{
  "source": "https://genztech.blog/free-for-students/",
  "license": "Free to cite with attribution + link",
  "updated": "2026-08-31",
  "checked": "2026-07-27",
  "offers": [
    {
      "name": "Claude for Education",
      "maker": "Anthropic",
      "category": "AI Models & Assistants",
      "offer": "Anthropic gives free Claude access (Pro-level features) to students, faculty, and staff — but only at universities that have signed an institutional 'Claude for Education' plan. There is no individual signup for students at unaffiliated schools.",
      "value": "Free Claude access, but only at partner institutions",
      "valueKind": "check",
      "eligibility": "Must attend/work at a partner university; sign in to claude.ai with your school email to be auto-upgraded. Unaffiliated students must get their institution to contact Anthropic's education sales team.",
      "indiaNote": "Access depends entirely on whether a specific Indian college has signed a Claude for Education agreement — there is no SheerID-style individual self-verification route for Claude itself. Separately, the GitHub Student Developer Pack (a Microsoft/GitHub benefit, globally available including India) gives students Claude Haiku 4.5 by default via GitHub Copilot; flagship Sonnet/Opus manual selection was reportedly restricted to Copilot's Auto mode as of March 2026 (secondary-source claim, not independently verified on Anthropic's own site).",
      "url": "https://claude.com/solutions/education",
      "sourceQuote": "Page describes 'Claude for higher education' as 'A comprehensive university-wide plan for institutions, including its students, faculty, and staff,' and directs prospective users to 'Contact our Education team' (contact-sales/education-plan) — no individual student sign-up flow is shown on the page.",
      "confidence": "confirmed",
      "checked": "2026-08-23"
    },
    {
      "name": "Microsoft 365 Personal Student Discount (with Copilot)",
      "maker": "Microsoft",
      "category": "AI Models & Assistants",
      "offer": "Verified college/university students get 50% off Microsoft 365 Personal ($4.99/month), which bundles Microsoft Copilot inside the desktop Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Outlook apps plus 1TB OneDrive. A separate limited-time 'free 12 months' promotion tied to a White House AI-education event required enrollment by Oct 31, 2025 and has already lapsed.",
      "value": "50% discount ($4.99/month), not free — includes Copilot in Office apps",
      "valueKind": "discount",
      "eligibility": "Full-time or part-time enrollment at an accredited college/university; verify via school email, enrollment details, school account, ISIC card, verification code, or documentation (dated student ID, progress report, class schedule, or acceptance letter)",
      "indiaNote": "The flexible, document-based verification options (student ID, class schedule, acceptance letter) are usable by Indian students even without an institutional email address. Pricing shown ($4.99) is on the US page; Indian students should check the localized in-country Microsoft 365 student pricing page for INR terms and regional availability, which was not separately confirmed in this research.",
      "url": "https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/college-student-pricing",
      "sourceQuote": "\"50% on Microsoft 365 Personal\" at \"$4.99/month\"... \"This offer includes Microsoft Copilot in desktop apps for productivity apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Outlook.\" (fetched directly from the official page)",
      "confidence": "confirmed",
      "checked": "2026-08-23"
    },
    {
      "name": "Le Chat Education Plan",
      "maker": "Mistral AI",
      "category": "AI Models & Assistants",
      "offer": "Verified students get Le Chat Pro at a discount: $5.99/month instead of the regular $14.99/month Pro price (about 60% off), valid for up to 12 months.",
      "value": "60% discount ($5.99/mo vs $14.99/mo), not free",
      "valueKind": "discount",
      "eligibility": "Must verify with an institutional (school-issued) email address at an accredited higher-education institution; must not have previously used Le Chat/Vibe Pro",
      "indiaNote": "Mistral's own help article explicitly states that documents (student ID, enrollment certificate, confirmation/acceptance letter) are 'not accepted as a substitute' for an institutional email. Many Indian colleges don't issue students a personal institutional email address, so this offer realistically only works for Indian students whose college issues them a school-domain email — no document-based fallback exists.",
      "url": "https://mistral.ai/pricing/",
      "sourceQuote": "Pricing page (fetched directly): student plan is \"$5.99\" per month vs Pro's \"$14.99/mo,\" \"Valid for a maximum of 12 months for verified students at accredited higher institutions.\" Help center (fetched directly): \"Personal email addresses... are not eligible for Education plan verification\" and \"Student IDs, enrollment certificates, confirmation letters, or other documents are not accepted as a substitute.\"",
      "confidence": "confirmed",
      "checked": "2026-08-23"
    },
    {
      "name": "Google AI Pro/Plus for Students (Gemini)",
      "maker": "Google",
      "category": "AI Models & Assistants",
      "offer": "Google relaunched a free-year student AI plan on 2026-08-19, replacing the previous version that ended in September 2025. It now splits by region: eligible university students in the US get a free year of Google AI Pro, while students in most other markets get a free year of the lower Google AI Plus tier instead (2x higher usage limits, 400GB cloud storage, Gemini Omni access, unlimited uploads for Study features). Both new users and students whose old 2025 AI Pro trial expired can qualify again. A valid payment method is required at signup and the plan auto-renews to a paid subscription after 12 months unless cancelled — this is a free trial year, not a permanent free tier.",
      "value": "Free for 12 months, then auto-charges: US students renew into Google AI Pro at US$19.99/mo; students in the ~140 other eligible markets renew into Google AI Plus at roughly US$4.99/mo or local currency equivalent (confirmed at ₹399/mo on the India-localized page). Must redeem by 31 December 2026.",
      "valueKind": "free",
      "eligibility": "University students aged 18+ in an eligible market, verified annually. Excluded markets as of this check: the US gets the Pro variant instead of Plus, and Plus is unavailable in Canada, Bolivia, Albania, Macau, Hong Kong, and Tunisia. Requires a valid payment method on file at signup.",
