30-second tour · what this page is for
You may already be paying for AI.
- Perks you own — Bundled with your phone plan, bank, or student email — unclaimed.
- Re-verified weekly — Expired offers get removed, not left to rot on the page.
- No affiliate bias — Listed because it is real, not because it pays us.
AI perks & deals · verified Oct. 17, 2026
You may already be paying for it
Carriers, banks, schools and Amazon hand out AI subscriptions. Most people never claim them — and most deal pages never say when one expired.
26 active offersExpired trapsAuto-renew datesNo affiliate links
Nine separate industries are quietly giving away or discounting AI subscriptions right now: Amazon, through Prime, phone carriers, phone and laptop makers, universities and the companies courting them, K–12 school districts, card issuers, developer-tool makers, the cloud providers courting the next generation of engineers, and — for one specific group — the federal government. A $20-a-month habit can legitimately cost $10, or nothing, depending on what you already pay for.
This page tracks what is actually claimable in the United States, with the date we checked it. It also does the thing deal pages never do: it keeps the expired ones on the page, marked expired, because half the guides still circulating tell you to claim offers that closed months ago.
Active right now
| Who gives it | What you get | Your cost | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon → Prime members Alexa+ | Alexa+ at no additional cost — the full assistant, for the whole household, across Echo devices, Alexa.com and the Alexa app | $0 $19.99/mo standalone | The rare one with no card and no renewal date to guard. Without Prime, Amazon now lists two routes on its own page: a Standard plan at $19.99/mo with unlimited daily use, and a free, usage-limited text chat version on Alexa.com and in the Alexa app. Amazon separately says Alexa+ is included at no additional cost on compatible Fire TV devices. Check this before buying any assistant subscription. |
| OpenAI → US K–12 educators ChatGPT for Teachers | A full ChatGPT workspace built for school use — GPT‑5.1 Instant, Auto and Reasoning-Mini, file uploads, deep research, web search, voice, image generation, memory, custom GPTs and admin controls | $0 through June 2028 | The largest offer on this page by headcount, and the one most often described wrongly. Roundups still on the first page of Google say it is free “through June 2027” — that was the launch promise. OpenAI’s own announcement page and help centre both now say June 2028. Eligibility is broader than the word “teachers” suggests: any teacher, staff member, school leader or district administrator employed by an accredited US K–12 school or district. Verify at chatgpt.com/k12-verification through SheerID. No card, and it is not ChatGPT Plus or Pro — it is a separate workspace, one district per workspace. Not available to students. |
| Anthropic → US K–12 educators Claude for Teachers | Free access to premium Claude, including Claude Code and Cowork, plus teaching skills and a Learning Commons connector mapped to academic standards in all 50 states | $0 one year | The rival to the row above, and the deadline works differently — which is the distinction that decides which one you claim first. OpenAI’s free window is a fixed calendar date for everyone; Anthropic promises “a full year of access” to anyone who signs up by June 30, 2027; its pages do not spell out that the year runs from your own sign-up date, so check the date shown in your account. Individual teachers verify with a school email, Anthropic names Goodstack only in its district setup guide, and OpenAI runs its own K–12 verification page, so being approved for one tells you nothing about the other. Open to teachers, coaches, librarians, specialists, counsellors and other certificated staff; educators only, not students. Districts can set up a free organisation covering all staff. |
