This list of free stuff for college students gives each item its test (school email, age, enrollment), the way you prove you’re a student, and what it costs when a free period ends. Student discounts and the freebies that turned out not to be free get tables of their own.
Key takeaways
- 8 of the 23 need only a school email or proof you’re enrolled: Autodesk’s free year covers AutoCAD, which costs $2,095 a year.
- 5 AI and streaming plans are free for 1 to 12 months, then bill you: Google AI Pro is free for a year, then $19.99 a month.
- The government gives the most: a Pell Grant of up to $7,395 for 2026-27, and a tax credit of up to $2,500 a year, $1,000 of it refundable.
- Discounts, not freebies: 9 student deals that other lists call free cost money; Walmart+ Student is $49 a year, and Canva Pro is free only through a college that licenses it.
- Proving you’re a student is the usual snag: 30 of the 40 newest Trustpilot reviews of UNiDAYS were about a check or code that failed.
- Free money on top: sell last term’s textbooks, take paid surveys (Survey Junkie pays $0.50 to $5 for most), or deliver for DoorDash from age 18.
Every freebie at a glance
8 tools free with a school email or student proof
Microsoft Office 365 A1
Microsoft Office 365 A1 gives students Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook in a web browser, free. Microsoft says anyone “with an eligible education email address can get Office 365 A1 for free,” but A1 has only the web versions. The desktop apps come with paid plans your school may or may not buy.
You keep it while you’re enrolled, and Microsoft can re-check your status “at any time.” The same page advertises 12 months of Microsoft 365 Premium free with a college email “for a limited time,” with terms it doesn’t print there. Microsoft 365 Personal for students is a 50% discount that needs a card and returns to full price once you can’t verify.
Worth it? Yes, start here: type your school email on Microsoft’s page and you’ll know in a minute whether your school is eligible.
GitHub Student Developer Pack
The GitHub Student Developer Pack bundles free developer tools, and the two biggest are GitHub’s own. Verified students get Copilot Student, an AI coding assistant with a monthly allowance of AI credits, and up to 180 core hours a month of Codespaces. Copilot Student’s allowance is smaller than Copilot Pro’s, which costs $10 a month.
You must be at least 13, in a degree- or diploma-granting program, and able to prove it with a dated school ID, class schedule, transcript or enrollment letter. If students from your school have verified with an academic email, you must use one too. GitHub re-checks eligibility every month.
Getting approved is the catch. On October 15, 2026, 12 of the 22 threads with the latest activity in GitHub’s Education forum were about an application rejected, unverified or stuck in review.
Worth it? Yes, if you write code: apply with your school email and a document that shows this term’s date.
JetBrains Student Pack
JetBrains gives students its Student Pack free: IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate, ReSharper and its other coding tools. The license lasts a year and renews free while you’re in a full-time program, from a link JetBrains emails two weeks before it expires.
Educational licenses “can’t be used for commercial work.” After you graduate, JetBrains gives you 40% off a personal subscription for two years.
Worth it? Yes, if your classes use its tools; paid client work needs a paid license.
Autodesk Education
Autodesk Education gives eligible students “free, one-year, single-user access” to its education software, AutoCAD included. Access renews every year while you qualify, and you can start the renewal 30 days before it runs out. Autodesk checks that you’re a student.
Education licenses “shall not be used for commercial, professional or any other for-profit purposes.” The value is large: an AutoCAD subscription costs $2,095 a year, or $260 a month on monthly billing (October 2026).
Worth it? Yes, for design, engineering and architecture students; keep it off paid work.
Figma Education
Figma gives students over 13 “free access to the Figma Professional tier.” You sign up with your student email, verify that you’re a student, then create an Education team. Without it, a Professional full seat costs $16 a month billed yearly, or $192 a year.
Figma takes students in “a structured classroom.” That includes universities, colleges and trade schools, but also online courses, bootcamps and design academies.
Worth it? Yes, if you design anything, from slides to apps.
Notion Education Plan
Notion gives students its Plus plan, limited to one member, free. You need to attend an accredited college or university and have a school email, and Notion says “We don’t accept student IDs or other documentation.” The school email must be the main email on your account.
