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Best Microsoft Azure offer right now $450 AI CREDIT$450 Azure OpenAI credit for accounts with 6+ months historyClaim CreditsSee all 5 offers
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Billing explained in plain English
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Nothing resold, ever
Microsoft Azure free credits, trials and programs for November 2026
We may earn a commission when you sign up through links here. It never changes what you pay. Details
Microsoft Azure does not issue public promo codes. Azure credits attach to a subscription offer, not a promo code. The $200 free account credit and the $100 student credit load themselves at sign-up. The only real code is the Investor Network referral code for Microsoft for Startups, which accelerators and VCs hand to portfolio companies. A $200 Azure coupon on a deals site is just the public offer with a box around it.
$450 in Azure credits for OpenAI servicesVerified todayEnds Mar 31
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Who qualifies: Azure subscriptions active for 6+ months with at least $100 in cumulative AI spend
Microsoft rewards established Azure AI users with a $450 credit toward Azure OpenAI Service. The credit covers GPT-4.1, o3, DALL-E, Whisper and all other models deployed through your Azure OpenAI resource, including provisioned throughput units.
Credit applies to Azure OpenAI consumption only. Does not cover reserved capacity commitments or Marketplace purchases. One award per subscription.
$1,250 in Azure credits for top-tier usersExclusiveVerified todayEnds Jun 30
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Who qualifies: Subscriptions with $250+ lifetime Azure spend, active for 6+ months
Azure's premier loyalty program grants $1,250 in credits to high-value accounts. The credit covers all Azure services including VMs, App Service, Cosmos DB, Azure OpenAI and Azure AI Search. It's applied automatically to your billing profile.
One-time award per qualifying subscription. Credit expires 6 months after activation. Does not apply to Marketplace purchases or support plans.
35% discount on Azure AI Search S1 and S2 tiersVerified todayEnds Mar 31
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Who qualifies: Subscriptions running AI Search indexes for 90+ consecutive days
Production AI Search workloads qualify for 35% off S1 and S2 tier pricing. The discount helps teams building RAG pipelines with Azure OpenAI scale their vector search infrastructure at reduced cost.
Applies to S1 and S2 consumption pricing only. Does not cover Free or Basic tiers. Cannot combine with Enterprise Agreement discounts.
$400 toward Cosmos DB consumptionVerified todayEnds Mar 31
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Who qualifies: Subscriptions with Cosmos DB accounts running for 6+ months
Scale your globally distributed databases with a $400 Cosmos DB credit. The credit applies to all throughput models including serverless, provisioned and autoscale, and covers storage, analytics and integrated cache.
Credit applies to Cosmos DB services only. Minimum 6 months of active Cosmos DB usage required. One award per subscription.
$300 one-time migration creditExclusiveVerified todayEnds Jun 30
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Who qualifies: Organizations with $100+ AI/ML spend at AWS or GCP in the past 90 days
Bring your AI workloads to Azure with a $300 migration credit. Submit your AWS or GCP billing showing AI/ML service usage and receive the credit within 7 business days. Covers Azure OpenAI, AI Search, Machine Learning and all AI services.
Billing proof from another provider required. One credit per subscription. Does not apply to Marketplace purchases.
Early-stage startups applying with a new personal Microsoft account never used with Azure. A credit card is required. Investor Network referral codes open higher tiers and a two-year benefit period.
New customers with a phone number, a non-prepaid credit or debit card and a Microsoft or GitHub account. One free account per customer. Credit cannot be spent on Marketplace or Spot VMs.
Full-time students aged 18 or older at an accredited degree-granting institution, verified through a school email address. One subscription per person, renewable each year while still enrolled.
Software companies with a B2B application built on Microsoft Cloud that will be published to the commercial marketplace within 12 months, headquartered outside embargoed countries.
Every subscription, including pay-as-you-go. Functions, Cosmos DB, App Service, Container Apps and Azure DevOps carry monthly amounts that do not expire.