| OpenAI → faculty & postdocs ChatGPT for Academic Researchers | A dedicated ChatGPT workspace with ChatGPT Pro-level rate limits and business data protections — up to five seats, one owner plus four verified collaborators | $0 12 months, 5 seats | New to this page, and the largest thing on it for anyone working in a lab. Eligibility is narrower than the other education rows and turns on a publication, not a job title: you must be a research faculty member or postdoctoral researcher at an institution on OpenAI’s eligibility list, and be listed as an author on an arXiv, bioRxiv or ChemRxiv paper posted within the last three years in Biological Sciences, Chemistry and Materials, Computer Science, Earth and Planetary Sciences, Engineering, Mathematics or Physics. Verification is SheerID, and the email you verify with must match the email on the ChatGPT account you are signed into — OpenAI documents the mismatch as the main failure mode. The catch that matters most right now: you will probably join a waitlist, not get a seat. OpenAI’s program page carries an update dated Aug. 10, 2026: new applicants “will now join a waitlist” while OpenAI reviews more than 13,000 first-wave applications and picks an initial 10,000-seat cohort “through a lottery among eligible applicants,” with applications to “reopen later this fall.” We missed that update for seven weeks; this row now says it (read Oct. 17, 2026). The help centre still quotes a 1–2 week review for selected applications. A card is required at checkout but the total is $0. It does not auto-renew. OpenAI states the workspace will not renew automatically and is deactivated after any grace period, which makes this one of the few offers here with no renewal date to guard. Collaborators must be at the same institution, and one verified email can belong to only one researcher workspace at a time. Full walkthrough, with the three other programmes aimed at academics: free AI for researchers. |
| Google → academic researchers Gemini for Research | Gemini API credits plus higher rate limits for a research project | Apply amount not published | The counterpart to the row above, and the one to apply for if your work is API calls rather than a chat workspace. Google’s page describes it as open to “faculty, staff, and PhD students” in supported countries — a wider net than OpenAI’s, which excludes PhD students and requires a recent paper. Read the formal line too: the same page’s eligibility clause says “faculty members, researchers or equivalent,” and does not repeat the words PhD students. A doctoral applicant should describe their research role, not just their enrolment. The trade-off is that Google publishes no credit amount, no rate-limit figure and no duration, and states that access and credits are “granted and removed at Google’s discretion.” Applications are reviewed monthly, so there is no deadline to race — and also nothing to hold Google to. We list it because it is real and first-party; we are not printing a number Google has not printed. |
| Anthropic → research groups Claude Team plan for scientists | A Claude Team workspace for a lab — Claude, Claude Code, Claude Cowork and Claude Science, central billing, single sign-on. Standard seats free; Premium seats (5× usage) $15/mo | $0 / $15 per seat, for 12 months | New to this page, and the first of the researcher offers that covers a whole group rather than one person. A principal investigator or equivalent at an accredited university or nonprofit research institute applies, in the natural sciences, mathematics, computer science, engineering or a related field, then adds postdocs, graduate students and researchers — 1 to 25 seats. For-profit companies, contract research organisations and industry R&D are excluded. For scale, the list price of a Team standard seat is $20/mo billed annually ($25 monthly) and a premium seat $100/mo billed annually, on Anthropic’s own pricing page. Premium can also be paid at $180 a seat for the year. Three conditions to read before you sign: it is offered to “a limited number of groups,” the discount lasts 12 months and then seats renew at “the then-current price” (Anthropic says it will notify admins first), and a group with no activity for 90 days may be moved back to standard Team pricing. Most applications are reviewed within seven business days. New this week: the plan now also carries monthly Claude API credits — $20 per Standard seat and $100 per Premium seat, pooled and capped at $500 a month, per Anthropic’s help centre (read Oct. 17, 2026). That means a lab paying $0 for 25 Standard seats would receive the full $500 pool (our arithmetic from Anthropic’s figures). Anthropic’s pages do not say whether a card is taken at sign-up; because Premium seats are billed, expect one (our inference). If your campus already has a Claude Enterprise agreement, Anthropic says to check with it first. Launched Aug. 27, 2026. |
| Google → US college students gemini.google.com/students | Google AI Pro free for 12 months: 4× higher Gemini limits, 5 TB storage, Gemini Spark, Gemini Omni, study notebooks and unlimited uploads of your own course material | $0 then $19.99/mo | US college students, 18+. A valid form of payment is required at sign-up and it charges $19.99/mo automatically when the year ends. Redeem by Dec. 31, 2026. Two conditions Google states and almost nobody repeats: eligibility has to be re-verified every year to keep access, and students whose 2025 AI Pro trial already expired can qualify again. Canada is excluded from both the US Pro offer and the non-US Plus offer, along with Bolivia, Albania, Macau, Hong Kong and Tunisia — Google states this in the same announcement (re-checked Sept. 11, 2026). |
| OpenAI → US college students Back to School 2026 | ChatGPT Plus for four monthly billing periods, including ChatGPT Work | $0 then $20/mo | New since our last check. Not the spring 2025 offer that closed — a new one, for current full- and part-time college and graduate students at eligible US degree-granting institutions, verified through SheerID. Claim by Oct. 31, 2026. A payment method is required and it renews at $20/mo. The catch almost nobody will read: cancelling early forfeits the free months you have not used — cancel in month four, not on day one. Plus billed through the Apple App Store or Google Play cannot receive it while it stays store-billed. Taking the 2025 offer does not rule you out. One redemption. Full walkthrough: free ChatGPT Plus for students. |
| GitHub → verified students & teachers GitHub Education | Copilot Student: Copilot’s features free, with an unstated monthly allowance of GitHub AI Credits for chat, agents, code review and the CLI | $0 | Changed since we last checked: GitHub renamed premium requests to AI Credits and stopped publishing a number for this plan — the comparison table now reads only “an allowance.” Auto model selection only, and third-party agents are excluded. GitHub re-checks eligibility every month, and activation is a separate step from approval. Teachers are handled differently from students: GitHub says verified teachers and maintainers of popular open-source projects may qualify for free Copilot Pro, not the Student plan. For scale, paid Copilot Pro is $10/mo with 1,000 base credits plus a 500 flex allotment (1,500 total, which GitHub now also writes as “$15/month of credits”), and a fourth paid tier, Copilot Max at $100/mo with 20,000 credits, now sits above Pro+. |
| Zed → university students Zed for Education | Zed Pro free for 12 months — unlimited edit predictions, real-time collaborative editing, and $10/month in AI token credits | $0 $10/mo value | The only offer on this page that hands students more than the paying customer gets. Paid Zed Pro is $10/mo and includes $5 of tokens; the free student plan includes $10 — double. Zed’s education and pricing pages mention no card, and after 12 months it automatically downgrades to the free plan rather than billing you, which is the opposite of every Google and OpenAI row above. Any accredited university worldwide, 18+. Verification is unusual — a GitHub account older than 30 days plus a current university email, checked against JetBrains’ open-source list of university domains, and you can add your own domain if it is missing. The excluded models are the expensive ones: Claude Fable, Claude Opus and the GPT Pro tier. If you graduate mid-year the plan still runs a full year from your application date. |
| AWS → students at listed schools Kiro for Students | 1,000 Kiro credits a month for 12 months — the same monthly allowance Kiro Pro sells for $20 | $0 $20/mo value | The catch is the school list, and it is what every roundup leaves out. This is not open to all .edu addresses — AWS publishes a named roster and your Kiro account must use an email from a school on it. When we read the page on Sept. 28, 2026 it listed roughly 130 institutions, about 50 of them in the US, with a form to nominate a school that is missing. AWS’s own Sept. 14, 2026 roundup describes the expansion as going “from 11 universities to 121 new schools across 16 countries.” 1,000 credits a month is exactly what Kiro Pro sells for $20, so the free year is worth about $240. No credit card required, and at the end you drop to the 50-credit free tier rather than being billed. Two limits sit in the terms and both bite: unused credits do not roll over month to month, and you may not buy add-on credits during the free year — so a heavy month is simply a short month. 18+, one per person, non-transferable, and the agreement is with Amazon Web Services rather than with Kiro. How it compares with the other three: free AI for researchers. |
| OpenAI → US & Canada students Codex credits | $100 in credits (shown as 2,500) for Codex, OpenAI’s coding agent | $0 | Enrolled at a degree-granting university and residing in the US or Canada when claiming. Verified through SheerID. Limit one per student. Credits expire 12 months after the grant date. This is not ChatGPT Plus. |
| OpenAI → Ohio, Michigan & Georgia students Codex credits, state programmes | $100 in Codex credits (shown as 2,500) on the same terms as the national student offer above — they expire 12 months after the grant date | $0 one per student | Changed this week, and our own row was wrong. Ohio is no longer alone: OpenAI now runs identical pages for Michigan and Georgia. We told Ohio readers last week that this route was wider than the national one and that a community college or trade school would get in here. Read the pages again, closely: each headline promises “college, community college, and trade school students,” but each eligibility answer says the offer is for students “enrolled at degree-granting universities” in that state and residing in that state when claiming — the same test as the national offer, plus residency. The two sentences contradict each other, and the eligibility answer is the one SheerID is asked to check. If you are at a community college or trade school, try it, but do not count on it. The Ohio programme was announced Aug. 17, 2026 alongside OpenAI’s Pike County data-centre agreement. You need a ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus or Pro plan, and these are not API credits. |
| Perplexity → students and educators Education Pro | Everything in Pro — unlimited Pro searches, file and image uploads, premium models, Perplexity Computer, Learn Mode — plus education-specific prompts | $10/mo a $19.99/mo value | Educators and faculty qualify, not only students — the detail most roundups miss, and it is still true. Correction to our own page: the $10 price is first-party again, and our flag was looking at the wrong article. For three weeks we carried this price as unconfirmable because the help-centre article we cited was deleted and its replacement, rewritten Sept. 3, 2026, says only “at a discount.” The number had moved, not disappeared: Perplexity’s plan-comparison article, last modified Sept. 5, 2026, prints “Education Pro ($10/mo with verification from SheerID).” Verified through SheerID. Ongoing, not a trial — so unlike most rows here there is no free window to time, and no renewal cliff. Still worth reading the upgrade screen, because the plan page and the comparison page have now disagreed once. |
| Verizon myPlan / myHome perk | Google AI Pro as a plan perk — upgraded Gemini, NotebookLM, AI in Google apps, YouTube Premium Lite, Google Home Premium, 5 TB storage, shareable with 5 people | $0 for 6 months then $10/mo — a $19.99/mo value | New this week: the first six months are free. Verizon’s Sept. 24, 2026 announcement gives “6 months of the Google AI Pro perk on us” to new and existing customers on eligible Simplicity, myPlan, home internet and Fios plans who are not already subscribed to the perk, with any new smartphone or none, and then continues at $10/mo. The announcement prints no end date, and Verizon repeated “six months of Google AI Pro on us” for “eligible customers” in an Oct. 14, 2026 release, again with no end date. Eligible plan required (Simplicity, Unlimited Ultimate/Plus/Welcome, 5G Home, LTE Home, Home Internet Lite, Fios except Classic Standalone). One per line and per account, 18+, and residents of the 50 states and DC only; only an