There’s no end date: you re-verify once a year with your school email, as often as you like. Each school email claims the offer once, and K-12 students don’t qualify.
Worth it? Yes; claim it before you build a workspace on a personal email you’d have to move.
Azure for Students
Azure for Students gives full-time university students a $100 credit for most of Microsoft’s cloud services, to use within 12 months, with no credit card. You sign up with your school email and renew each year while you’re a student. When the credit runs out, Microsoft emails you; if you don’t move to pay-as-you-go, your subscription is disabled rather than billed.
Worth it? Yes, for computer science and data students: it’s cloud credit with no card attached.
YNAB
YNAB (You Need a Budget) gives college students a free year. You prove enrollment with a university document that shows your name, the school and a date, such as a student ID, transcript or tuition statement, then get an invite to redeem. Graduate, international and part-time students qualify.
There’s no second free year, even if you’re still in school. After it, YNAB costs $109 a year or $14.99 a month.
Worth it? Yes, if you’ll keep a budget; set a reminder before the year ends.
5 AI and streaming plans free for months, then billed
Each of these bills you when the free months end, unless you cancel first. Here is how long each stays free and what it costs after (October 2026).
Google AI Pro
Google AI Pro is free for a year to “eligible U.S. college students ages 18+,” including students whose 2025 trial has run out. It brings higher Gemini limits and 5 TB of storage. You verify every year to keep it.
You must redeem it by December 31, 2026 and add “a valid form of payment” at sign-up. Unless you cancel, it “will automatically charge $19.99/month after the trial ends,” which is $239.88 a year.
Worth it? Yes, if you’ll use it; put the cancel date in your calendar the day you sign up.
ChatGPT Plus
OpenAI’s 2026 Back to School offer gives students four free monthly billing periods of ChatGPT Plus. It covers full- and part-time college and graduate students at eligible US degree-granting schools, checked by SheerID; you don’t need a school email. You must claim it by October 31, 2026, and only once.
A payment method is required, and after four months Plus renews at $20 a month. Cancel early and “any remaining promotional months are forfeited.” Subscriptions billed through Apple’s App Store or Google Play can’t use it.
Worth it? Only if you claim it by October 31, 2026 and are ready to cancel in month four.
Prime for Young Adults
Amazon’s old Prime Student is now Prime for Young Adults, for anyone 18 to 24 or a student. It starts with a six-month trial, then costs $7.49 a month, half of regular Prime’s $14.99. It includes free Grubhub+ with $0 delivery fees, but not household sharing.
Amazon says paid members who haven’t used their benefits can get “up to a full refund” of the current period. The FTC sued Amazon in 2023 over how Prime signed up and canceled members, and Amazon settled in September 2025, agreeing to a $1 billion civil penalty and $1.5 billion in refunds. The complaint showed the button choice below, from standard Prime’s checkout.
Worth it? Yes for six months; decide before month seven whether $7.49 a month earns its place.
Spotify Premium Student
Spotify Premium Student is free for one month, then $6.99 a month, and includes Hulu (With Ads). Spotify says the two would normally cost $12.99 and $12.49 a month. You must be over 18 at a US Title IV accredited college, checked by SheerID.
The free month is only for people who haven’t tried Premium before. You re-verify every 12 months, up to three more times, so the student price lasts four years at most. Reward-app gift cards can cover the bill: see our list of sites for free Spotify gift cards.
Worth it? Yes, as a discount: it’s the cheapest way to get both Spotify and Hulu.
Apple Music Student
Apple Music’s student plan costs $6.99 a month after a free first month for new subscribers, and comes with Apple TV at no extra cost. Apple keeps the student price for up to four years while you stay a student. After that you pay the individual price, $11.99 a month.
Worth it? Pick Apple Music or Spotify, not both: students pay the same $6.99 for either.
4 kinds of free help from the government
FAFSA and the Pell Grant
The FAFSA is the form that opens federal grants, and “There is no fee to fill out a FAFSA form.” The 2027-28 form is open on studentaid.gov. A site that charges you to file it is not the government.