Automatic
Free tier that matters
$200 credit for the first 30 days of a new account
750 monthly hours each of B1s, B2pts v2, B2ats v2 VMs for 12 months
Azure Functions 1 million requests per month, always free
Cosmos DB 1,000 RU/s and 25 GB storage, always free
App Service 10 web or API apps with 1 GB storage, always free
Azure SQL Database 100,000 serverless vCore-seconds per month
Container Apps 180,000 vCPU-seconds and 2 million requests per month
Azure DevOps 5 users with unlimited private Git repos
Recent program changes
Startup credits restated as $200 then $4,800 after verification Microsoft’s startup FAQ on Learn, updated October 30, 2026, lists a $200 milestone for 90 days, $4,800 for 180 days after business verification, a $25,000 milestone with a two-year window, and up to $150,000 over time. Source
GPT-5.5 reaches Microsoft Foundry at $5 per million input tokens Microsoft’s Azure blog announced general availability of GPT-5.5 in Microsoft Foundry for the following day, priced at $5 input, $0.50 cached input and $30 output per million tokens, with GPT-5.5 Pro at $30 input and $180 output. Source
Azure AI Foundry becomes Microsoft Foundry and adds Claude models The Azure blog post for Ignite 2025 presented the platform as Microsoft Foundry with more than 11,000 models and announced Claude Sonnet 4.5, Opus 4.1 and Haiku 4.5 in the catalog. Microsoft Learn now lists Azure AI Foundry and Azure AI Services as the previous names. Source
GPT-5 family generally available in Azure AI Foundry The Azure blog of August 7, 2025 made GPT-5, GPT-5 mini, GPT-5 nano and GPT-5 chat generally available, with a model router that Microsoft said can cut inference costs by up to 60% by routing prompts across the family. Source
A new Azure account comes with $200 of credit that expires 30 days after sign-up, plus free monthly amounts of more than 20 services for 12 months and 65+ services that stay free for good. The card you enter gets a $1 hold that’s reversed, and nothing is charged until you choose to upgrade. That makes Azure the shortest of the big-cloud trials, but also the one with the clearest upgrade step.
Everything below is a program Microsoft itself runs: the free account, Microsoft for Startups with its verified-progress tiers up to $150,000, Azure for Students at $100 with no card, ISV Success for companies heading to the marketplace, and the Foundry pricing that governs Azure OpenAI tokens. No resold credits, and no codes we can’t trace to a Microsoft page.
What runs out first on Azure is the 30-day clock, not the $200. A team prototyping on GPT-4.1 at $2 per million input tokens would need to push 100 million tokens through to spend the credit in a month, and almost nobody does. Plan the upgrade for day 25. Once day 30 passes the subscription is disabled and everything in it stops until you move to pay-as-you-go.
How to claim Microsoft Azure credits
Start at Try Azure for freeOpen azure.microsoft.com/free, choose Try Azure for free, then sign in with a Microsoft account or use Sign in with GitHub. Use a personal account that has never held an Azure offer, because you only get one free account per customer.
Complete the profile and card checkFill in Country/Region, a phone number and a non-prepaid credit or debit card. Microsoft places a temporary $1 authorization and reverses it. The card isn’t charged while the account stays free, so this step costs nothing.
Watch the balance in Cost ManagementIn the Azure portal, open Microsoft Cost Management to see the remaining credit and the days left. The $200 ends 30 days after sign-up whether you’ve spent it or not, and the 12-month free services run on their own schedule.
Deploy a model in FoundryGo to ai.azure.com, create a project and deploy GPT-4.1 or another model from the catalog. Standard Azure OpenAI models need no registration form. Token usage draws down the $200 first, so this is where most of the credit goes.
Upgrade from the Subscriptions bladeSearch Subscriptions, select the free subscription, and choose Upgrade subscription in the command bar. Add a payment method if prompted, type a subscription name, pick a support plan and select Upgrade. Whatever credit is left stays available through day 30.
Ways to stretch your Microsoft Azure credits
Spend the $200 on paid-only services
The credit only covers usage outside the free list, so point it at things with no free amount: Azure OpenAI tokens, premium storage, a bigger VM. Keep Functions, Cosmos DB and App Service inside their always-free limits and let the credit buy what the free tier can’t. Spending $200 on a B1s VM that was free anyway is the classic mistake.
Route batch work through the Batch API
The Batch API returns completions within 24 hours at a 50% discount to Global Standard pricing, so GPT-4.1 batch input is $1 per million tokens instead of $2. Classification, evaluation and backfill jobs belong there. On a $200 credit that’s the difference between 100 million and 200 million input tokens.
Choose Global over Data Zone or Regional
Global Standard deployments are the cheapest per token, with Data Zone and Regional variants carrying a premium on the same model. Unless a compliance rule pins data to one geography, deploy Global and keep the difference. PTU minimums are lower too, 15 PTUs for GPT-4.1 Global versus 50 Regional.
