AWS Activate credits: what you can actually get in 2026, and how not to waste them.
AWS Activate credits are the cheapest money a startup will ever raise, and the easiest to burn without noticing. This guide covers the tiers, who qualifies, why applications bounce, and what happens the month they run out.
Last verified against AWS's own pages: 19 Oct 2026
Changed: Portfolio used to be "up to $100,000". AWS's pages now say up to $200,000. Plenty of older guides haven't caught up.
The three ways to get AWS startup credits.
| Programme | Who it's for | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| Activate Founders | Self-funded startups, no institutional investor needed | $1,000, up to $5,000 for some |
| Activate Portfolio | Pre-Series B startups backed by an Activate Provider (accelerator, VC, angel network) with an Organization ID | up to $200,000 |
| AWS credits for AI startups | Invite-only, through an AWS account manager | $200,000 and up |
Source: AWS Startups: credits. Amounts depend on the provider's agreement with AWS; "up to" means exactly that.
Eligibility for AWS startup credits, line by line.
AWS lists three conditions for Activate:
- Pre-Series B, founded in the last 10 years. A Series A company qualifies; a Series B one doesn't.
- An AWS account on a paid plan. Free-tier-only accounts can't receive credits.
- New to Activate, or asking for more than you've had before. There's a lifetime cap per company.
For Portfolio there's a fourth, easy to miss: you must apply within 12 months of your most recent funding date. Raise in January, forget until the following February, and your provider's code may no longer work.
How to apply, and how long it takes.
- Get the Organization ID from your accelerator or investor's perks page (Portfolio only).
- Apply from the AWS Activate site using the same email as the AWS account's root or billing contact.
- Make sure your company website is live and matches the name on the application.
- Wait. AWS quotes 5 to 10 business days for a decision.
- Once approved, the credits and their expiry date appear in the Billing console a few hours later.
Why AWS Activate applications get rejected.
AWS's own FAQ and founder reports point to the same handful of reasons:
- Email mismatch. The applicant's email differs from the AWS account's, or uses a personal domain while the website uses a company one. This is the most common one, and it occasionally trips on legitimate applications too.
- No public website or profile, or a holding page that doesn't say what the company does.
- Lifetime cap reached, including credits received through an earlier programme.
- Duplicate application from another account at the same company.
- Funding past Series A at the time of applying.
If you're rejected for an email mismatch, fix the account contact first, then reapply. Arguing with the form rarely works.
Sources: AWS Activate FAQ, AWS Startups: everything you need to know about Activate credits.
What the credits won't pay for.
Credits apply automatically to most of your bill, oldest first, and you can't choose which services they cover. They don't cover past charges. AWS excludes a few things outright, including Mechanical Turk, AWS Managed Services, AWS Professional Services, and Training and Certification. They can cover eligible support plans and some third-party models on Bedrock.
Two things founders trip over: marketplace software billed through AWS is generally not covered, and if you move providers you may lose eligibility for a higher tier later. Check the current Activate terms before you plan around anything unusual.
When AWS credits expire, and what happens next.
AWS says credits usually expire within one to two years, depending on the package. Credits end at whichever comes first: the expiry date, or the moment the balance hits zero. Growth makes the second one arrive early.
The next month, the full bill goes to your card. Nobody at AWS calls you first. If the card fails, the account can be suspended, which has happened to startups who forgot whose card was on file.
Two habits that prevent the surprise:
- Watch gross usage, not the net invoice. Cost Explorer can show charges before credits are applied.
- Set an AWS Budget on that gross figure, with an alert at 80% of what you can afford after credits.
To see exactly when yours run out and what it does to cash, use the AWS credits runway calculator.
How to stretch credits without slowing the team down.
- Turn staging off at night and at weekends. A scheduled scale-down often saves a third of non-production cost.
- One NAT gateway per non-production environment, or none with VPC endpoints.
- ECS on Fargate before Kubernetes. An EKS control plane is $73 a month before a single pod runs. See ECS vs EKS.
- Log retention set to weeks, not forever.
- Don't buy Savings Plans with credits in mind. Commit only to what you'll run after they're gone.
- Know your gross cost per customer. It's one of the first numbers asked for in Series A technical due diligence.
Accounting note: credits aren't cash. They don't belong on the balance sheet as money in the bank, and a runway model that treats AWS as free is wrong by exactly the amount of your future bill.