AWS Activate vs Founders Hub vs Google for Startups: Credits Compared
· Cloud Credits Research, Recovery playbooks
All three providers will pay you - in usage - to build on them. The dollar ceilings get the headlines, but the programs differ most in who can access them and how the credits unlock.
The comparison
| AWS Activate | MS for Startups (Founders Hub) | Google for Startups | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ceiling | $100k (Portfolio) | $150k (staged unlocks) | $200k / $350k AI (Scale) |
| No-investor tier | $1k (Founders) | Yes - full program | ~$2k (Start) |
| Gatekeeper for top tier | Activate Provider (VC/accelerator) | None - milestone-based | Institutional investor |
| Typical expiry | 1–2 years | Per-stage | 2 years (Scale) |
| Extras | AWS support credits, training | GitHub Enterprise, M365, OpenAI credits | Support + partner benefits |
What actually differentiates them
Founders Hub is the accessibility outlier. No investor requirement, staged unlocks tied to usage and milestones. For bootstrapped teams it's frequently the only path to five-figure credits - and the bundled GitHub/M365/OpenAI credits are real money for a small team.
Activate is the ecosystem play. The $100k tier flows through accelerators and VCs, so the program doubles as a reason your investor's platform team introduces you to AWS. Activate credits also famously convert into early lock-in - budget your exit-or-stay decision before the credits expire, not after.
Google's AI track is the biggest number and reflects strategy: $350k targets exactly the workloads (GPU/TPU training and inference) whose bills grow fastest. If your product is model-heavy, the math frequently beats the other two even after engineering-migration costs.
Three rules regardless of provider
- Apply before the spend. Nothing is retroactive (the playbooks cover timing per program).
- Treat credits as runway, not architecture budget. Anything you build only because it's free becomes a bill on expiry day.
- Diary the expiry. Credits vanishing unspent is the startup-program version of unclaimed SLA credits - same invisibility, same fix: put a number on it with the estimate and give it an owner.
