New AWS accounts can sign up with GitHub or Google, mostly with no credit card, and get up to $200 in credits
AWS has a new sign-up flow that lets new customers create an account with GitHub, Google, Apple, or Amazon credentials, and most people do not need a credit card. You get $100 in Free Tier credits at sign-up and can earn up to $100 more by finishing five starter activities such as trying a model in the Amazon Bedrock playground, for up to $200 over six months.
The briefing
AWS launched a new sign-up experience on September 16. New customers can create an AWS account with existing GitHub, Google, Apple, or Amazon credentials, and most of them do not need a credit card, so the Free Tier credits are there as soon as signup finishes. Your first project comes preconfigured, and if you code with Cursor, Kiro, or Claude Code, a single prompt connects your coding tool to AWS.
What you get
A new account gets $100 in credits right after sign-up. Finishing the starter activities in the Explore AWS widget on the Console Home page earns up to $100 more, for a total of up to $200. There are five activities: launch an Amazon EC2 instance, try a foundation model in the Amazon Bedrock playground, set up a budget with AWS Budgets, build a web app with AWS Lambda, and create an Amazon RDS database. Any charges from the activities are covered by your credits.
New accounts start on the Free plan. You are not charged while on it, and it ends after six months or when your credits run out, whichever comes first. After that your account is suspended and your data is kept for 90 days, during which you can upgrade to a Paid plan to get it back. If you upgrade, any remaining credits apply to future bills automatically.
The credits are only for people who have never had an AWS account. If you have registered before, you go straight to the Paid plan without these credits. Some new customers are also asked for extra verification or a payment method at sign-up. In that case AWS holds $1 for 3 to 5 days, and you are not charged as long as you stay on the Free plan.
What you can use
You can spend the credits on foundation models from many providers in Amazon Bedrock, for text, image, video, and embedding output, billed at standard Bedrock rates. Common services such as EC2, Lambda, and RDS also draw from the same credits.
The Free plan covers a subset of services. Services that would burn through the credits right away and hardware purchases are excluded, and other promotional credits such as AWS Activate cannot be stacked on it. If you need the full catalog, you can upgrade to the Paid plan at any time and set a monthly spend limit for your project starting at $20. When the project reaches that limit, AWS pauses its resources instead of charging more.
How to claim
- Open the AWS sign-up page, choose the new Sign up for AWS option, and log in with GitHub, Google, Apple, or Amazon.
- Enter your name, verify your email with the one-time code, create a password, and add your contact details. AWS then sets up your first project.
- In the console, open the Explore AWS widget, filter by Earn AWS credits, and finish the activities to earn the remaining $100.
Details: AWS new sign-up announcement, AWS Free Tier, and Free Tier FAQs.