How I Got $300 FREE AWS Credits¶

Six months ago, I applied for $300 in free AWS credits, and it’s been a game-changer for my cloud projects. With these credits, I’ve gone beyond the Free Tier plan, provisioning multiple larger EC2 instances and leaving them running for days , experimenting with various kubernetes deployments, and trying out IaC configurations. It has opened up so many possibilities without worrying about costs. In this shot blog post, I share the process of approval and some other relevant resouces along with tips for getting and using AWS credits for your projects!

YouTube - Watch this Video Where I explained How I Got $300 FREE AWS Credits

In this video I share how I got $300 FREE AWS Credits and how you can also apply for the credits.

The Invitation by AWS¶

Earlier this year, I got an email from AWS inviting me to apply for The AWS Rapid Ramp Credit Program which provides a $300 credit to small businesses to quickly get started testing AWS against their specific IT and business requirements by subsidizing a proof of concept. The free AWS credits would be applied to my AWS account.

This was trilling as my AWS account was relatively new (barely 1-month old).

The process was fairly straightforward. I followed the link in the email and filled out an application on the AWS website, explaining how I planned to use their cloud services for personal projects and learning. A week later, I received an approval email, and just like that, I had $300 to explore more of AWS.

I later discovered that though I was invited to apply for the credits, anyone could easily apply for the free $300 credits as long as you meet some basic requirements.

To qualify for the $300 AWS Rapid Ramp Credit Program, you must have: 1. A valid AWS account, with up-to-date billing information (reseller accounts do not qualify) 2. Not previously received more than $300 of AWS promotional credit 3. A sufficient business case and proof of concept to test using the credits 4. No linked accounts

How To Apply For the AWS $300 Credits¶

Applying for AWS credits is simple. Start by visiting the AWS Promotional Credits page (link below), where you’ll find the application form. You’ll need to provide basic details about your AWS account, your project description and intent explaining how you plan to use AWS services. Be clear about your goals and the value AWS will bring to your project. Once submitted, AWS typically reviews your request within a few days. If approved, you’ll receive an email notification saying the credits have been applied to your account and you can view your credits from your AWS Billing and Cost Mangement Console.

Click Here to apply for the $300 AWS Rapid Ramp Credit Program

What Services Does the AWS Credits Cover?¶

The $300 credits cover more than 230 AWS services including Compute, Lambda serverless, storage, Bedrock, Sagemaker, EKS, ECR, and the list goes on .

Click here to view the list of services covered by the AWS Credits

Note: This list may change subject to AWS Terms and Conditions

Complete list of services

These services can be used with the associated credit:

