Building a Startup with No Budget? Use Student Deals Instead
Pro tools for student founders — without burning your wallet
Are You Cooked like me?
When I started building my first product, I signed up for everything: ChatGPT Plus, Copilot, Notion AI, Figma Pro, Superhuman…
Before I knew it, I was spending over $200/month just to build something that wasn’t even making money yet.
Turns out, most of these tools offer huge student discounts — if you dig deep enough.
I found out late. So here’s the list I wish I had on day one.
💻 Build
Cursor Pro – 1 year free (best AI pair programmer I’ve used)
: https://www.cursor.com/students
Windsurf Pro – 50% off (lightweight VSCode + AI features)
: https://windsurf.com/editor/students
GitHub Copilot – 6 months free
: https://education.github.com/pack
🧠 AI
ChatGPT Plus – 2 months free (till May 31)
: https://chatgpt.com/students
Gemini Advanced – 1 year free (till June 30)
: https://gemini.google/students/
Claude Pro – 3 months free (Cal students only, till May 16)
: https://www.anthropic.com/for/cal-students
🎨 Design
Figma Pro – Free for students
: https://www.figma.com/education/
📚 Idea & Docs
Notion Plus + AI – Free plan + 50% off AI
: https://www.notion.com/product/notion-for-education
📨 Email
Superhuman – $10/month (normally $30)
: https://new.superhuman.com/superhuman-for-education-170370
🎧 Focus Fuel
Spotify Premium – $5.99/month (vs. $21.98)
: https://www.spotify.com/us/student/pro
Because deep work needs deep beats.
Why share this?
I’ve spent the past year figuring out how to build with low budget — and failed a few times along the way.
This list isn’t a growth hack. It’s just stuff that actually helped me move faster without going broke.
If you’re a student founder like me — and cooked from trying to pay for everything out of pocket — I hope this gives you a head start.
Got more gems?
Comment below. I’d love to add them here and credit you.