Half the "get [AI tool] free as a student" posts floating around right now are describing offers that ended over a year ago. We checked the official pages directly in July 2026 so you don't waste an afternoon signing up for something that already closed. Here's what's real, what's dead, and what depends on your specific school.
Still free right now (verified)
Two offers held up when we checked the source pages directly:
- **GitHub Student Developer Pack** — Still active, no expiration in sight. Free GitHub Pro, Codespaces at the Pro tier, a JetBrains IDE license, Azure and DigitalOcean credits, and 50+ smaller partner perks. You need a school email or other proof of enrollment to apply.
- **Notion Education Plus plan** — Free unlimited-block Plus plan for college students and educators with a verified `.edu`-style address at a school listed in the World Higher Education Database. The catch: this only includes a *limited trial* of Notion AI, not full AI access — that still requires a paid Business plan.
Expired offers that are still all over the internet
These were real at some point, which is exactly why they keep getting recycled in "free AI tools for students" roundups. As of now, none of them are live:
- **Perplexity Pro "Race to Infinity"** — A referral competition that gave students a free month (and top schools a free year). It ended December 31, 2024.
- **ChatGPT Plus, two free months** — OpenAI's experimental program for college students in the US, Canada, Australia, and Colombia ran March 31 to May 31, 2025, then closed.
- **Google AI Pro (Gemini) student offer** — Google's own FAQ now states the offer "ended on March 11, 2026 and is no longer available." Students are back to Gemini's regular free tier unless they pay for AI Pro.
Claude for Education: real, but not a personal signup
Anthropic does offer free Claude access to students — but only through a university-wide partnership Anthropic sets up directly with a school's IT department, not an individual sign-up page. If your university already has a deal in place, check with your campus IT or library site before assuming you need to pay. If it doesn't, there's currently no public "sign up as an individual student" path for free Claude access.
Before you trust any "free for students" post
- Go to the company's own pricing or education page, not a third-party blog quoting it.
- Look for an explicit end date or "this offer has ended" banner — companies do post these when a promo closes.
- If the claim is "sign up with a promo code," be extra skeptical; the legitimate offers above verify through your actual school email, not a code from a random article.
**Bottom line:** the GitHub Student Developer Pack and Notion's education plan are the two AI-adjacent freebies you can count on right now. Everything else billed as "free AI for students" is either already gone or locked behind a deal your school has to negotiate — so budget accordingly rather than counting on a promo that may no longer exist.