Both clouds now put $200 on the table for a new account, and that’s where the similarity ends. AWS splits its $200 into $100 at sign-up and five $20 tasks, lets the Free plan run for 6 months, and doesn’t ask most new customers for a payment method. Azure gives the whole $200 at once but only for 30 days, asks for a non-prepaid card, then layers 12 months of free services on top for anyone who upgrades to pay-as-you-go. One is a slow burn. The other is a sprint.
The startup paths diverge just as sharply. AWS Activate publishes fixed tiers, $1,000 for self-funded founders and up to $200,000 for startups backed by an Activate Provider. Microsoft for Startups replaced its Founders Hub levels in July 2025 with a milestone model that begins at $200 and can grow to $150,000. Numbers checked on both providers’ own pages on November 2, 2026. We earn a commission if you sign up through our links. It does not change your price.
Two very different ways to spend $200
AWS rebuilt its Free Tier on July 15, 2025. Every new customer gets $100 on sign-up and can earn $20 each for five tasks: launch and terminate an EC2 instance, configure an RDS database, build a Lambda web app with a function URL, run a prompt in the Bedrock text playground, and set an AWS Budget with an alert. On the Free plan the credits last 6 months and the account closes when they run out. On the Paid plan the same credits last 12 months and the account stays open. Do the five tasks in week one; they double your budget.
Azure hands over $200 on day one and starts a 30-day timer. The credit survives an early upgrade, but you must move to pay-as-you-go within the 30 days or the account is disabled. The credit can’t be spent on Marketplace offers, Azure Hybrid Benefit or Spot VMs. It’s one free account per customer, in 140 supported countries, and sovereign clouds such as Azure Government are excluded. Thirty days is short, so decide what you’re testing before you sign up.
Whether you need a card to get in
AWS doesn’t require a payment method for most new customers, though it may ask for additional information to verify identity. A Free plan account can’t be charged until you upgrade, which is also why it can’t use Savings Plans, Reserved Instances, some Marketplace listings or any promotional credit including Activate. One trap: joining AWS Organizations, Control Tower or the Partner Network upgrades the account to Paid automatically.
Azure requires a phone number, a non-prepaid credit or debit card, and a Microsoft or GitHub account. A temporary $1 authorization goes on the card and is reversed, and under spending protection the card isn’t charged. The mechanism is a spending limit: credit-based subscriptions ship with a limit equal to the credit, and reaching it stops and deallocates VMs and makes storage read-only until the next period or until you remove the limit. Your card stays safe, but so does your downtime.
Twelve free months against thirty free services
This is where Azure pulls ahead for anyone keeping a server running. New customers get 12 months of 750 hours a month on B1s, B2pts v2 and B2ats v2 VMs, 750 hours of a B1MS burstable Flexible Server for PostgreSQL and MySQL, a 100 GB Standard container registry and 5,000 transactions on three Azure Vision tiers. That’s a VM and a database running around the clock for a year. After the year, more than 65 always-free services remain, including Functions at 1 million requests, Cosmos DB at 1,000 RU/s with 25 GB, App Service with 10 apps, and 5 users on Azure DevOps.
AWS retired its 12-month free tier for accounts created on or after July 15, 2025. What remains on both plans is a set of more than 30 always-free services within monthly limits, with overages covered by credits automatically. Lambda gives 1 million requests and 400,000 GB-seconds a month at no charge. There’s no free EC2 allowance for new accounts, so a persistent t3.micro costs money from the first hour once the $200 is gone.
Activate against Microsoft for Startups
AWS Activate has three tiers. Founders gives self-funded startups $1,000, with select companies reaching $5,000. Portfolio, for startups with an Activate Provider Organization ID from an accelerator, angel group or VC, goes up to $200,000 and requires pre-Series B status with the latest round in the past 12 months. Both need a company founded within 10 years, a working website and a Paid plan account. Expect an answer in 5 to 10 business days, and expect credits to expire within one to two years.
Microsoft for Startups uses milestones instead of tiers. A startup new to Azure gets $200 for 90 days, then $4,800 valid for 180 days after business verification. At the $25,000 milestone the startup receives a one-time two-year period to use its credits, and the allocation can reach $150K. Startups referred by an Investor Network partner enter higher, with most beginning at $100,000 and keeping benefits for two years from approval. A credit card and a new personal Microsoft account are both required, and the work account you already have won’t do.
Same hourly price, different machine
The two smallest burstable Linux VMs cost exactly the same per hour in their home US regions. A t3.micro in N. Virginia is $0.0104 with 2 vCPUs and 1 GiB. A B1s in East US is $0.0104 with 1 vCPU and 1 GiB. Over a 730-hour month either one is about $7.59 before disks and network. AWS gives you a second vCPU for that price, though both run at a fraction of baseline CPU, so don’t read too much into it.
Cheaper options exist on both sides. The Graviton t4g.micro is $0.0084 an hour on AWS, and Azure B2ats v2 with its Arm-based processor is $0.0094 an hour in East US. Azure bills a VM showing Stopped for its allocated cores, while Stopped (Deallocated) is free, a distinction that costs people real money. AWS charges CPU credits in Unlimited mode at $0.05 per vCPU-hour for T3 if you burst past the baseline for long periods.
What support costs once you are paying
AWS restructured its plans. Basic Support is free for all customers, Business Support+ is a $29 monthly minimum per account or a tiered percentage of charges, Enterprise Support has a $5K minimum, and Unified Operations is $50K. The Business Support+ percentages run 9% up to $10K of monthly charges, 7% to $80K, 5% to $250K, and 3% above. The response target for a production system down is under one hour.
Azure keeps fixed prices. Basic is included, Developer is $29 a month with an 8-business-hour target for minimal-impact cases, Standard is $100 with a 1-hour Severity A response, and Professional Direct is $1,000. On a $3,000 monthly bill, AWS Business Support+ costs $270 while Azure Standard stays at $100 and answers faster for critical cases. The gap widens as spend grows. Model it before you commit a production workload.
The winner: Tie
We call this one even. AWS wins the trial for an individual: no card, 6 months, and the same $200. Azure wins for anyone who upgrades, with 12 months of free VM hours, a bigger always-free list, flat-price support and a spending limit that enforces itself. Startup credits favor AWS at the top and Azure at the bottom, so your funding stage decides.
Choose AWS if you want to explore without a payment method, your accelerator is an Activate Provider, or the services you need have no Azure counterpart.
AWS offers (5)Choose Azure if your company already runs on Microsoft 365 and Entra ID, you want a year of free B1s hours, or you need predictable flat-rate support.
Microsoft Azure offers (5)