      "indiaNote": "India is not on the excluded-market list, so Indian students qualify for the free year of Google AI Plus; the India-localized version of the page quoted a post-trial auto-renewal price of ₹399/month. Set a calendar reminder before the 12-month mark or the December 31, 2026 redemption deadline — whichever applies — since a card is charged automatically unless you cancel first.",
      "url": "https://gemini.google/students/",
      "sourceQuote": "\"Google AI Plus student plan\" ... \"free-of-charge\" / \"at no cost\" for \"1 year\" ... \"eligible university students aged 18+. Both new users and students whose 2025 AI Pro trial has expired can qualify.\" ... \"Redeem until 31 December 2026\" ... \"Valid form of payment required at sign-up. Unless cancelled earlier, Google AI Plus will automatically charge ₹399/month after the trial ends.\" Cross-confirmed on Google's own announcement (blog.google/innovation-and-ai/products/gemini-app/student-offer-google-ai/): \"Eligible students in the U.S. only\" get Google AI Pro renewing at \"$19.99/mo\"; international students get Google AI Plus renewing at \"$4.99/month or local currency equivalent\" in \"over 140 markets... except for in the U.S., Bolivia, Albania, Canada, Macau, Hong Kong, and Tunisia.\"",
      "confidence": "confirmed",
      "checked": "2026-09-06"
    },
    {
      "name": "Perplexity Pro for Students",
      "maker": "Perplexity AI",
      "category": "AI Models & Assistants",
      "offer": "Perplexity offers verified students a discount on Perplexity Pro, bundled with Comet, the company's AI browser aimed at students. The vendor page states the discount plainly but does not publish the size of it, the resulting price, or the plan length anywhere before you create an account and pass verification, so the only fact confirmable from the public page is that a student discount on Pro exists.",
      "value": "Discounted Pro, exact discount not published pre-signup",
      "valueKind": "discount",
      "eligibility": "Sign in or sign up with any email address, then verify student status inside the product. Notably the sign-in step does not itself demand an institutional email domain, though what the verification step accepts is not stated on the public page.",
      "url": "https://www.perplexity.ai/students",
      "sourceQuote": "Students get discounted Pro. Sign in or sign up with any email. Verify your student status to get Pro at a discount.",
      "confidence": "needs-recheck",
      "checked": "2026-09-08",
      "indiaNote": "Promising for Indian students on the verification route, because sign-up accepts any email address rather than requiring an institutional domain, which is the usual blocker at Indian colleges that never issue one. What the student-verification step actually accepts, document upload or a school email, is not disclosed publicly, so treat eligibility as unconfirmed until someone runs the flow. Do not assume free: this is a discount on a paid plan, and the amount is unpublished."
    },
    {
      "name": "ChatGPT Edu",
      "maker": "OpenAI",
      "category": "AI Models & Assistants",
      "offer": "OpenAI's official education page (chatgpt.com/business/education/) markets 'ChatGPT Edu' purely as an institution-wide deployment — 'an accessible option for universities to deploy AI to students, faculty, researchers, and campus operations.' The only call to action on the page is 'Contact sales.' There is no individual student sign-up, pricing, discount, or self-serve verification flow shown anywhere on the page.",
      "value": "N/A for individual students — no self-serve free or discounted plan exists; access depends entirely on whether a student's university has purchased a ChatGPT Edu deployment.",
      "valueKind": "check",
      "eligibility": "Only available if a student's university has separately contracted with OpenAI for a campus-wide ChatGPT Edu deployment; individual students cannot sign up or apply directly.",
      "indiaNote": "Not applicable to individual verification — this is an institution-level enterprise sale, not a program an Indian student (or any student) can join on their own. Ask your university IT department whether it has a ChatGPT Edu contract; if not, students fall back to the same free ChatGPT tier available to anyone with an account.",
      "url": "https://openai.com/chatgpt/education/",
      "sourceQuote": "\"ChatGPT Edu — Bring AI to campus at scale. An accessible option for universities to deploy AI to students, faculty, researchers, and campus operations.\" Sole CTA: \"Contact sales.\" No individual pricing or student self-signup shown. (fetched directly from chatgpt.com/business/education/, which openai.com/chatgpt/education/ redirects to)",
      "confidence": "confirmed",
      "checked": "2026-08-23"
    },
    {
      "name": "GitHub Student Developer Pack",
      "maker": "GitHub (Microsoft)",
      "category": "Cloud & APIs",
      "offer": "Free bundle of 85+ partner developer tools/services for verified students, refreshed continuously. Currently-listed partners most relevant to cloud/APIs include Microsoft Azure ($100 credit + 25+ free services, plus a separate 13-17 age variant), DigitalOcean ($200 platform credit — expiring, see separate entry), MongoDB Atlas ($50 credit + free certification), Namecheap (.me domain + SSL), .TECH (free domain), JetBrains (free IDE subscription), Heroku, Notion, GitHub Codespaces/Pro, Datadog, Sentry, BrowserStack, and dozens more.",
      "value": "Sum of individual component values (~$100 Azure + $200 DigitalOcean, expiring 7/31/26 + $50 MongoDB + $150 MongoDB cert + free JetBrains/Namecheap/.TECH domains, etc.) — GitHub does not currently publish one aggregate dollar figure on the pack page itself.",
      "valueKind": "free",
      "eligibility": "Enrolled in a degree- or diploma-granting course of study, age 13+, own a GitHub personal account. Verify via school-issued email OR uploaded proof of enrollment (student ID, transcript, enrollment/admission letter, fee receipt).",
      "url": "https://education.github.com/pack",
      "sourceQuote": "Re-verified 2026-08-19 on education.github.com/pack: still free for verified students, listing \"Free GitHub Pro while you are a student\", GitHub Copilot Student with unlimited code completions, JetBrains \"A free subscription for students, to be renewed annually\", \"$100 in Azure credit\" (18+) and \"$50 in MongoDB Atlas Credits\".",
      "confidence": "confirmed",
      "checked": "2026-08-19",
      "indiaNote": "Works for Indian college students. Most Indian colleges don't issue .edu-style emails, but GitHub explicitly supports manual verification via uploaded documents (student ID card front+back, admission/fee receipt, or enrollment letter). Community reports (e.g. discussions on github.com/orgs/community) confirm Indian students are routinely approved this way; processing can take longer than instant .edu-email verification."