A Pell Grant is the money it can unlock: up to $7,395 for 2026-27, for undergraduates who “display exceptional financial need” and have no bachelor’s degree. Unlike a loan, it “does not have to be repaid,” except in certain cases, and you can get it for up to 12 terms. College Board counts 7.3 million recipients in 2024-25, at $5,320 each on average. The maximum rose from $6,195 in 2019-20 to $7,395 in 2023-24 and has stayed there since.
The Education Department’s January 2026 letter warns the 2026-27 amount “could change at any time pending further action by Congress.”
Worth it? Yes: the FAFSA costs nothing, and a Pell Grant is the largest free money on this list.
American Opportunity Tax Credit
The American Opportunity Tax Credit is worth up to $2,500 per student a year, for the first four years of college, if the student is enrolled at least half-time. Up to 40% of it is refundable, and the IRS’s own example tells someone not required to file a return that they “should file to get a refund of your $1,000 refundable credit.” You claim it on Form 8863, and you generally need the Form 1098-T your college sends.
Two rules decide who gets it. If someone claims you as a dependent, only they can claim the credit; if not, only you can. If you were under 24 at the end of the year and meet conditions in the instructions, you can’t get the refundable part (line 7, ringed below).
The credit shrinks as modified adjusted gross income rises from $80,000 to $90,000 ($160,000 to $180,000 on a joint return), and stops there.
Worth it? Yes: it’s up to $2,500 a year, and filing a return is the only step.
Free tax filing
IRS Free File gives guided tax software at no cost if your adjusted gross income is $89,000 or less. Free File Fillable Forms is free at any income. Each partner sets its own rules, and a state return may cost extra.
VITA volunteer sites prepare returns free, generally for people who make about $70,244 or less, and each site can set its own limit. Filing matters even when you owe nothing: the refundable part of the credit above reaches you only through a return.
Worth it? Yes; start at IRS.gov/freefile rather than a search ad.
SNAP food benefits
SNAP has a rule for students. USDA says students enrolled more than half-time in college “are only eligible for SNAP if they meet an exemption,” on top of SNAP’s other rules. If you get most of your meals through a meal plan, you’re not eligible.
Many students who could get it don’t. GAO estimated that 23% of college students, 3.8 million, were food insecure in 2020. Of the food-insecure students who were potentially eligible for SNAP, 59% did not report getting it.
Worth it? Yes, if you work 20 hours a week or have work-study: apply through your state and say you’re a student.
6 more free things on campus, nearby and by mail
Free textbooks
OpenStax, a nonprofit at Rice University, publishes free, peer-reviewed textbooks you can read online. It says 49 million students have used them, saving $3.8 billion, and that 71% of US colleges and universities use them each year. Ask whether your course has an OpenStax book, or a copy on library reserve, before you buy.
Books are a real line in the budget. College Board allows $1,330 a year for books and supplies at a public four-year college in 2025-26, though it says that’s an allowance, not what students actually spend.
Worth it? Yes; check your syllabus against OpenStax’s catalog every term.
Campus food pantry
Many colleges run a campus food pantry where students take food free. Where use is counted, it’s climbing: the University of Arizona’s pantry logged more than 50,000 visits in 2025-26, about 1,650 a week, KGUN 9 reported in September 2026. UW-Madison’s Open Seat had over 2,500 visits in September 2025, against 550 two years earlier, The Daily Cardinal reported.
Search your school’s site for “food pantry” or ask the dean of students. Swipe Out Hunger, a nonprofit that works with colleges on student hunger, counts 891 campus partners.
Worth it? Yes, whenever money runs short before the next paycheck.
Career closet and counseling
Student fees pay for services many students never use. At Ohio State, the Reid Family Career Closet gives students professional clothes “at no cost,” up to 10 items a visit, “yours to keep.” UT Austin offers TimelyCare, “a free 3rd party virtual mental health and well-being platform” with phone or video visits around the clock.
What’s free varies by school, so read your own student life and health center pages.
Worth it? Yes; look before you buy an interview suit.
