2023's Top Resources for Higher Education that Cloud Providers Offer for Free

Last updated on March 1st, 2023 at 1:39pm

Public cloud providers offer a wealth of free resources to the higher education community to grow skills, experiment, and innovate. Check out our comprehensive list of resources to help cloud practitioners, researchers, and faculty and students get started and progress in the cloud at little or no cost.

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Cloud Practitioners: Enhance Your Skills

Google Cloud

Google Cloud Training:  On-demand courses and hands-on labs to learn Google Cloud using role-based learning paths or prepare for and earn Google Cloud certifications. New learners start with a 30-day no-cost trial.

Amazon Web Services

AWS Educate: A free platform to learn how to use AWS through hundreds of hours of self-paced training and resources, including hands-on labs in the AWS Management Console.  Learners can browse job postings from employers seeking entry-level cloud talent or other postings that correlate to the level of learning completed. Employers can also post jobs and hire talent who have completed courses, labs, and certifications.

AWS Training: A free resource for professionals to take courses from AWS experts based on role, domain, certification, and other similar paths.

Microsoft Azure

Azure Training:  Access completely free, self-paced training available for all skill and experience levels.

Azure Free Services: A monthly allowance of pay-as-you-go services to be used free of charge for the first 12 months of a new Azure account and 55+ always-free services.

Azure Migrate: A free service from Microsoft that will analyze and assess on-premises resources to plan migrations to Azure. 

Researchers: Jumpstart Your Projects

Google Cloud

Google Cloud Research Credits: Faculty, PhD students, and postdoctoral researchers from accredited higher education institutions and eligible nonprofit research institutions in approved countries can apply for up to $5,000 in credits for academic research.

Climate Innovation Challenge: Researchers in higher education and not-for-profit research organizations can apply for Google Cloud credit grants to accelerate their climate resilience projects.

Google Cloud Training: On-demand courses and hands-on labs to learn Google Cloud using role-based learning paths or prepare for and earn Google Cloud certifications. New learners start with a 30-day no-cost trial.

Amazon Web Services

AWS Cloud Credit for Research: Full-time faculty or research staff at an accredited research institution,  and graduate, post-graduate, or PhD students can apply for promotional credits to build cloud-hosted publicly available science-as-a-service applications, software, or tools to facilitate research, perform proof of concept or benchmark tests, and more.

Microsoft Azure

Azure for Researchers: Learn how to build and manage research workloads in the cloud with free, on-demand training tailored for researchers and research technology professionals.

Azure Research Credits: Create a proof of concept, migrate existing research workloads and datasets to the cloud, or build tools to facilitate research with Azure Research Credits. 

Faculty and Students: Learn the Cloud

Google Cloud

Training Credits: Get Qwiklabs credits for training courses to learn how to use Google Cloud and prepare for Google Cloud certifications. Plus free access to online training courses from Qwiklabs in Coursera.

Credits for Learning: Credits to be used by students to learn how to use the cloud for career development purposes. $100 in credit per approved course for faculty members; $50 for each student.

Career Readiness Track: Get complimentary access to the Cloud Architecture quest in Qwiklabs and complimentary access to Architecting with GCP Specialization in Coursera.

Google Cloud Free Tier: Use these Google Cloud products that are always available free provided you remain under the monthly usage allowance.

Google Cloud 90-Day Free Trial: This free trial features $300 in free credits for new accounts.

Amazon Web Services

AWS DeepRacer Student: Apply to the AI&ML scholarship to access 20 hours of AWS AI & ML content, receive model training, and get free storage to participate in the AWS DeepRacer Student League.

AI & ML Scholarship Program: These scholarships for the Udacity AI Programming with Python Nanodegree program provide a collaborative virtual course that teaches programming tools and techniques fundamental to machine learning. 

AWS Educate: A free platform to learn how to use AWS through hundreds of hours of self-paced training and resources, including hands-on labs in the AWS Management Console.  Learners can browse job postings from employers seeking entry-level cloud talent or other postings that correlate to the level of learning completed.

AWS Machine Learning University: A free program helping community colleges, Minority-Serving Institutions, and Historically Black Colleges and Universities teach data management, artificial intelligence, and machine learning concepts. The program provides access to the same machine learning courses used to train Amazon’s own developers.

AWS Free Tier: Get free access to selected AWS services for 12 months from the creation of an AWS account. 

Microsoft Azure

Azure for Students: Get Azure credits to be used within the first 12 months, plus select free services if you are 18 or older and attend an accredited, degree-granting two-year or four-year educational institution as a full-time student.

Azure Training: Completely free, self-paced training available for all skill and experience levels. 

Azure Lab Services: Run a class, set up a training lab, or host a hackathon in the cloud that your students can access from anywhere. It is pay-as-you-go, but new Azure accounts get initial credits and are eligible for the Azure Free Services allowance of free pay-as-you-go services for the first 12 months

Azure Free Services: A monthly allowance of pay-as-you-go services to be used free of charge for the first 12 months of a new Azure account and 55+ always-free services.

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