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Google Cloud research

edu.google.com/programs/credits/research/GPU cloudcompute/google-cloud-researchJSON compare report an error provider JSON

Free allowance: 'PhD students conducting research may apply for $1000 in GCP Credit per year' and 'Faculty and Postdoctoral researchers are eligible for one award of up to $5,000 USD'.
Verdict: fails: identitythe identity required is not reachable without it
Cost: no price stated
Identity: institutionno card, no phone
Binding limit: write-gatedthe organisation field is a closed picker over an accredited-institution list plus a faculty-directory URL, so an unaffiliated applicant cannot fill the form at all.
Evidence: documented4 sources; a first-party page was read and the sentence quoted
Freshness: stale on 2026-11-22checked 2026-10-22 (live); stale on 2026-11-22

Free tier	'PhD students conducting research may apply for $1000 in GCP Credit per year' and 'Faculty and Postdoctoral researchers are eligible for one award of up to $5,000 USD'. The application form requires 'Organization Name *' chosen by 'Begin typing and select institution from the provided list', a 'Link to your profile in your institution's faculty or researcher directory', a 'Google Cloud Billing Account ID', a 250-word proposal, and a pricing-calculator estimate. Review is '6-8 weeks'. unit none; metered on wall-clock; recurring-credit
Price	none stated
Limits	write-gated (binding) the organisation field is a closed picker over an accredited-institution list plus a faculty-directory URL, so an unaffiliated applicant cannot fill the form at all. source
Identity	institution not published
Egress	not stated
Interface	rest inferred from the tooling the provider documents; not probed
Tooling	not stated
Composes with	Only for a student: the PhD line is USD 1,000 a year and renews, which buys roughly 800 TPU v5e chip-hours at USD 1.20, so it funds TRC's host VM and GCS bucket rather than the accelerator. The faculty line is one award per person, ever, so it does not renew.
Reliability	no reliability event recorded
Notes	Distinct from the TRC record and worth keeping separate, because the two Google programs have opposite doors: TRC takes a free-text affiliation, this one takes a picker over accredited institutions. The referring loophole is the only path an outsider might use, and it requires two university applicants who name you, so it is a finding about the door rather than a route. The compute-side reading is fails-identity, because the gate is the form field rather than the amount.

Evidence 4

date	source	what it proved
2026-10-22	web.archive.org/web/20260317102442id_/https://support.google	Wayback capture 2026-03-17 of the vendor help page: 'PhD students conducting research may apply for $1000 in GCP Credit per year', 'Faculty and Postdoctoral researchers are eligible for one award of up to $5,000 USD', 'Students on a Masters degree program are not eligible', 'we review and make decisions on applications within 6-8 weeks', 'Only one person per research proposal may apply', quoted
2026-10-22	edu.google.com/programs/credits/research/	the live form's required fields: 'Organization Name ' with 'Begin typing and select institution from the provided list', 'Link to your profile in your institution's faculty or researcher directory', 'Google Cloud Billing Account ID ', 'The program is currently only available in the countries listed'; page 200
2026-10-22	support.google.com/google-cloud-higher-ed/answer/10724468?hl	the live help page returned a bot challenge (429 through six providers), so the quoted terms come from the 2026-03-17 capture rather than the live page
2026-10-22	www.reddit.com/r/googlecloud/comments/1rrllgu/new_free_trial	quoted OP: 'you are no longer allowed to use free trial credits on Google Studio API anymore'; a reply suggests the change targets accounts created for free AI access; the OP's own workaround is to use Vertex AI instead [re-read 2026-10-22]

More fields 1

{
 "facets": {
  "class": "research-credit",
  "free_tier_kind": "recurring-credit",
  "shape": {
   "vcpu": null,
   "ram_gib": null,
   "gpu_class": null,
   "gpu_count": null
  }
 }
}

Unknown values 6

$.egress.metered egress metering was not published
$.egress.terms a source was read and is silent on this field
$.per_object_cap.stated the field does not apply to this kind of offer
$.reliability_note nothing of this kind was observed
$.retention.stated the field does not apply to this kind of offer
$.tooling a source was read and is silent on this field