Startup Credits Runway Calculator

Each grant is forecast against its own provider’s spend, because AWS credits pay only AWS charges. Spend grows at the monthly rate you enter, compounded daily from today. A grant ends on the day cumulative spend reaches its balance (it runs out) or on its expiry date, whichever comes first; if it expires first, what is left is lost. The first full bill is the monthly spend rate on that day.

Because credits only pay for what each program covers. AWS promotional credits do not pay for most Marketplace products, upfront fees for Savings Plans and Reserved Instances, Enterprise Support or tax, although AWS Activate does cover third-party models on Bedrock until the credits run out. Google for Startups credits exclude Marketplace and partner models, apart from a separate partner-model credit for Scale and AI tier members.

From the day a credit runs out or expires, the charges it covered are billed to your card or invoice. On AWS a credit still covers the billing month in which it expires, so the first full bill is the month after. This calculator does not model that: it ends a grant on its expiry date, so for AWS credits it can show the cliff up to a month early, which errs on the safe side. Google for Startups is different: in year two it covers only 20% of eligible spend, so the cash bill jumps at the first anniversary. Anthropic prepaid accounts stop serving API requests when the balance reaches zero, which is an outage rather than a bill.

On AWS, a budget on spend with credits included and a threshold of a dollar, so you hear the day credits stop covering you, plus Cost Anomaly Detection. On Google Cloud, a budget that leaves credits out, so it shows what you would really pay. At Anthropic, workspace spend limits, and at OpenAI, project budgets.