    },
    {
      "name": "Microsoft Azure for Students",
      "maker": "Microsoft",
      "category": "Cloud & APIs",
      "offer": "$100 Azure credit usable within 12 months, plus free monthly amounts of 20+ popular services for 12 months and 65+ always-free services, renewable annually while still a student.",
      "value": "$100 USD credit, no credit card required to sign up.",
      "valueKind": "free",
      "eligibility": "Full-time university student, verified via school-issued email address recognized by Microsoft.",
      "url": "https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free/students",
      "sourceQuote": "No credit card required... Renew your subscription annually and continue to get free access to Azure as long as you're a student.",
      "confidence": "confirmed",
      "checked": "2026-08-23",
      "indiaNote": "Works for many Indian students but is gated on Microsoft recognizing the student's college email domain — Microsoft does not publish a public list of eligible Indian institutions, and Microsoft Q&A threads show some Indian students get 'not eligible' errors if their college domain isn't recognized. If the direct signup fails, the Azure benefit bundled inside the GitHub Student Developer Pack (verified via document upload rather than email domain) is a documented fallback route, as is the separate 'Azure for Students (ages 13-17)' variant listed as its own GitHub Pack partner."
    },
    {
      "name": "DigitalOcean credit via GitHub Student Developer Pack",
      "maker": "DigitalOcean (via GitHub Education)",
      "category": "Cloud & APIs",
      "offer": "Ended. DigitalOcean has fully wound down its participation in the GitHub Student Developer Pack. Redemption closed July 31, 2026 and it no longer appears among the Pack's listed partner offers. The wind-down was retroactive: DigitalOcean expired every Pack credit on August 1, 2026, including credits students had already redeemed earlier in the year on the stated understanding that they were good for 12 months. Unused balances did not carry over or transfer, and accounts reverted to standard billing, so any Droplets, databases or volumes left running began charging the card on file.",
      "value": "Ended, all Pack credits expired August 1, 2026",
      "valueKind": "gone",
      "eligibility": "No longer obtainable. Previously required an active GitHub Student Developer Pack verification.",
      "url": "https://education.github.com/pack/offers",
      "sourceQuote": "DigitalOcean is leaving the Student Developer Pack, and their student credit offer for $200 of platform credit will no longer be available after July 31, 2026. Re-checked 2026-08-17 against the Pack offers page: DigitalOcean no longer appears anywhere in the partner offer list.",
      "confidence": "confirmed",
      "checked": "2026-08-17",
      "indiaNote": "Dead as of 2026-08-17, kept on the list so students who budgeted around it are not left guessing. Indian students who redeemed this earlier in 2026 lost the remaining months of what was sold as a year of credit when DigitalOcean expired all balances on August 1, and should check that nothing is still running on that account and quietly billing a card. For replacement free-tier compute the Pack's remaining cloud partners, Microsoft Azure credits and Heroku, are the realistic substitutes, and both accept the same GitHub Education document-upload verification that works without an institutional email domain."
    },
    {
      "name": "MongoDB Atlas credit via GitHub Student Developer Pack",
      "maker": "MongoDB",
      "category": "Cloud & APIs",
      "offer": "$50 MongoDB Atlas credit, access to MongoDB Compass and MongoDB University, plus a free MongoDB certification (valued at $150) after completing a certification learning path.",
      "value": "$50 Atlas credit + $150 certification value.",
      "valueKind": "free",
      "eligibility": "GitHub Student Developer Pack verification, then separately verify student status at mongodb.com/students by entering GitHub info.",
      "url": "https://www.mongodb.com/students",
      "sourceQuote": "$50 Atlas Credit - MongoDB Atlas is the most advanced cloud database service on the market... Free MongoDB Certification ($150 value)",
      "confidence": "confirmed",
      "checked": "2026-08-23",
      "indiaNote": "Same GitHub Education verification path as the main pack applies (document upload accepted for Indian colleges); redeeming the Atlas credit itself requires adding a valid credit card or PayPal account to the Atlas org (credit offsets charges, card not charged unless usage exceeds the credit)."
