AWS Activate (Founders / Portfolio)
- Free allowance
- Founders tier: '$1,000 in AWS Activate Credits ...
- Verdict
- caveatusable, with a named limit or an unprobed read path
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- institutionno card, no phone
- Binding limit
- per-object-capper-object-cap: S3 single PUT 5 GiB
- Evidence
- reported3 sources; a third party said so
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-11-05checked 2026-10-21 (inherited); stale on 2026-11-05
| Free tier | Founders tier: '$1,000 in AWS Activate Credits ... Select startups may qualify for up to $5,000 over time'. Portfolio tier: 'up to $200,000 in AWS Activate Credits' for provider-backed (accelerator/VC) startups. Credits cover 'over 200 eligible AWS services' explicitly including 'Storage: ... Amazon S3'. unit mixed; metered on stored-bytes |
|---|---|
| Price | none stated |
| Limits |
per-object-cap: S3 single PUT 5 GiB / multipart 5 TiB — not binding. request-rate: S3 request rates are effectively unlimited at this scale but each PUT/GET is billed and drains the credit. retention: 'Credits usually expire within 1-2 years depending on the package.' |
| Binding | per-object-cap the per-object cap sets the shard size and therefore the object count; it bounds the total more tightly than any headline quota |
| Identity | institution not published |
| Egress | S3 egress is metered and billed from the same credit balance — this is an archive-only play unless fronted by Cloudflare (AWS is a Bandwidth Alliance partner). |
| Per-object cap | per-object-cap: S3 single PUT 5 GiB (5368709120 bytes) |
| Retention | retention: 'Credits usually expire within 1-2 years depending on the package.' (730 days) |
| Interface | s3-compatible, rclone, cli part of the text of Free tier, above |
| Tooling | Native S3 API; rclone backend 's3'; aws-cli; s5cmd for high-concurrency transfers. |
| Composes with | Credits are per AWS account and per organisation ('Have not previously received AWS Activate Credits of equal or greater value'). Portfolio requires an Activate Provider affiliation. The useful multiplier is credit size x expiry window, not account count. |
| Reliability | Purely a spend credit: once exhausted, S3 reverts to paid and will bill the card on file. No data-loss mechanism, just an expiry cliff. |
| Parsed numbers |
|
Evidence 3
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-21 | aws.amazon.com/startups/learn/everything-you-need-to-know-ab | '$1,000 ... up to $5,000 over time' (Founders), 'up to $200,000' (Portfolio), 'Credits usually expire within 1-2 years' |
| 2026-10-21 | aws.amazon.com/startups/learn/everything-you-need-to-know-ab | 'Storage: Lets you store large datasets ... in Amazon S3 without ballooning costs' |
| 2026-10-21 | source not published | probe: GET aws.amazon.com/startups/learn/everything-you-need-to-know-about-aws-activate-credits -> 200 |
Unknown values 3
$.identity_cost.detailboilerplate$.per_object_cap.notesthe field may be stated in a source that was not read$.retention.notesthe field may be stated in a source that was not read