AWS Amplify
AWS App Runner
AWS AppFabric
AWS AppSync
AWS Application Migration Service
AWS Audit Manager
AWS B2B Data Interchange
AWS Backup
AWS Billing Conductor
AWS Budgets
AWS Certificate Manager
AWS Clean Rooms
AWS Cloud Map
AWS Cloud WAN
AWS CloudFormation
AWS CloudHSM
AWS CloudTrail
AWS CodeArtifact
AWS CodeCommit
AWS CodeDeploy
AWS CodePipeline
AWS Compute Optimizer
AWS Config
AWS Cost Explorer
AWS Data Exchange
AWS Data Pipeline
AWS Data Transfer
AWS DataSync
AWS Database Migration Service
AWS DeepRacer
AWS Device Farm
AWS Direct Connect
AWS Directory Service
AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery
AWS Elemental MediaConnect
AWS Elemental MediaConvert
AWS Elemental MediaLive
AWS Elemental MediaPackage
AWS Elemental MediaStore
AWS Elemental MediaTailor
AWS End User Messaging Third Party Fees
AWS Entity Resolution
AWS Fault Injection Simulator
AWS Firewall Manager
AWS Global Accelerator
AWS Glue
AWS Glue Elastic Views
AWS Greengrass
AWS Ground Station
AWS HealthImaging
AWS Identity and Access Management Access Analyzer
AWS Import/Export
AWS Import/Export Snowball
AWS IoT
AWS IoT 1 Click
AWS IoT Analytics
AWS IoT Device Defender
AWS IoT Device Management
AWS IoT Events
AWS IoT FleetWise
AWS IoT SiteWise
AWS IoT Things Graph
AWS IoT TwinMaker
AWS Key Management Service
AWS Lake Formation
AWS Lambda
AWS Mainframe Modernization
AWS Migration Hub Refactor Spaces
AWS Modular Data Center
AWS Network Firewall
AWS OpsWorks
AWS Outposts
AWS Parallel Computing Service
AWS Payment Cryptography
AWS Private 5G
AWS Resilience Hub
AWS RoboMaker
AWS Route 53 Application Recovery Controller
AWS Secrets Manager
AWS Security Hub
AWS Service Catalog
AWS Shield
AWS SimSpace Weaver
AWS Snowball Extra Days
AWS Step Functions
AWS Storage Gateway
AWS Storage Gateway Deep Archive
AWS Supply Chain
AWS Support (Business)
AWS Support (Developer)
AWS Systems Manager
AWS Telco Network Builder
AWS Transfer Family
AWS WAF
AWS Wickr
AWS X-Ray
AWS re:Post Private
Alexa Top Sites
Alexa Web Information Service
Alexa for Business
Amazon API Gateway
Amazon AppFlow
Amazon AppStream
Amazon Athena
Amazon Augmented AI
Amazon Bedrock
Amazon Braket
Amazon Chime
Amazon Chime Business Calling a service sold by AMCS LLC
Amazon Chime Call Me
Amazon Chime Call Me a service sold by AMCS LLC
Amazon Chime Dial In a service sold by AMCS LLC
Amazon Chime Dialin
Amazon Chime Features
Amazon Chime Services
Amazon Chime Voice Connector a service sold by AMCS LLC
Amazon Cloud Directory
Amazon CloudFront
Amazon CloudSearch
Amazon CodeWhisperer
Amazon Cognito
Amazon Cognito Sync
Amazon Comprehend
Amazon Connect
Amazon Connect Customer Profiles
Amazon Connect Voice ID
Amazon DataZone
Amazon Deadline Cloud
Amazon Detective
Amazon DevOps Guru
Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility)
Amazon DynamoDB
Amazon EC2 Container Registry (ECR)
Amazon EKS Anywhere
Amazon ElastiCache
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
Amazon Elastic Container Registry Public
Amazon Elastic Container Service
Amazon Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes
Amazon Elastic File System
Amazon Elastic Inference
Amazon Elastic MapReduce
Amazon Elastic Transcoder
Amazon FSx
Amazon FinSpace
Amazon Forecast
Amazon Fraud Detector
Amazon GameLift
Amazon Glacier
Amazon GuardDuty
Amazon HealthLake
Amazon Honeycode
Amazon IVS Chat
Amazon Inspector
Amazon Inspector
Amazon Interactive Video Service
Amazon Kendra
Amazon Keyspaces (for Apache Cassandra)
Amazon Kinesis
Amazon Kinesis Analytics
Amazon Kinesis Firehose
Amazon Kinesis Video Streams
Amazon Lex
Amazon Lightsail
Amazon Location Service
Amazon Lookout for Equipment
Amazon Lookout for Metrics
Amazon Lookout for Vision
Amazon MQ
Amazon Machine Learning
Amazon Macie
Amazon Managed Blockchain
Amazon Managed Grafana
Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus
Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka
Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow
Amazon MemoryDB
Amazon Mobile Analytics
Amazon Monitron
Amazon Neptune
Amazon Nimble Studio
Amazon Omics
Amazon OpenSearch Service
Amazon Personalize
Amazon Pinpoint
Amazon Polly
Amazon Q
Amazon Quantum Ledger Database
Amazon QuickSight
Amazon Redshift
Amazon Rekognition
Amazon Relational Database Service
Amazon Route 53
Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive
Amazon SageMaker
Amazon Security Lake
Amazon Simple Email Service
Amazon Simple Notification Service
Amazon Simple Queue Service
Amazon Simple Storage Service
Amazon Simple Workflow Service
Amazon SimpleDB
Amazon Sumerian
Amazon Textract
Amazon Timestream
Amazon Transcribe
Amazon Translate
Amazon Verified Permissions
Amazon Virtual Private Cloud
Amazon WorkDocs
Amazon WorkLink
Amazon WorkSpaces
Amazon WorkSpaces Application Manager
Amazon WorkSpaces Thin Client
Amazon WorkSpaces Web
AmazonCloudWatch
AmazonConnectCases
AmazonWorkMail
CloudWatch Events
CodeBuild
CodeCatalyst
CodeGuru
Comprehend Medical
Contact Center Telecommunications (service sold by AMCS, LLC)
Contact Center Telecommunications Korea
Contact Center Telecommunications South Africa
Contact Lens for Amazon Connect
DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX)
Elastic Load Balancing
Q in Connect
VMware Cloud on AWS

View List of Services covered by the AWS Credits

With these credits, I’ve been able to venture beyond the AWS Free Tier and try out AWS services that would normally come with a cost.

The credits have been a great opportunity to test and grow my cloud projects without worrying about unexpected costs.

Additional Resources¶

Below are some additional resources that talk more about AWS credits: