Roboflow for Startups
AI Platform Credits
1 free year of the Roboflow Core plan ($948 value), credits loaded up front
A free year of Roboflow Core ($948) for new customers under $5M raised — labeling, cloud-GPU training, and inference credits loaded up front.
Who qualifies
Every condition below is taken from the vendor’s own published criteria. Read them before you spend an afternoon on the application.
Partner referral needed
There is no self-serve application. You need a referral from an approved VC, accelerator or incubator — start with your lead investor’s portfolio-benefits page.
Startups
The programme is aimed at startups. Vendors read this loosely, but expect to describe the company and what you are building on the application.
About Roboflow for Startups
Quick answer
A free year of Roboflow Core ($948) for new customers under $5M raised — labeling, cloud-GPU training, and inference credits loaded up front.
Roboflow is the default platform for building computer-vision models, and its startup program gives eligible companies a full free year of the Core plan — a $948 value — with all twelve months of platform credits loaded up front. That covers the whole vision pipeline: dataset storage and indexing, AI-assisted labeling, cloud-GPU training, inference API calls, and deployment. The catch: you need to come through one of Roboflow's partner startup programs.
What you get
- 12 months of the Roboflow Core plan free ($948 value)
- A full year of platform credits loaded up front — storage, dataset indexing, AI-assisted labeling, cloud-GPU training, inference API calls, and deployment
- 20 private projects and 3 user seats with concurrent training jobs
- Model weights download with a commercial Ultralytics license for up to 10 embedded devices
How to apply
5 steps. The last one is the part most people skip.
- 1
Get the referral before anything else
Roboflow for Startups has no self-serve application for this programme. Ask your lead investor, accelerator or incubator for their partner link — most Tier 1 funds keep a portfolio-benefits page listing exactly this. Without it the rest of the process is closed to you.
- 2
Open Roboflow for Startups through the link on this page
It carries our referral tag. The terms you get are identical either way, and it never changes what this page says about the programme.
- 3
Have the eligibility evidence ready
Applications are checked against 2 conditions — partner referral needed, startups. Incorporation date, cap table and a one-line description of what you are building cover most of it.
- 4
Size the migration against the 12 months window
Credits start burning from activation, not from when you get round to using them. Work out what you will genuinely consume in that window before you move production workloads across.
- 5
Know the rate you land on when it runs out
The point of a credit is a runway extension, not a permanent discount. Check standard list pricing for the usage you will have by then, so the first real invoice is a decision rather than a surprise.
Roboflow for Startups FAQ
The questions we actually get asked about this programme.
Ask us something elseThe published offer requires membership (or alumni status) in a partner startup program like Google for Startups, Y Combinator, or Sequoia Arc. If yours isn't a partner, Roboflow invites you to email startups@roboflow.com — programs get added, and it costs nothing to ask.
No — Roboflow explicitly says free public plan users are still eligible. The new-customer requirement targets teams already paying for Core or Growth, so upgrade through the program rather than paying first.
You move to standard Core pricing (about $79/month when billed annually, i.e. the same $948/year the program waives) or negotiate a Growth/Enterprise plan. Since credits load up front, monitor burn so training-heavy months don't exhaust them early.
