Ask HN: How to get free/cheap Claude and AWS credits

5 points·jacAtSea··5 comments

Hi Laid off, took a gap year and now trying to get back into the field to want to do a side project with Python/Java + Claude Code + Cloud(AWS, GCP, Azure) Is there a way to get free or cheap Claude and AWS credits ? I am willing to working on volunteer project.

Thanks

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You don’t need Claude. I use codex-cli daily with my $20 a month ChatGPT subscription and never approached any limits.

AWS has a real Fred tier now as of 6/2025 where you get a $100 credit in addition to the other free stuff - Lambda up to a certain limit every month, free EC2 hours etc.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/awsaccountbilling/latest/aboutv2...

But be careful. If you don’t know what you’re doing, AWS can bite you in the ass. What type of resources do you need to spin up on AWS?

More context: I was a 60% Data Engineer and 40% back eng engineer.

The job ads now ask for cloud computing, I did on-perm with similar components but built in house.

Step Functions Glue Athena S3 RDS

Databrick GCP Snowflake

I am looking at ways to 'modernize' 'cloudifly' myself

This is chatgpt suggestions: Step 3: Your FIRST project (this is the breakthrough) Project: “Cloud Data Pipeline” (must-do) What you build: Pull financial data (API) Store in S3 Process with Python Schedule with Airflow Load into warehouse (Redshift or PostgreSQL) Architecture (simple) API → Python → S3 → Airflow → DB → (optional dashboard)

The university I work with offers claude free to students. If you had a class you wanted to take perhaps there might be a similar opportunity

I am using GLM. The quota is so generous, but the quatlity, I will say, 80-85% ?

am i the only one whose API usage is cheaper than monthly subscription?

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