Use cached input on repeated prompts
GPT-4.1 cached input is $0.50 per million tokens, a quarter of the standard $2 input rate. System prompts, few-shot examples and retrieved documents that repeat across calls all qualify. Structure the prompt so the stable part comes first and the user turn last, or the cache never hits.
Start the startup credits only when ready
The first $200 of Microsoft for Startups lasts 90 days, and the $4,800 that follows business verification lasts 180 days. Credits must be activated within 90 days of accepting the agreement. Apply when a real workload is a month away, not during idea validation. We’d rather wait a month than watch the first tier expire on an empty subscription.
Set a budget alert before day 30
Once upgraded, Cost Management budgets email you at thresholds you set. Create one for the monthly figure you can tolerate before the free credit expires, because the free subscription converts to pay-as-you-go with no spending cap the moment you choose Upgrade. Resources that were disabled for lack of credit come back on and start billing at the same time.
Microsoft Azure billing, explained
The free account is spending-protected. Microsoft verifies the card with a temporary $1 authorization that’s reversed, and the card isn’t charged while the account stays free. The $200 credit covers any usage outside the free amounts and expires 30 days after sign-up. Services that are free for 12 months stay free for 12 months regardless of the credit, and the 65+ always-free services never bill within their monthly limits.
When the credit runs out or the 30 days end, Microsoft sends a notice and asks you to upgrade. If you do, the subscription moves to pay-as-you-go rates, leftover credit stays usable through the original day 30, and the 12-month free services continue. Usage above the free amounts bills to the card monthly. If you decline, the subscription and everything in it are disabled until you upgrade, and re-enabled resources are charged from the moment they come back.
Credits never cover Azure Marketplace offers or Spot VMs, and Azure Hybrid Benefit can’t be combined with the free credit. For Microsoft for Startups, credits apply through an Azure Sponsorship offer at 100% off pay-as-you-go rates for the term. Three things still hit the card on a sponsored subscription: a service the sponsorship doesn’t cover, exhausted credits, or usage in a different billing profile.
Microsoft Azure credits FAQ
how much free credit does azure give new accounts
Azure gives new customers $200 of credit to use within 30 days. On top of that you get free monthly amounts of 20+ popular services for 12 months, such as 750 hours of B1s virtual machines, and 65+ always-free services like Azure Functions at 1 million requests a month. The credit can’t be used on Marketplace offers or Spot VMs.
does azure free account require a credit card
Yes. Sign-up needs a phone number, a non-prepaid credit or debit card, and a Microsoft or GitHub account. Microsoft places a temporary $1 authorization to verify the card and reverses it, and the card isn’t charged while the account stays free. Azure for Students is the exception, with no card needed for its $100 credit.
what happens after 30 days on azure free account
Microsoft notifies you and asks whether to move to pay-as-you-go. If you upgrade, you keep the 12-month free services and pay standard rates for anything above the free amounts. If you don’t, your account and services are disabled and stay that way until you upgrade. Any 12-month free service that keeps running after its expiry bills at pay-as-you-go rates.
how much are microsoft for startups azure credits
Startups begin with $200 for 90 days, then $4,800 for 180 days once the business is verified. A $25,000 milestone brings a one-time two-year window, and startups can reach $150,000 over time through verified progress and sustained usage. Investor Network referral codes bring a two-year benefit period and higher tiers earlier. Microsoft restated these figures on October 30, 2026, so older guides quoting Founders Hub amounts are out of date.
can students get azure credits without a credit card
Yes. Azure for Students gives $100 of credit for 12 months and doesn’t ask for a credit card. You must be 18 or older and attending an accredited full-time degree-granting institution, verified through your school email. The offer renews annually while you remain a student, and the credit excludes Marketplace products, support plans and Azure DevOps.
how much does azure openai gpt-4.1 cost per million tokens
GPT-4.1 on a Global Standard deployment in East US 2 is $2 per million input tokens, $0.50 per million cached input tokens and $8 per million output tokens. GPT-4.1 mini is $0.40 input and $1.60 output, and GPT-4.1 nano is $0.10 and $0.40. Batch API meters run at half those rates. GPT-5.5 launched at $5 input and $30 output in April 2026.
do i need to apply for access to azure openai
Not for standard models. All Azure customers are eligible for models sold by Azure, and there’s no registration form unless a specific model is designated Limited Access or you want to turn off guardrails or abuse monitoring. Create a Foundry resource at ai.azure.com, deploy a model and call it with your subscription.
$450 AI CREDIT$450 Azure OpenAI credit for accounts with 6+ months history