Account Owner or Account Manager can add it. Cancel an existing paid Google One subscription first — Verizon says any value, free trial, discount or promotional pricing on that old subscription will not carry over. Verizon’s two documents now disagree about a 90-day deadline. The Terms & Conditions dropped the clause in late September and still do not have it. Verizon’s own perk FAQ, re-read Oct. 3, still says you “must activate the subscription within 90 days of buying the perk or the perk automatically cancels.” Treat the stricter one as live. What remains is the gap that made it matter: billing begins at enrolment, access begins only when you register the line with Google, so every day you delay is a paid day you cannot use. Register immediately regardless. A new sentence replaces it, and it cuts the other way from the phone trials above: cancel and you lose access the same day, with the $10 prorated — where cancelling a Pixel trial keeps access to the end of it. Workspace and child Google accounts are not eligible. |
| Google → Pixel 11 Pro buyers Pixel 11 Pro, Pro XL, Pro Fold | Google AI Pro for 6 months — higher Gemini limits, 5 TB storage, Google Health Premium | $0 then standard monthly price | Half what the last generation got. Google’s own Pixel help page lists 12 months of AI Pro for US Pixel 10 Pro buyers (redeemable until Oct. 31, 2026) and 6 months for the Pixel 11 Pro line, redeemable until Oct. 31, 2027. The base Pixel 11 is not listed for AI Pro at all. New and existing users are eligible; a payment method is required and the trial “automatically renew[s] into paid subscriptions unless canceled.” Unlike the ChatGPT student offer, cancelling during the trial keeps access to the end of it. Pixel 10 Pro owners: two weeks left to redeem the 12 months, as of Oct. 17, 2026. |
| Samsung → Galaxy buyers (US) Z Fold8, Z Fold8 Ultra, Z Flip8, Galaxy Tab S12+ / S12 Ultra, Galaxy S26 FE | Google AI Pro for 6 months | $0 then $19.99/mo | For devices bought and activated between Aug. 1, 2026 and Aug. 1, 2027; redeem by Aug. 1, 2027. Card required, not charged until the trial ends, then billed monthly. Excluded: anyone already on a higher Google One tier or an add-on, family members who are not the plan manager, people billed through a third party, and discounted Pixel-bundle subscribers. Returning the phone may cancel the subscription. Wider this week: Samsung’s US offer terms, re-read Oct. 10, 2026 on its Galaxy Tab S12 page, list the Galaxy Tab S12+ and S12 Ultra tablets and the Galaxy S26 FE phone on the same dates, the same card rule and the same $19.99 renewal. The base Tab S12 is not on the list. The two tablets add four months of Photoshop mobile (card required, redeem before May 19, 2028) and six months of Notability (no card, US only). |
| Google → Googlebook buyers Googlebook laptops (Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo) | Google AI Pro for 12 months — 5 TB storage and higher Gemini limits — plus 3 months of YouTube Premium and app trials including Adobe Photoshop | $0 with a laptop from $899 | The longest device trial on this page: twice what the Pixel 11 Pro and the Samsung devices carry. Google’s Sept. 21, 2026 launch post says every Googlebook includes it, starting at $899. The terms we could not read last week are now confirmed on Google’s own Googlebook offer terms, read Oct. 10, 2026: buy and activate the laptop on or after Oct. 1, 2026, redeem by March 31, 2027, a card is required at sign-up, and it renews at $19.99/mo “or the then-current subscription fee.” One rule the phone offers do not have: it is for new Google AI Pro subscribers only — if you already pay for AI Pro, the laptop adds nothing. The YouTube Premium months are only for people who have never had Premium, Music Premium or Premium Lite or one of their trials, and roll to $15.99/mo. |
| American Express → business cards Business Platinum / Gold | Up to $300 per calendar year in statement credits on US purchases of ChatGPT Business | $300 back per calendar year | Not re-read this week: the Amex benefit page did not load for us on Oct. 10 or Oct. 17, 2026, so this row is an earlier reading. Amex’s own pages, as shown in search results on Oct. 17, still describe up to $300 per calendar year on US ChatGPT Business purchases, with enrolment required. Enrollment is required before you buy — find the ChatGPT Business Credit tile in the card’s Benefits Dashboard, accept the terms, then purchase. Credits post six to eight weeks from the payment date, not the order date, and a tracker in the same dashboard shows how much of the $300 you have used. Only the Basic Card Member or an Authorised Account Manager can enrol, and the card has to be the billing card on file at OpenAI. Amex states that if OpenAI renames or rebrands ChatGPT Business, eligibility is unaffected. Subject to OpenAI’s own auto-renewal terms. |
| Microsoft Microsoft 365 Personal / Family | AI features across Office, Designer, Paint and Photos — but Microsoft has stopped saying how much. Its own page now reads “Standard usage” where the numbers used to be | Included in the plan price | Not in the customer’s favour, and still true on Oct. 10, 2026. Microsoft’s support page — now stamped “Last updated: October 2026” — has deleted every number. The 60 AI credits a month, the 15 Deep Research runs, the 10 minutes of Vision, the 30 minutes of Voice: all replaced by the words “Standard usage,” “More usage” and “Extensive use.” We carried those figures from Microsoft’s own page and we will not keep printing them now that Microsoft does not. The fourth consumer tier, Microsoft 365 Pro, is back where we can read it. In late September it had vanished from every page we checked. On Oct. 3, 2026 its own Microsoft Store page shows $99.99 a month with a Buy button, and the AI-limits support page names it throughout. The plan comparison page, re-read Oct. 10, 2026, now names it in its menu and FAQ but still prints no price for it; the $99.99 appears only on the product page. We were right not to call it discontinued. What has not changed: AI benefits are “only available to the subscription owner and cannot be shared with others,” and Microsoft now prints that on the buy page too — a Family plan does not give the family AI. Prices held: Personal $99.99/yr, Family $129.99/yr, Premium $199.99/yr or $19.99/mo. The monthly options are now on the comparison page too, and they are the expensive way to buy: Personal $9.99/mo and Family $12.99/mo work out to $19.89 and $25.89 more a year than paying annually. |
| Google & YouTube → US college students AI Pro + Premium bundle | Google AI Pro bundled with a full YouTube Premium individual subscription — ad-free video, background play, downloads — on top of everything in the student AI Pro offer | $8.99/mo vs $35.98 separately | New on Aug. 19, 2026. Verified through SheerID at sign-up. Valid for up to 4 years and then renews at the standard price once student status ends. Individual use only, and not available on school-issued accounts — the restriction that disqualifies most people who assume they qualify. |
| OpenAI → nonprofits OpenAI for Nonprofits | ChatGPT Business Standard seats at a nonprofit rate; up to 75% off ChatGPT Enterprise through sales | $8/user/mo billed annually ($10 monthly) | New to this page. The list price of a Business standard seat is $20/mo billed annually or $25 monthly, so the nonprofit rate is 60% off, not the 75% in the headline — 75% is the Enterprise ceiling, negotiated with sales. Premium seats get no discount at all, and in a workspace with both kinds only the standard seats are reduced. A Business workspace needs at least two paid seats. Eligibility is checked by Goodstack. No API discount. Compare it with the Anthropic row below before you choose — full side-by-side: ChatGPT nonprofit discount vs Claude for Nonprofits. |
| Anthropic → nonprofits Claude for Nonprofits | Claude Team at a nonprofit rate, including Claude Code and file creation; discounted Enterprise through sales | $8/user/mo $3 in low- and middle-income countries | New to this page. The twin of the OpenAI row: the same $8 seat price, against the same $20/$25 list price for a Team standard seat. Two differences decide between them. Eligibility is wider: registered 501(c)(3) organisations and international equivalents, K–12 public and private schools, and certain rural and community health providers (Critical Access Hospitals, Rural Emergency Hospitals, Federally Qualified Health Centers, Rural Health Clinics). And self-service is capped: organisations with fewer than 20 people verify through Goodstack in about 2–3 minutes; larger ones are sent to sales. Team is 2–150 seats, minimum 2. Anthropic’s page does not say whether the $8 is the annual or monthly rate, and prints no nonprofit price for premium seats. |
