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Cloud Credits

Cloud credits are promotional or contractual funds provided by AWS, GCP, or Azure that offset billing charges, commonly issued through startup programs or enterprise agreements.

How It Works

A cloud provider issues credits to a customer’s account in a fixed dollar amount. Those credits apply automatically against eligible charges when the bill is generated, reducing the amount the customer owes. Credits are typically tied to specific services, time windows, or usage categories. Once the credit balance is exhausted, or the eligibility period expires, regular on-demand rates apply. AWS issues credits through programs like AWS Activate and the Migration Acceleration Program (MAP). Google Cloud offers credits through Google for Startups. Azure distributes credits via the Azure Sponsorship and startup partner programs.

Why It Matters for Cloud Cost

Credits are a legitimate cost offset, but they are temporary. Teams that plan budgets around active credit balances often face a sharp increase in spend once those credits run out. Without accurate tracking, finance teams may underestimate true cloud costs, miss the expiration date, or fail to account for the gap between credited spend and actual list-price exposure. Credits also vary by service eligibility, so a credit that covers compute may not apply to data transfer or storage, creating partial offsets that are easy to misread in billing reports. Tracking credit balances separately from commitment-based savings like Reserved Instances or Savings Plans is essential for clean cost reporting.

ClearCost is Usage AI’s visibility and showback reporting layer, giving finance and engineering teams a unified view of cloud spend across AWS, GCP, and Azure.

See how Usage AI saves 30 to 50% on AWS, GCP, and Azure.

Related Terms

Cost Allocation Tags

Cost allocation tags are key-value labels applied to cloud resources so organizations can track, attribute, and report on spending by team, project, environment, or any custom dimension.

Cloud Cost Visibility

Cloud cost visibility is the ability to see, understand, and attribute cloud spending in real time across accounts, services, regions, and teams, forming the foundation of any cost optimization effort.

Compute Savings Plan

An AWS Compute Savings Plan is a flexible pricing model that reduces compute costs by up to 66% vs on-demand in exchange for a consistent hourly spend commitment over one or three years.