    },
    {
      "name": "AWS Educate",
      "maker": "Amazon Web Services",
      "category": "Cloud & APIs",
      "offer": "Free hands-on cloud labs (Storage, Compute, Networking, Databases, Cloud Operations), shareable digital skill badges, and (for 18+) access to the AWS Educate Job Board.",
      "value": "Free training content only. No monetary AWS account credit is offered under the current version of the program — earlier years of AWS Educate included cash-value credits/vouchers for institutions and the AWS Certification exam voucher, but community reports and AWS's own certification blog confirm those grant/voucher components were discontinued (the associated exam voucher and institutional grants ended around 2023). AWS Educate is also no longer listed as a current partner in the GitHub Student Developer Pack's 85-partner offer list.",
      "valueKind": "free",
      "eligibility": "Open to anyone 13+ worldwide with just an email address — no school verification required for the free labs.",
      "url": "https://aws.amazon.com/education/awseducate/",
      "sourceQuote": "Learners as young as 13 can register for AWS Educate with just an email address... no credit card needed.",
      "confidence": "confirmed",
      "checked": "2026-08-23",
      "indiaNote": "Fully open to Indian students — registration only requires an email address, no institutional or geographic restriction found on the official page. However, expect labs/badges only, not free AWS account spending credit."
    },
    {
      "name": "Google Cloud for Education — Teaching & Learning Credits",
      "maker": "Google Cloud",
      "category": "Cloud & APIs",
      "offer": "Google Cloud billing credits for coursework/projects, but NOT self-serve: a faculty member at an eligible institution must apply first, then the faculty member emails eligible students a redemption link. Separately, Google Cloud Skills Boost (skills.google) offers free/low-cost hands-on labs and skill badges to individuals without needing faculty involvement.",
      "value": "Illustrative example cited in Google's own documentation is $50 USD per student, valid for 1 year after redemption — actual amount is set by whatever the faculty member's grant provides, not a fixed public figure.",
      "valueKind": "check",
      "eligibility": "Institution must be an accredited, regionally-recognized, non-profit, degree-granting higher-ed institution in an eligible country; student must be currently enrolled and access credits in their capacity as a student (no commercial/personal use). Requires a faculty sponsor — students cannot request credits directly.",
      "url": "https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/edu-grants",
      "sourceQuote": "docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/edu-grants (fetched directly): \"If your faculty has applied and received Google Cloud credits for your course, they send you an email with a URL... Your credits are valid for one year after you redeem them.\" support.google.com/google-cloud-higher-ed/answer/10322652 (fetched directly on recheck): the program's eligibility list of regionally accredited, non-profit institutions in eligible countries outside the US explicitly includes India, alongside Canada, UK, Australia, Japan, Germany, Brazil, and South Korea; for-profit institutions are excluded.",
      "confidence": "confirmed",
      "checked": "2026-08-23",
      "indiaNote": "Confirmed directly on Google's own eligibility page that India is on the list of eligible countries for this program. That said, it remains faculty-gated — an individual Indian student cannot request credits alone and must wait for a professor to apply and forward a redemption link. Skills Boost's individual free-tier labs remain the direct self-serve alternative."
    },
    {
      "name": "Vercel v0 for Students",
      "maker": "Vercel",
      "category": "Cloud & APIs",
      "offer": "1 year of free v0 Premium (AI app-building tool built on Next.js/React/Tailwind/shadcn) for students at a specific whitelist of participating universities.",
      "value": "1 year of v0 Premium tier free (a paid Student Plan at $4.99/mo also exists for those outside the whitelist).",
      "valueKind": "check",
      "eligibility": "Must attend one of roughly 15 listed partner universities (e.g., Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, UC Berkeley, MIT, NYU, Northwestern, Cornell, USC, Georgia Tech, ASU, University of Washington, San Francisco State, Grand Canyon University, University of Waterloo) and verify with that school's .edu-style email.",
      "url": "https://v0.app/students",
      "sourceQuote": "Get 1 year of free v0 premium when you verify your student status at an active school.",
      "confidence": "confirmed",
      "checked": "2026-08-23",
      "indiaNote": "Does NOT currently work for Indian college students — this is not a general program, it is restricted to a small named whitelist of mostly US/Canadian universities, none of which are in India. Students outside the whitelist can only join a waitlist at v0.app/students hoping their school gets added; there is no document-upload fallback like GitHub Education offers."
    },
    {
      "name": "Netlify for Students",
      "maker": "Netlify",
      "category": "Cloud & APIs",
      "offer": "No dedicated student program exists. Netlify is not among the 85 partners currently listed on GitHub's official Student Developer Pack offers page, and a direct check of Netlify's own pricing page confirms no student discount, student plan, or education program of any kind.",
      "value": "N/A — students get the same free public 'Free' plan (renamed from 'Starter'; hard-capped at a 300-credit monthly allocation covering deploys, compute, bandwidth, and web requests) as any other user, or can separately apply for Netlify's Open Source plan if their project qualifies (unrelated to student status).",
      "valueKind": "gone",
      "eligibility": "N/A (no dedicated program to be eligible for).",
      "url": "https://www.netlify.com/pricing/",
      "sourceQuote": "Directly fetched netlify.com/pricing (2026-08-23 recheck): no mention of a student discount, student plan, education program, or GitHub Student Developer Pack benefit anywhere on the page; plans are now Free ($0 forever, 300 credit limit), Personal ($9/mo), Pro ($20/mo), and Enterprise.",
      "confidence": "confirmed",
      "checked": "2026-08-23",
      "indiaNote": "Not applicable — there's no distinct student program currently to check India-specific eligibility against. Older forum/community claims that Netlify gave a free Pro-plan year via the GitHub Student Pack could not be corroborated on any current official page and appear stale; treat those as outdated."