| Anthropic → Max and Team subscribers Monthly Claude API credits | Monthly credits for the Claude API, Managed Agents, the Agent SDK and the Console playground: $100 on Max 5x, $200 on Max 20x, and on Team $20 per Standard seat and $100 per Premium seat, pooled and capped at $500 | Included in the plan price; Max starts at $100/mo | New this week, launched Oct. 7, 2026 in Anthropic’s release notes. It covers the nonprofit and scientist Team plans in the two rows above too, so an $8 nonprofit seat now carries a $20 API credit. The catches are all in Anthropic’s own help article (read Oct. 17, 2026): Pro is not eligible, and neither are Free or Enterprise. The credit does not pay for interactive Claude Code or for extra usage in the Claude apps, and it does not work on Bedrock, Vertex AI or Foundry. You claim it on claude.ai in a web browser after seven days on the plan, by linking one Claude Console organisation — and you cannot change that link yourself later, so pick the organisation you will build in. Unused credit expires at the end of each billing cycle; there is no rollover. No card is needed on the Console side, and when the credit runs out, API calls stop unless you have bought credits. Upgrading from Pro to Max costs $80 a month more than Pro; the credit is only worth it if you will actually call the API. Full walkthrough: does Claude Max include API credits? |
| Perplexity → US government workers Perplexity for Government | Perplexity’s top models — its own Sonar plus models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google — with what Perplexity calls “zero data usage” on government requests | $0 no contract | The one offer here with no card, no code and no renewal date. Perplexity says it identifies government requests itself, logged in or out, through technical measures and agency network ranges, so there is nothing to claim. Set up under the GSA OneGov agreement announced Nov. 19, 2025, which also lets an agency buy Enterprise Pro for Government at $0.25. GSA’s Buy AI page, read Oct. 17, 2026, now prints an end date for that price: “$0.25 from now until Apr 2027.” Perplexity’s own announcement loaded for us this week, but its government landing page did not. |
| OpenAI → service members & veterans chatgpt.com/veterans-claim | One free year of ChatGPT Plus | $0 one year from claim | For US service members leaving active duty in the next 12 months, and veterans and retirees who left in the last 12 months. Verification is through ID.me, not SheerID. OpenAI tells existing web Plus subscribers not to cancel before applying it; store-billed Plus has to lapse first. One per person, not transferable. Accounts that belong to an Enterprise workspace cannot redeem it, even from a personal workspace. The terms say it expires a year after the claim date but do not print the renewal price — read the checkout screen. |
Every row re-read on the provider’s own page on Oct. 17, 2026, except where a row says otherwise. Nothing expired and no price in the table moved. One offer is new: Anthropic’s Max and Team plans have carried monthly Claude API credits since Oct. 7, which also reach the nonprofit and scientist Team plans. One row was wrong and is fixed: ChatGPT for Academic Researchers has put new applicants on a waitlist with a 10,000-seat lottery since Aug. 10, and our row did not say so. Smaller changes: Google’s free AI Pro trials do not include YouTube Premium Lite until you convert to paid; GSA now dates Perplexity’s $0.25 government price to April 2027; Verizon repeated its six free months on Oct. 14; and Verizon’s legacy Disney+ add-ons go up on Oct. 21. Pixel 10 Pro owners have until Oct. 31 to redeem their year, and ChatGPT’s student offer must be claimed by the same date. What we could not re-read this week: the American Express benefit page and T-Mobile’s benefits page did not load; OpenAI’s pricing page served us only a non-US version; and Microsoft’s 365 Pro page draws its price by script, so the $99.99 is our Oct. 3 reading. Offers change without notice; the date is there so you know how stale this is.