Newspapers through your school
The New York Times gives Academic Passes through schools that buy them. You sign up with the school’s email, can’t already be a digital subscriber, and “The school must have passes available.” Passes leave out Games, Cooking and The Athletic.
The Wall Street Journal sells a discounted student subscription to verified US college students. It’s free only through a school’s WSJ University Membership, and its student packages take a card and renew automatically.
Worth it? Yes; check your library’s site before you pay for any news subscription.
Free museum entry
Museums for All gives SNAP recipients free or reduced entry to more than 1,600 US museums with an EBT card and photo ID. Bank of America’s Museums on Us gives its card holders one free general admission on the first full weekend of every month. Some museums let local students in free, such as MoMA for full-time students of listed New York schools.
Worth it? Yes, and pair it with SNAP: the same EBT card opens Museums for All.
UNiDAYS Student Sample Society
UNiDAYS Student Sample Society mails free samples, and sometimes full-size products, to verified UNiDAYS members. UNiDAYS calls it “completely free” with “no obligation,” though a few offers carry a small delivery charge shown up front. You get an email when a sample drops, then confirm it and your address, one of each per person.
Samples come only when brands run campaigns, and reviewing them makes you “more likely” to get some. A company called SoPost ships them and receives your details. We found no brand that mails free care packages to college students; for more by-mail offers, see our list of websites to get free stuff.
Worth it? Yes, if you already use UNiDAYS; it costs one sign-up.
Called free, but you pay: student discounts
Other lists call these student deals free. They’re discounts: worth having, but each costs money (prices read October 15, 2026, from each company’s page).
Restaurant deals work the same way: they’re app sign-up rewards and birthday offers, not student perks. See our lists of free food apps, places that give a free meal and ways to get free coffee.
What other lists call free, and what companies publish
Bottom line: when a list says free, look for the month it ends and the price after it.
How you prove you’re a student, and why brands pay for it
Most offers here check you through one of three services. SheerID does it for Spotify, YouTube, Walmart+, Headspace, Hulu and OpenAI, and sells to brands, saying it is “Trusted by hundreds of the world’s most admired brands.” UNiDAYS and Student Beans are free student apps that list brands’ discounts.
Brands pay because they want students as customers early. SheerID’s own case study says YNAB “won 68% more students” with it. UNiDAYS tells brands that one in three students are members in seven countries, the US among them.
Keep a document ready for when the instant check fails. Headspace’s SheerID form asks for one with your first and last name, the school and a date within the current term or the last three months: an enrollment letter, class schedule, tuition receipt or transcript.
UNiDAYS rates 4.85 on the App Store but 3.3 on Trustpilot; Student Beans rates 4.88 and 4.1. The complaints are about verification: of UNiDAYS’ 40 newest English Trustpilot reviews on October 15, 2026, 30 were about a rejected or stuck check or a code that didn’t work, though about 10 came from teachers or nurses. For Student Beans, 5 of the 40 newest were.
Bottom line: try your school email first; if a check stalls, upload a dated document rather than retrying.
Free money on top: ways to earn while you study
Free stuff saves money; these put some back. Each pays for your time or your old things, so none is free in the sense above. For more, see our side hustle ideas.
Sell last term’s textbooks
BookScouter takes a book’s ISBN and shows buyback offers from many vendor sites, so you can pick the best. Its app rates 4.54 on the App Store from 1,709 ratings. Decluttr buys books along with phones, games, CDs, DVDs and LEGO, ships free and pays the next business day after your items pass its check (our Decluttr review).
Worth it? Yes; sell before the next edition comes out.
Take paid surveys between classes
Survey Junkie pays $0.50 to $5 for most surveys and cashes out from $5 by PayPal, bank transfer or gift card; you must be 18. Swagbucks pays for surveys, games and shopping, takes members from 13 with a parent’s permission under 18, and redeems from $3. Freecash pays for games and offers, but its first cash-out needs an ID check with a selfie.