    },
    {
      "name": "JetBrains Student Pack (All Products Pack + AI Pro trial)",
      "maker": "JetBrains s.r.o.",
      "category": "Dev Tools & IDEs",
      "offer": "Free full 'Student Pack' covering all 10 JetBrains desktop IDEs (IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate, PyCharm Professional, WebStorm, GoLand, PhpStorm, CLion, RustRover, Rider, RubyMine, DataGrip), a limited trial of JetBrains AI Pro (code completion + AI chat/agents), and free access to JetBrains Academy courses. Individual single-IDE downloads (IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, CLion, WebStorm, RustRover, Rider, RubyMine, DataGrip) are also available free with no student verification at all if you only need one tool. License is free for the duration of study, renewed annually; after graduation you get 40% off any JetBrains product/pack for 2 years.",
      "value": "Free vs. the All Products Pack + AI Pro list price of US $299/year shown on the site (discounted grad rate US $179.40/yr for 2 years post-graduation).",
      "valueKind": "free",
      "eligibility": "Full-time student enrolled in an accredited program lasting one year or more.",
      "indiaNote": "Verify with a university/college email address, an ISIC/ITIC card, or an active GitHub Student Developer Pack — no credit card needed. If an Indian college's email domain (.ac.in etc.) isn't auto-recognized, JetBrains explicitly lets you submit the domain to the SWOT repository, or fall back to ISIC/ITIC or GitHub Education verification instead.",
      "url": "https://www.jetbrains.com/academy/student-pack/",
      "sourceQuote": "Requirements: University email address, ISIC/ITIC card, or GitHub Student Developer Pack. Full-time student in a program lasting one year or more. — 'Access tools at no cost for the duration of your studies', 'Renewed annually in your JetBrains Account'",
      "confidence": "confirmed",
      "checked": "2026-08-26"
    },
    {
      "name": "GitHub Copilot Student plan (via GitHub Student Developer Pack)",
      "maker": "GitHub (Microsoft)",
      "category": "Dev Tools & IDEs",
      "offer": "Verified students get GitHub Copilot (AI code completion and chat across editors), normally a paid product, at no cost through GitHub Education / the Student Developer Pack. New plan sign-ups had been paused from April 20, 2026 but reopened on June 17, 2026; the pack-offers page now advertises live sign-up again.",
      "value": "Free access to a Copilot tier normally priced roughly $10-$39/month depending on plan, for verified students. A separate always-free 'Copilot Free' tier (2,000 completions/month, no card, no verification) exists for anyone regardless of student status.",
      "valueKind": "free",
      "eligibility": "Same as the GitHub Student Developer Pack: age 13+, enrolled in a degree- or diploma-granting course of study, verified via school-issued email and/or official, dated proof of enrollment.",
      "url": "https://education.github.com/pack/offers",
      "sourceQuote": "GitHub's VP of product development announced the pause on new Copilot Pro/Pro+/Student sign-ups on April 20, 2026, citing changed compute demands from agentic workflows. GitHub reopened sign-ups for the free Copilot Student plan on June 17, 2026; GitHub Education's live page now advertises Copilot Student as available for free to verified students with an active sign-up flow, re-confirmed 2026-08-31.",
      "confidence": "confirmed",
      "checked": "2026-08-31",
      "indiaNote": "Same GitHub Education verification path as the main pack applies, manual document upload is accepted for Indian colleges without institutional email addresses. Existing verified students who already activated the benefit were unaffected by the pause; new activations are open again as of June 17, 2026. Unverified secondary-source claim: reports say that since March 12, 2026 GitHub restricted manual selection of Claude's flagship Sonnet/Opus models on the Copilot Student plan, leaving Claude Haiku 4.5 as default with Sonnet/Opus reachable only via Copilot's Auto mode, this was not confirmed directly on GitHub's own page."
    },
    {
      "name": "GitLab for Education",
      "maker": "GitLab Inc.",
      "category": "Dev Tools & IDEs",
      "offer": "Free GitLab Ultimate tier with unlimited seats and 50,000 compute (CI/CD) minutes per month, granted to enrolled educational institutions on a 1-year license with annual renewal. This is a distinct, institution-level program from GitHub's Student Developer Pack — it is not an individual self-serve student sign-up.",
      "value": "Unlimited-seat GitLab Ultimate (normally a paid per-seat tier) + 50,000 CI minutes/month, free for the whole institution.",
      "valueKind": "check",
      "eligibility": "Institution must be accredited, primarily focused on teaching enrolled students, credential-granting, and not-for-profit. Application is made by faculty or staff employed full-time at the institution, using the institution's email domain, via the GitLab Customers Portal — individual students cannot apply directly.",
      "indiaNote": "This is granted at the institution level, not to individual students, so an Indian student cannot self-verify with a personal college email the way they can for JetBrains or GitHub Education. Access depends entirely on whether the student's Indian college/university has already enrolled in the program (or on a professor/IT staff applying on the institution's behalf) — students should check with their department rather than expect a direct sign-up flow.",
      "url": "https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/education/join/",
      "sourceQuote": "'Unlimited seats of GitLab Ultimate', '50,000 compute minutes per month included', '1 year duration with annual renewal'; applicants must be 'faculty or staff employed full-time at the institution' and 'apply using their institution's email domain.'",
      "confidence": "confirmed",
      "checked": "2026-08-23"
    },
    {
      "name": "Replit for Students",
      "maker": "Replit, Inc.",
      "category": "Dev Tools & IDEs",
