If you’re building a startup, Azure credits often show up early in your journey, sometimes before you’ve had time to decide where they’ll have the most impact. They may appear as a benefit, a line item, or something to explore later. As you focus on getting your product off the ground, it’s a common approach for startups to apply credits to core infrastructure first or hold onto them for future needs.
But we’ve designed Azure credits to do more than sit in the background.
When used intentionally, they can act as a catalyst, helping you move faster, scale more confidently, and bring meaningful innovation into production from day one.
The key is understanding how Azure credits can support your full startup lifecycle, rather than a single workload or moment in time.
How Azure credits can support your startup
If you’re an early-stage team, you’re likely moving fast with a small group of engineers wearing multiple hats. Decisions about tooling and infrastructure aren’t theoretical, they directly affect burn rate, velocity, and time to market.
In conversations with founders we work with, we consistently hear them looking for the same things you likely are:
- Speed without increasing operational complexity
- Flexibility to experiment, learn, and iterate
- A clear path from MVP to production
- Infrastructure that’s enterprise-ready when growth accelerates
Azure credits are designed to support exactly that. When applied across development tools, infrastructure, and AI, they help you move forward without forcing trade-offs too early.
One set of credits, multiple layers of impact
Azure credits aren’t limited to a single service or moment in your journey. You can apply them across the core areas where you spend time and energy—from writing code to scaling production workloads to building AI-powered features.
How you can apply Azure credits across your stack
| Your need | Azure-supported capability | What it enables |
| Add intelligent capabilities | Azure AI models | Bring a practical, production-ready AI into products, so teams can move beyond experimentation and into real customer value |
| Scale applications as the business grows | AKS Automatic | Give applications room to grow as adoption increases, while Azure handles the underlying Kubernetes operations |
| Build and evolve products faster | GitHub services | Help small teams ship faster with smoother coding, testing, and collaboration as the product evolves |
| Run on reliable foundations | Compute, storage, networking | Provide a reliable, secure foundation that supports growth without forcing early infrastructure commitments |
Instead of managing separate budgets for each layer of your stack, you can rely on Azure credits as a shared foundation that grows with your product.
Building with AI models on Azure
If AI is part of your product roadmap, how Azure credits apply depends on the type of model you’re using.
- First-party Azure AI models (Azure Direct). When you provision first-party Azure AI models through Microsoft Foundry on a sponsored subscription, usage is automatically covered by Azure credits. No additional setup is required.
- Third-party AI models. Coverage for third-party models can vary based on the model and sponsorship guidelines. In some cases, third-party usage may not be eligible to be billed using Azure credits. This distinction is worth keeping in mind as you plan AI workloads. Before getting started, you may want to confirm whether a model is Azure-hosted and eligible under sponsorship, rather than assuming credits will apply. Microsoft Learn offers detailed guidance on eligibility for Microsoft Foundry models.
Understanding this early can help you design AI features that scale smoothly and avoid unexpected cost surprises as you grow.
Scaling deliberately with Azure Kubernetes Service
As your product gains traction, infrastructure and application needs evolve. What works during early testing may not be sufficient for production workloads.
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) gives you a clear path from experimentation to production with AKS Automatic. There are no special steps required to use Azure credits with AKS. If you provision AKS resources on your sponsored Azure subscription, usage is automatically covered by Azure credits while credits are available.
This allows you to scale gradually, pay only for what you consume, and avoid premature infrastructure decisions. You can focus on reliability and growth without worrying about additional configuration to apply credits.
Power your everyday development with GitHub
If you’re building a startup, chances are your team already lives in GitHub. It’s where ideas turn into pull requests, features get shipped, and collaboration happens every day.
To take full advantage of Azure credits with GitHub, you just need to complete a quick connection step for eligible GitHub services. This involves connection your Azure sponsored subscription as a payment method in GitHub for services like Copilot, Codespaces, and Actions.
Once connected, eligible metered GitHub usage can draw down from available Azure credits instead of requiring a separate payment method. Without this connection, GitHub usage may be billed independently.
This small setup step helps you move faster with your development workflows while keeping costs aligned with your Azure credits.
Why Microsoft for Startups is built for this moment
We understand how important it is for startup to have a foundation that can keep pace as priorities shift and your product evolves.
Microsoft for Startups brings together Azure credits, GitHub, Kubernetes, and AI so you can move from early development to production without re-architecting or renegotiating your stack. Every credit is designed to support real progress, from shipping faster to scaling responsibly to bringing AI-powered features into production.
When you use Azure credits intentionally across development, infrastructure, and AI, they become more than a benefit. They help create momentum at every stage of growth.
Ready to put your Azure credits to work?
Join Microsoft for Startups today and start building, scaling, and innovating with confidence.
