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A common question I get from devs who are getting started with Microsoft Azure is how to get free access to create and test Azure resources, especially for learning purposes.
This makes sense since many devs are just trying to learn the platform in preparation for job interviews, while others are evaluating Azure to see if it’s the best choice for their upcoming apps.
In fact I had to ask myself that same question when Microsoft laid me off a few years ago, since that also ended my free employee subscription.
Today I don’t pay a cent for all my Azure usage, and in this newsletter I’ll show you how I get my free credits plus several other options to get started for free.
(I’ll also give a quick bootcamp update at the end, so keep reading till the end to not miss it.)
Let’s dive in.
1. The Azure Free Account
If you have never used Azure before, meaning you are a new Azure customer, this is the way to go, unless you qualify as a student (more on that later).
Here’s what you get:
- Free access to 20+ popular services for 12 months
- Access to 65+ always-free services
- $200 credit to access anything else for 30 days
The catch here is that you have to enter your credit card, mainly for identity verification.
However, it won’t be charged unless you explicitly remove the spending protection that will be automatically enabled for you.
2. Azure for Students
This might be your second-best option if you don’t qualify for the free account. It’s ideal for college students ramping up on Azure perhaps in preparation for a full-time job after graduation.
To be eligible you must prove that you are age 18 or older and a full-time student of an accredited, degree-granting two-year or four-year educational institution, which will be validated via your school’s email address.
Here’s what you get with this option:
- Same access to free Azure services as the Free Account
- $100 credit to access anything else within 12 months
But the beautiful thing about this option is that no credit card is required, which makes things much easier for students.
Are you a student but not 18 yet?
Well, if you are at least 13 there’s a variant of this option called Azure for Students Starter, which only gives you access to the free tier of a limited set of services, but might be enough for school projects.
3. Microsoft Learn Sandbox
This one I discovered recently, but I think it’s a valid option for one-off learning sessions with specific Azure services.
These sandboxes are essentially time-boxed Azure subscriptions with restrictions around the regions, service types, and SKUs you can use.
They are available across multiple Microsoft Learn training modules and have a few other restrictions:
- You can use up to 10 sandboxes per day, but only 1 at a time
- Each sandbox can be used for up to 1 hour or 4 hours (depending on the MS Learn module)
- You can’t save the progress once the sandbox times out
The good thing is that no credit card is required, and once you activate the sandbox you can use not just the Cloud Shell, but any other means to access Azure resources, like the Azure Portal or the Azure CLI.
Sadly there is no simple catalog of MS Learn sandboxes that I could find, but you can search for these specific learning modules where I have confirmed there’s a sandbox (at the time of this writing):
- Describe the core architectural components of Azure
- Explore Azure App Service
- Describe Azure compute and networking services
- Describe Azure storage services
- Introduction to Azure virtual machines
4. Microsoft for Startups
This is an amazing option for folks who are starting a small business and who need to use Azure services to support it.
If your business qualifies, you can get anywhere between $1,000 to $150,000 in Azure credits, which is mind-blowing.
This is what I used to complete all the Azure training content included in my microservices program and is what I’m heavily using to produce the new training coming to the bootcamp.
What’s crazy is that they actually encourage you to spend more credits by achieving a series of milestones tied to the growth of your business.
I’m actually finding it a bit challenging to spend those $25,000, but we’ll see!
Quick Bootcamp Update
Last week I completed all the required Game Store application updates to get it fully deployed to Azure, which is quite a milestone!
There were a few last-minute updates to introduce both Azure Front Door and a new EF migrations background worker, mainly to showcase best practices around blob storage and the database.
But the really cool thing is that this was deployed with just one command from my .NET Aspire-powered project and the Azure Developer CLI.
Infrastructure as Code is really amazing, especially when done mostly via pure C#, and I can’t wait to walk bootcamp students through the steps to get there.
Now I’m in slide deck mode, so this week I’ve been working hard on tons of new slides that will get everyone up to speed with Azure, especially devs who have never used it before.
I plan to be mostly done with slides by this time next week, and then we move to the recording phase, so we are getting there.
Stay tuned!
Julio
Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 ways I can help you:
-
.NET Cloud Developer Bootcamp: Everything you need to build production-ready .NET applications for the Azure cloud at scale.
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