The clock is the difference most people miss. Google Cloud gives you $300 to spend over 90 days. Azure gives $200 that must be used within 30 days, after which you move to pay-as-you-go or the account is disabled. Azure softens that with 12 months of free services for new customers, including 750 hours a month of a B1s virtual machine, and a list of more than 65 services that stay free within monthly limits. Three months of breathing room, or one month plus a year of extras.
On startup credits the two have moved in opposite directions this year. Google publishes tiers up to $200,000, or $350,000 for AI startups. Microsoft for Startups, which dropped the Founders Hub name in July 2025, now starts a self-service applicant at $200 and grows the allocation through milestones to as much as $150,000. Figures checked on both providers’ own pages on November 2, 2026. We earn a commission if you sign up through our links, and it does not change your price.
Ninety days against thirty
Google Cloud credits a new billing account with $300 that is valid for 90 days. You add a card or other payment method, Google places a hold of up to $1, and nothing is charged unless you activate the full account. When credit or time runs out, resources are stopped and you have 30 days to upgrade before they’re deleted. If you upgrade early, the unused credit still applies until the original 90 days expire, so there’s no penalty for activating on day ten.
Azure gives $200 to use within 30 days. The credit stays available for the full 30 days even if you upgrade on day one. To keep the free services going you must move to pay-as-you-go within those 30 days or when the credit is spent, whichever comes first, and Microsoft is blunt that otherwise your account and services will be disabled. It’s one free account per customer across 140 supported countries and regions. Put the upgrade date in your calendar the day you sign up.
What keeps running after the credit
Azure splits its free usage in two. For 12 months new customers get 750 hours a month each of B1s, B2pts v2 and B2ats v2 virtual machines, 750 hours of a burstable B1MS Flexible Server for PostgreSQL or MySQL, and 5,000 transactions on Azure Vision tiers. Separately, more than 65 services are always free within limits, including 1 million Azure Functions requests, 1,000 RU/s and 25 GB on Cosmos DB, 180,000 vCPU-seconds on Container Apps, and 10 web apps on App Service.
Google has no 12-month layer. Its Free Tier is a flat monthly allowance with no end date: one e2-micro VM in us-west1, us-central1 or us-east1, 30 GB-months of persistent disk, 5 GB-months of regional Cloud Storage, 1 TiB of BigQuery queries, 2 million Cloud Run requests and 2 million Cloud Run functions invocations. For a small web service that holds its own against Azure, but Azure gives you a full year of a real VM rather than a shared-core micro.
Startup credits after the 2025 reshuffle
Microsoft for Startups now works through milestones. A startup new to Azure receives $200 of credits for 90 days, then $4,800 for 180 days after business verification, and at the $25,000 milestone a two-year period to use the credits. A startup can reach up to $150K as it demonstrates verified progress and sustained Azure usage. Startups referred by an Investor Network partner begin higher, with most starting at $100,000. The program FAQ behind these numbers was updated October 30, 2026, so they’re current.
Google publishes its ceiling up front. The Google for Startups Cloud Program covers 100% of eligible usage in year one up to $100,000, or up to $250,000 for AI-first startups, then 20% in year two up to another $100,000. The funded Scale tiers require Pre-Seed to Series A funding raised in the last 3 to 5 years. A Start tier exists for digital-native startups with a working MVP and plans to seek venture funding, but Google doesn’t publish a dollar figure for it, so neither do we.
Who is allowed to sign up
Azure is strict about identity. The free account needs a phone number, a non-prepaid credit or debit card, and a Microsoft or GitHub account, and Microsoft for Startups wants a new personal Microsoft account that has never touched an Azure Free Trial, Azure for Students or a prior startup offer. Work or school accounts aren’t supported for the startup application. A credit card is mandatory for the startup program too, for identity verification and for usage outside the credits.
Google ties eligibility to payment history rather than identity type. Anyone who has been a paying user of Google Cloud, Google Maps Platform or Firebase, or who already used a Free Trial, is out. Some countries also require bank account verification. The practical effect is that a developer with an old Firebase project on a paid plan can’t get the $300, while an Azure applicant can simply create a fresh Microsoft account.
Which one stops the bill for you
Azure turns on a spending limit by default for the free account, equal to the credit. When usage exhausts it, deployed services are disabled for the rest of the billing period, VMs are stopped and deallocated, and storage becomes read-only. You can’t set a custom amount, and the limit is unavailable on pay-as-you-go. Marketplace items, support plans and Entra ID P1 or P2 bill separately even with the limit on.
Google Cloud has nothing automatic for the trial beyond the credit itself. An alerts-only budget doesn’t cap usage or spending. To get a hard stop you connect a budget to a Pub/Sub topic and write a function that disables Cloud Billing on the project. That’s a well-documented pattern, but it’s a task on your list, not a default. After the trial, both clouds bill in arrears at list price for anything a credit doesn’t cover.
Support at the cheap end
Both entry plans cost $29 a month, but they behave differently as spend grows. Azure Developer support is a flat $29 with an 8-business-hour response for minimal-impact cases. Standard is $100 a month with a 1-hour response for Severity A, and Professional Direct is $1,000. Google Standard Support is $29 or 3% of monthly charges, whichever is higher, with a 4-hour P2 target in local business hours. Enhanced is $100 minimum or 10% of the first $10K, sliding to 3% over $250K.
The percentage model bites at scale. A team spending $5,000 a month pays $150 for Google Standard and still $29 for Azure Developer, though the Azure plan gives slower responses. At $100 of Azure Standard you get a response time Google only offers on Enhanced, which would cost $500 on that bill. For production workloads Azure support is cheaper. For a hobby budget the two are identical.
The winner: Google Cloud
Google Cloud wins for the developer reading this page: $300 is more than $200, 90 days is three times 30, and nothing closes your account when the trial ends. Azure wins specific fights, including a year of free B-series VM hours, a default spending limit, and a startup entry credit that needs no investor. Funded AI startups should look at the $350,000 Google tier first.
Choose Google Cloud if you want three months to evaluate, run on BigQuery or Gemini, or have raised a round that qualifies for the Scale or Scale AI tiers.
Google Cloud offers (5)Choose Azure if you live in Microsoft 365 and Entra ID, want 750 free VM hours a month for a year, or prefer a spending limit that stops charges automatically.
Microsoft Azure offers (5)