      "offer": "Free 'Starter' plan (unlimited public apps, basic Replit AI, community support) for everyone, plus 50% off Replit Core for verified students: $10/month instead of the standard $20/month, unlocking Replit Agent with fuller AI credits, unlimited private apps, and production deploys.",
      "value": "$10/month discount off Core ($120/year saved) vs. standard pricing.",
      "valueKind": "discount",
      "eligibility": "Sign up / verify with a school-issued '.edu' email address; discount auto-applies once the account email is recognized as academic.",
      "indiaNote": "The official page explicitly asks for a '.edu' email, which is the US convention — most Indian institutions use domains like .ac.in or custom institutional domains. It's not stated on the page whether those pass verification, so confidence is high that the offer itself is real and live, but Indian students should attempt sign-up with their actual college email to confirm it clears the .edu-style check rather than assume it will.",
      "url": "https://replit.com/edu/students",
      "sourceQuote": "'Free to start. 50% off Core with your .edu email.' ... '.EDU EXCLUSIVE — CORE — $10 / month with .edu email' ... '50% off with .edu verification'",
      "confidence": "confirmed",
      "checked": "2026-08-23"
    },
    {
      "name": "Cursor for Students",
      "maker": "Anysphere, Inc. (Cursor)",
      "category": "Dev Tools & IDEs",
      "offer": "No dedicated automatic student discount is currently open. Cursor's previous 'free 1 year of Cursor Pro for verified students' program was closed to new sign-ups on June 25, 2026 (cited as an anti-fraud measure); students who already redeemed it keep their rate until it expires. Currently the general free 'Hobby' tier (limited Agent requests/Tab completions) is open to anyone, and additional Pro credits/discounts for students are being distributed via on-campus/online campus events starting fall 2026, plus a credit-request form aimed at grad students, researchers, and educators.",
      "value": "Free Hobby tier only; the prior offer was worth ~$240/year and is no longer obtainable by new applicants.",
      "valueKind": "gone",
      "eligibility": "Free tier: open to everyone, no verification. Campus-event credits: tied to attending/being near a Cursor campus event or submitting the researcher/educator credit-request form.",
      "indiaNote": "The free Hobby tier works globally, including India, with zero verification. Since the old .edu-verified free-year program is closed, Indian students no longer have a simple self-serve path to a free year of Pro — access now depends on Cursor running a campus event they can reach, or on the campus newsletter, which has historically skewed toward US/UK campuses.",
      "url": "https://cursor.com/students",
      "sourceQuote": "Does Cursor offer discounts to students? — 'Anyone can get started with Cursor for free. To upgrade your access, look out for promotions at our on-campus and online events starting this fall.'",
      "confidence": "confirmed",
      "checked": "2026-08-21"
    },
    {
      "name": "Windsurf student discount (now Devin Desktop)",
      "maker": "Cognition AI",
      "category": "Dev Tools & IDEs",
      "offer": "Not currently active. Windsurf was rebranded to 'Devin Desktop' on June 2, 2026; windsurf.com and its former /editor/students page now permanently redirect to devin.ai/desktop, whose pricing shows only Free / Pro / Max / Team-Enterprise tiers with no student or education tier. Numerous third-party deal-aggregator pages still advertise a '50% off with .edu email' Windsurf student plan, but that offer/page no longer exists on the official site as of this check.",
      "value": "N/A — no live student offer to value.",
      "valueKind": "gone",
      "eligibility": "N/A — no program currently exists to apply eligibility criteria to.",
      "indiaNote": "Not applicable — there is nothing to verify against right now. Devin Desktop's general Free tier remains open to anyone worldwide, including India, without student verification.",
      "url": "https://devin.ai/desktop",
      "sourceQuote": "'Devin Desktop is the new name for Windsurf. We're building on the IDE foundation of Windsurf to introduce the command center for managing all your agents in one place.' Pricing tiers shown: 'Free - $0' ... no student/education tier present.",
      "confidence": "confirmed",
      "checked": "2026-08-26"
    },
    {
      "name": "Warp terminal student/education discount",
      "maker": "Warp.dev, Inc.",
      "category": "Dev Tools & IDEs",
      "offer": "No dedicated student or education discount currently exists. The official education URL (warp.dev/education) returns HTTP 404, and the live pricing page (warp.dev/pricing) lists only Free / Build (~$20/mo) / Max / Business / Enterprise tiers with no student pricing, verification flow, or education mention anywhere.",
      "value": "N/A — no offer to value; the Free tier ($0/month, full core terminal features, limited cloud-agent access) is the best available option and is open to all users, not student-exclusive.",
      "valueKind": "gone",
      "eligibility": "N/A — nothing to be eligible for.",
      "indiaNote": "Not applicable — there is no program to check eligibility against. Warp's Free tier is globally available, including India, with no student verification required or offered.",
      "url": "https://www.warp.dev/pricing",
      "sourceQuote": "Pricing page: 'Free — $0/month ... Limited cloud agents access', 'Build — Starting at $20/month' — no student tier text present; https://www.warp.dev/education returns HTTP 404 Not Found.",
      "confidence": "confirmed",
      "checked": "2026-08-26"
    },
    {
      "name": "1Password credit via GitHub Student Developer Pack",
      "maker": "1Password (via GitHub Education)",
      "category": "Dev Tools & IDEs",
      "offer": "Verified GitHub Student Developer Pack members get a full year of 1Password free, including 1Password Developer Tools (CLI, SSH agent, Secrets Automation integrations).",
