tool and 10 JetBrains AI subscriptions for up to 5 years | Worldwide | Open | 2026-10-22 |
| Mintlify for StartupsMintlify | 50% off Mintlify Pro for 12 months; current YC batch gets 12 months free | Worldwide | Open | 2026-10-22 |
| n8n Start-up Plann8n | Business-plan features at the Start-up price (333€/mo billed annually vs 667€/mo Business, ~50% off) | Worldwide | Open | 2026-10 |
| New Relic for StartupsNew Relic | Free full-platform access for 5 users plus generous monthly data ingest; dollar value and duration not stated | Worldwide | Open | 2026-10-22 |
| PagerDuty for StartupsPagerDuty | 6 months free (20 seats, 20,000 events, 1,000 AI Actions); dollar value not stated | Worldwide | Open | 2026-10-22 |
| Rootly Startup ProgramRootly | Up to 50% off the full Rootly platform; 'pay what you can' for teams under 25 employees; dollar value not stated | Worldwide | Open | 2026-10-23 |
| Shortcut Startup ProgramShortcut | 12 months free of Shortcut Business plan + SAML SSO; dollar value not stated | Worldwide | Open | 2026-10-23 |
| Stream Maker AccountStream | Free Stream Chat/Video plan for tiny teams; dollar value not stated | Worldwide | Open | 2026-10-22 |
Other categories
AI credits for startups · Cloud credits for startups · GPU credits for startups · Data & analytics perks for startups · Security & compliance perks for startups · Business software perks for startups · Banking & payments perks for startups · Cash grants & prizes for startups · Government grants for startups · Research & student founder programs · Equity-free accelerators & incubators
Program terms change often. Open a program to see its official source and verification date, and confirm on the provider's page before you apply. Spotted something out of date? Report a correction.