Survey Junkie Summary
- $0.50-$5 for most standard surveys
- Extra points if you screened out of survey
- Additional ways to earn up to $150
- Install Survey Junkie extension for bonus
- Low payout threshold of $5
- Variety of surveys
Swagbucks Summary
- Many ways to earn money and e-gift cards
- $10 welcome bonus after a $25 shop purchase
- Up to 10% cashback when shopping online
- $3 minimum e-gift card withdrawal
- Play games and enter tournaments for SB
- Legit platform run by Prodege
Our guide to surveys for college students compares more of them.
Get cash back on what you buy anyway
Rakuten pays cash back at more than 3,500 stores, by PayPal or check every quarter. Its welcome bonus needs a $25 purchase within 90 days, not just a sign-up. Capital One Shopping is free, needs no Capital One account, adds coupon codes at checkout and pays its rewards as gift cards.
On the App Store, Capital One Shopping rates 4.87 and Rakuten 4.82. Freecash rates 4.73, DoorDash’s driver app 4.68, Survey Junkie 4.55 and Swagbucks 4.39 (October 15, 2026).
Deliver for DoorDash
DoorDash takes delivery drivers from 18 (19 in 13 states, 21 in California), with a car, a scooter or, in some cities, a bicycle. Pay is base pay plus promotions plus all your tips, paid weekly, or daily for a fee with Fast Pay.
DoorDash Summary
- Flexible working hours
- Be your own boss
- No experience or training required
- Daily payments available
- Special perks and rewards for drivers
- 2% cash back on gas with Crimson
How to claim the most in your first semester
- Claim the free tools with your school email: Microsoft, GitHub, JetBrains, Autodesk, Figma, Notion and Azure.
- File the FAFSA: the 2027-28 form is open, and it’s free.
- Keep your Form 1098-T: make sure someone claims the American Opportunity credit, on your return or your parents’.
- Before any free trial starts, set a reminder for the day before it bills.
- Check SNAP if you work 20 hours a week or have work-study.
- Sell last term’s books before you buy this term’s, and check OpenStax first.
Worth doing
- The free school-email tools: Office 365 A1, GitHub, Notion, Figma
- The FAFSA every year, and the American Opportunity credit
- Google AI Pro, if you’ll use it and set a cancel reminder
- Survey Junkie or Swagbucks for gift-card money between classes
- DoorDash, if you’re 18 or over (19 or 21 in some states) and have spare hours
Skip
- Any site that charges to fill out the FAFSA
- Trials you won’t remember to cancel
- A second music plan: Spotify’s student price already includes Hulu
- Paying for Canva Pro or a news subscription before asking your school
How we researched this
We read each company’s own eligibility and pricing pages, the IRS, Education Department and USDA rules, and the FTC’s Prime complaint on October 15, 2026. We counted the newest complaints about student verification on Trustpilot and in GitHub’s forum, and campus pantry figures come from the newsrooms that reported them. Student offers change each semester; the date at the top is when we last checked them.
Free Stuff for College Students FAQ
What do college students get for free?
With a school email, Microsoft’s web apps, GitHub’s Student Pack, JetBrains, Autodesk, Figma, Notion’s Plus plan and a $100 Azure credit. The government adds the Pell Grant, the American Opportunity credit and free tax filing, and many campuses run free food pantries. No one website lists them all, so start with your school’s IT and student life pages.
How do you get Amazon Prime free as a student?
Sign up for Prime for Young Adults, open to anyone 18 to 24 or a student, which starts with a six-month free trial. It then costs $7.49 a month, so cancel before month seven to pay nothing.
How do you get Google’s free AI plan for students?
Verify at Google’s student page if you’re a US college student aged 18 or over, and redeem by December 31, 2026. Google AI Pro is then free for a year and bills $19.99 a month after it unless you cancel.
Do students get Netflix for free?
No. Netflix’s plans and pricing page lists no student plan or student price. Spotify’s student plan, $6.99 a month, includes Hulu (With Ads).
Do college students get 50% off at Walmart?
Only on the Walmart+ membership, not on products. Walmart+ Student costs $6.47 a month or $49 a year after a 30-day trial, for students 18 or older at a Title IV college.
What can college students get for free by mail?
UNiDAYS Student Sample Society mails samples to verified members when brands run campaigns. We found no brand that mails free care packages to college students.