      "value": "1Password free for 1 year (normally a paid password-manager subscription), including 1Password Developer Tools.",
      "valueKind": "free",
      "eligibility": "Requires an active, verified GitHub Student Developer Pack account; redeemed as one of the Pack's partner offers rather than through a separate 1Password signup.",
      "indiaNote": "Uses the same GitHub Education verification as the rest of the Pack (school email or uploaded proof of enrollment), so the same document-upload fallback that works for Indian colleges without institutional email domains applies here too.",
      "url": "https://education.github.com/pack/offers",
      "sourceQuote": "\"Get 1Password free for a year including 1Password Developer Tools\" (fetched directly from education.github.com/pack/offers, 2026-08-23)",
      "confidence": "confirmed",
      "checked": "2026-08-23"
    },
    {
      "name": "Figma Education",
      "maker": "Figma, Inc.",
      "category": "Design & Productivity",
      "offer": "Verified higher-education students, higher-ed educators, and bootcamp participants get the Figma Professional plan (Figma + FigJam) completely free. K-12 students/teachers get Figma Education (Enterprise-tier classroom features), also free.",
      "value": "Professional plan is normally roughly $12–15/editor/month depending on billing cycle and region (third-party pricing trackers; not stated on the education page itself) — fully waived for verified accounts.",
      "valueKind": "free",
      "eligibility": "Currently enrolled college/university student, higher-ed educator, or bootcamp participant (Professional tier); or K-12 student/teacher (Education tier). Verified through SheerID using a school-issued email or uploaded proof (student ID, transcript, enrollment letter) if no school email exists.",
      "url": "https://www.figma.com/education/",
      "sourceQuote": "Re-verified 2026-08-19 on figma.com/education: \"Use them to ideate, create, and share work — all free, as a student or teacher.\" Sign up with a student or teacher email address, then verify student/educator status from the account. No end date stated.",
      "confidence": "confirmed",
      "checked": "2026-08-19",
      "indiaNote": "Figma's own help article (help.figma.com) states the program is 'only available in select regions and may not be accessible everywhere' without naming which regions — it neither confirms nor excludes India explicitly. SheerID, the verification vendor, does support many Indian universities in general, so the realistic path for an Indian student is to just attempt verification with a school email or ID rather than assume inclusion or exclusion in advance."
    },
    {
      "name": "Framer for Education",
      "maker": "Framer B.V.",
      "category": "Design & Productivity",
      "offer": "Verified students get the Framer Basic plan completely free, renewable every 11 months while still enrolled.",
      "value": "Basic plan cited on Framer's own education page as roughly a $120/year value, waived to $0 for verified students; includes full Design Canvas, CMS, ~1,000 free monthly AI credits, and template access.",
      "valueKind": "free",
      "eligibility": "Must be enrolled in a certified in-person or online educational program (high school, college, or university). Offer applies to new Framer customers; discount is applied at checkout before account creation and applications are reviewed within about 5 business days.",
      "url": "https://www.framer.com/education/students/",
      "sourceQuote": "Students must be enrolled in a certified in-person or online program, like a high school, college, or university.",
      "confidence": "confirmed",
      "checked": "2026-08-23",
      "indiaNote": "Framer's page doesn't name a verification vendor (e.g., SheerID) or list excluded countries — it describes enrollment proof reviewed manually within about 5 business days, which reads as a softer check than an instant .edu-email-only gate. That's a more forgiving path for Indian students who lack an official institutional email address (unlike Notion's WHED-email-only rule), but I could not find an explicit India-specific confirmation on Framer's own materials, so this is inferred from the general application process described rather than directly verified for India."
    },
    {
      "name": "Notion for Education",
      "maker": "Notion Labs, Inc.",
      "category": "Design & Productivity",
      "offer": "Individual students and teachers get a free Notion Plus plan (single-member workspace).",
      "value": "Plus plan is normally about $10/member/month billed annually (per Notion's public pricing page, corroborated by third-party trackers) — free for verified individual workspaces.",
      "valueKind": "free",
      "eligibility": "Must sign in to Notion using an email address issued by an institution that is listed in the World Higher Education Database (WHED). Personal email addresses do not qualify, and Notion does not accept student ID or other documentation as a substitute.",
      "url": "https://www.notion.com/help/notion-for-education",
      "sourceQuote": "The Education Plus Plan for individual students and teachers is a free Plus Plan for a one-member workspace. It's available for students or teachers signed in with their education institution's email per the WHED. / Unfortunately, you must have a valid educational email address to upgrade to the Plus Plan. We don't accept student IDs or other documentation to verify a student or educator status at this time.",
      "confidence": "confirmed",
      "checked": "2026-08-20",
      "indiaNote": "Eligibility hinges entirely on having an official institutional email address matched against the WHED list — there is no ID-upload fallback. Many Indian colleges/universities are WHED-listed, but a significant number of Indian students are never issued an official college email address by their institution, which would block this specific offer even if the school itself qualifies. Check with your registrar or IT department for an institutional email before assuming eligibility."
