Startup credit playbooks: five ordered application stacks
Pick the one that matches your situation. Each is ten programs in the order to file them, with the amounts from the directory, what to have ready before each form, and an honest line on which tiers need a VC, accelerator or partner referral. Every stack has an AWS step: you apply for Activate yourself, and a matched AWS partner can file MAP, POC or IW funding when the workload qualifies and AWS approves it.
- 01Bootstrapped AI product: the no-investor credit stackSolo founders and small teams building an AI product with no VC, no accelerator and no referral codes. You have a working product or a credible MVP, a company domain and a live website.$25K to $60K, no investor requiredStarts with NVIDIA, Amazon Web Services, Cloudflare, Microsoft and 6 moreread the playbook →
- 02Seed-stage B2B SaaS: stack the investor-gated tiersB2B SaaS teams that closed a pre-seed or seed round from an institutional VC or accelerator in the last 12 months. The round date matters: AWS, Vercel and Cloudflare all count from it.$100K to $250K you can actually spend in year oneStarts with Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft, Cloudflare and 6 moreread the playbook →
- 03AI-first startup with a seed round: compute and model creditsAI-native companies at seed or Series A with institutional backing. Your bill is inference, fine-tuning and GPUs, not web hosting. Most of the programs below gate on which VC you have.$250K to $500K+ in compute and model credits, most of it gated on your VCStarts with Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft, Anthropic and 6 moreread the playbook →
- 04Non-US founder: credits that work from the EU, UK, MENA, India, LATAM and APACFounders incorporated outside the United States, at any stage. Most big programs are global; the traps are billing-country locks, local-card rules and the handful of programs that quietly exclude your region.$20K to $60K without a US investor; the same $200K AWS ceiling applies worldwideStarts with Amazon Web Services, Cloudflare, Google Cloud, Microsoft and 6 moreread the playbook →
- 05Moving to AWS from Heroku, GCP, Azure or DigitalOcean: fund the migrationTeams already in production on another platform, spending $2,000 or more a month, who want the move to AWS paid for. Works at any stage, with or without a VC: what counts is the workload you are moving.$50K to $150K in MAP funding for startups if AWS approves, plus the data-layer creditsStarts with Amazon Web Services, MongoDB, Neon (a Databricks company), Redis and 6 moreread the playbook →
Order of operations, not a list of logos
Three things decide the order. First, review time, so the slow ones go first. NVIDIA Inception ran 2 to 3 months in 2026. AWS says Activate review takes 7 to 10 business days. Cloudflare answers within 48 hours. Deadlines: AWS Activate Portfolio, Vercel and Cloudflare count from your last round and close at 12 months. Expiry: nearly every credit lasts 12 months from approval, so GPU and inference grants wait until there is a workload to burn them on.
Every amount is the program's own published figure, verified on 2026-10-09 and linked to the official page. Where a provider stopped publishing a number (MongoDB, Modal, Fireworks, OpenAI) the playbook says so instead of inventing one.
One part of each stack is not a form you can fill in. MAP funding for a migration, POC funding to test something and IW funding for new work on AWS can only be requested by an AWS partner. $50K to $150K for startups. Depends on the workload; AWS approves. CloudRoute matches you with a vetted partner who can file it, for free. Get matched free →