    },
    {
      "name": "Adobe Creative Cloud Pro for Students",
      "maker": "Adobe",
      "category": "Design & Productivity",
      "offer": "Adobe sells Creative Cloud Pro to verified students and teachers at a discount rather than free. The bundle covers 20+ apps including Photoshop, Illustrator, Adobe Premiere and Acrobat, plus Firefly generative AI with 4,000 monthly generative credits for premium video and audio features, Adobe Express Premium, Frame.io, fonts, templates and 100GB of cloud storage.",
      "value": "71% off year one: US$19.99/mo, then US$39.99/mo (list US$69.99/mo)",
      "valueKind": "discount",
      "eligibility": "Students and teachers, verified through Adobe's own 'Check eligibility' flow. Billed as an annual plan paid monthly. The headline price applies to the first year only and roughly doubles to US$39.99/mo afterwards, which is the detail most summaries of this offer omit.",
      "url": "https://www.adobe.com/education/students/creativecloud.html",
      "sourceQuote": "Save 71% on 20+ apps and Adobe Firefly creative AI for images, video, and audio. Pay US$19.99/mo the first year and US$39.99/mo after that.",
      "confidence": "confirmed",
      "checked": "2026-08-17",
      "indiaNote": "The US$19.99/mo figure is the US storefront. Adobe localises Creative Cloud pricing, so Indian students are quoted INR on the .in storefront and both the rupee price and the discount percentage can differ from the 71% headline: check the Indian storefront rather than converting the dollar figure. Verification runs through Adobe's own eligibility check rather than requiring an institutional email domain, which suits Indian students whose colleges do not issue one. Budget for the year-two step up, since the renewal price is the one most students get caught by."
    },
    {
      "name": "Canva for Campus",
      "maker": "Canva",
      "category": "Design & Productivity",
      "offer": "Canva's own education page draws a hard line between K-12 and higher-ed: primary/secondary students get free Canva Education (Pro/premium features) via a teacher invite. University and college students get only Canva Free by default; Pro/premium features via 'Canva for Campus' exist only if the student's specific university or institution has separately set it up, and the page tells students to 'Contact your university or institution for access' rather than offering any individual self-verification route.",
      "value": "N/A for an individual, unaffiliated student — Canva Free only. Pro/premium access depends entirely on whether the student's specific university has enrolled in Canva for Campus.",
      "valueKind": "check",
      "eligibility": "University/college students get Canva Free automatically; Pro-tier 'Canva for Campus' access requires the student's institution to have a Canva for Campus agreement in place — an individual student cannot unlock it alone.",
      "indiaNote": "No individual verification path exists to check against — eligibility hinges entirely on whether a specific Indian college or university has set up Canva for Campus, not on anything a student can do themselves (unlike GitHub Education's document-upload route). Ask your university IT department or student services whether Canva for Campus is active before assuming it isn't available.",
      "url": "https://www.canva.com/education/students/",
      "sourceQuote": "\"Higher education students (university and college) — Get started as a university and college student with Canva Free. You may be eligible for free access to Pro and premium features through Canva for Campus. Contact your university or institution for access.\" (fetched directly from canva.com/education/students/, 2026-08-23)",
      "confidence": "confirmed",
      "checked": "2026-08-23"
    },
    {
      "name": "Autodesk Education (AutoCAD, Fusion, Revit, Inventor)",
      "maker": "Autodesk",
      "category": "Design & Creative",
      "offer": "Autodesk gives students, educators and school IT administrators free educational access to its product line, including AutoCAD, Fusion, Revit, Inventor, Maya, 3ds Max and the free browser-based Tinkercad. Access runs for one year from the moment eligibility is confirmed and is renewable for as long as you stay eligible. Files carry an educational-use watermark and the licence is for learning, not commercial work.",
      "value": "Free one-year educational licence across the Autodesk catalogue, renewable",
      "valueKind": "free",
      "eligibility": "Students, educators and school IT admins at an accredited educational institution. You pick a product first, then run Autodesk’s eligibility confirmation before the download unlocks.",
      "indiaNote": "Autodesk runs eligibility confirmation through its own verification flow rather than requiring an institutional email domain, which is the usual blocker for Indian colleges. Autodesk also serves a separate India site, so start from the India storefront to get local terms. The exact documents accepted were not confirmed in this check, so treat the verification route, not the free-access claim, as the part to check yourself.",
      "url": "https://www.autodesk.com/education/edu-software/overview",
      "sourceQuote": "\"We offer students, educators, and school IT administrators free educational access to Autodesk products and services. Once eligibility is confirmed, you’ll have access for one year, renewable as long as you remain eligible.\" (read directly from the official education overview page, 2026-08-19)",
      "confidence": "confirmed",
      "checked": "2026-08-19"
    },
    {
      "name": "Unity Student Plan",
      "maker": "Unity",
      "category": "Game Development",
      "offer": "Unity’s Student plan is a free licence of the Unity editor for enrolled students, split into a secondary-school tier and a post-secondary tier. It also bundles a free education licence for Odin Inspector and Validator, an editor extension that is otherwise paid.",
      "value": "Free Unity Student licence plus a free Odin Inspector and Validator education licence",
      "valueKind": "free",
      "eligibility": "Students aged 16 and older enrolled at an accredited educational institution who can consent to their personal information being collected and processed. Separate application tracks for post-secondary and secondary students.",
      "indiaNote": "The stated eligibility is enrolment at an accredited institution plus the age-16 floor, with no institutional-email requirement written into the eligibility text, so Indian students are not gated the way they are on Notion or Le Chat. The application still goes through Unity’s own review, and the accepted proof-of-enrolment documents were not confirmed in this check.",
      "url": "https://unity.com/products/unity-student",
      "sourceQuote": "\"ELIGIBILITY: Students 16 years and older who are enrolled in an accredited educational institution and can consent to having their personal information collected and processed.\" Page also states \"With the free Unity Student plan, you’ll receive: ... A free Odin Inspector and Validator education license\" (read directly from the official page, 2026-08-19)",
      "confidence": "confirmed",
      "checked": "2026-08-19"
    }
  ]
}