Expired or not available in the US
These are still being recommended by guides, videos and roundups. They will waste your afternoon.
| Offer | Status | What is actually true |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT Plus, free for students | Expired | Real, and gone. OpenAI ran the US and Canada promotion in spring 2025 and it closed May 31, 2025. OpenAI’s 2026 student offer is a new one, with different terms — four months, a card required, and a cancellation rule that runs the opposite way. It is in the table above. |
| Samsung Galaxy → free year of Perplexity Pro | Expired | A genuine Galaxy Store promotion for US Galaxy phone and tablet owners in 2025. It ended Dec. 24, 2025 and is not a built-in benefit of newer Galaxy phones. Perplexity’s current promotions do not include Samsung. |
| PayPal / Venmo → free year of Perplexity Pro | Expired | It was real: a 12-month Perplexity Pro subscription for PayPal and Venmo users, announced Sept. 2025. The window closed Dec. 31, 2025. Anything promising it today is recycling an old page. |
| Comet browser → free year of Perplexity Pro (.edu) | Expired | The Comet referral route that students passed around ended Nov. 6, 2025, and the referral stack that once ran to two years of free Pro ended May 31, 2026. Education Pro at $10 is what replaced it. |
| T-Mobile → free year of Perplexity Pro | Not the US | This is a Deutsche Telekom promotion running through Magenta Moments in European markets. We read T-Mobile’s own US benefits page on Aug. 22, 2026: Netflix, Apple TV+, Hulu, SiriusXM, Pandora, DoorDash, in-flight Wi-Fi — and no AI benefit of any kind. |
| Copilot Pro at $20/mo | Retired | Microsoft stopped selling the standalone consumer plan to new customers on Oct. 1, 2025. Its capabilities live on inside Microsoft 365 Premium at $19.99/mo, and support for existing subscribers ended Aug. 1, 2026. |
| Xfinity Rewards → free year of Perplexity Pro | Expired | Entirely real, and the most-recirculated of the lot: Xfinity Rewards members got a promo code good for 12 months of Perplexity Pro, usable up to eight times. Sign-up closed Aug. 29, 2025 — a year ago to the day as we write this. Existing Pro subscribers were never eligible. Tech coverage of it still ranks. |
| Handshake → free year of Google AI Plus | Expired | The freshest trap on this page, and the one most likely to waste your time this month: a real Handshake-and-Google offer giving US and Canadian students 18+ a free year of Google AI Plus. Handshake’s own page now carries the line “The Google AI Plus offer for Handshake students has ended and is no longer available to claim.” It closed Aug. 21, 2026 — two days after the Google student offer that replaced it launched. Roundups published this month still list it as live. If you are a student, the live route is the Google AI Pro row above. |
Four of these eight closed in the last quarter of 2025. That is when the introductory-giveaway phase of this market ended; what replaced it is narrower and more conditional — and, as the Handshake row shows, the closures have not stopped.
If none of it applies to you
Not everyone is a student, a Verizon customer or a business cardholder. For everyone else the relevant move is at the bottom of the price list rather than in the perks. Google launched Google AI Plus in the US on Jan. 27, 2026 at $7.99/month, per its own blog, as a tier below AI Pro with storage shareable across five other family members. Several outlets reported on June 8, 2026 that Google cut it to $4.99 and doubled storage to 400 GB.
That changed in late August. We carried the $4.99 figure as press-reported for months because Google’s US pricing page will not serve US dollars from where we check, and we do not print prices we have not read on the provider’s own page. Google’s own student-offer post of Aug. 19, 2026 now states it outright, pricing AI Plus at $4.99/month with 400 GB of storage. It is first-party as of Aug. 29, 2026, and it is logged as a verified change in our AI price change log.
One more thing moved in the same direction: Google AI Pro now includes YouTube Premium Lite at no extra cost in the US, per Google One support. That is worth noting before you pay for both — and it quietly raises what the Verizon $10 perk is actually worth. But not during a free trial. The same Google One help page, read Oct. 17, 2026, says: “The YouTube Premium Lite benefit is unavailable until trials of Google AI Pro conclude and you convert to a paid subscription.” That covers the student, Pixel, Samsung and Googlebook trials in the table above. Whether Verizon’s six free months count as a Google trial, neither company says; we have not confirmed it either way. The same page also lists Colab compute units as “not available to Google One trial memberships.”
The streaming half of the same trick
The carriers that discount AI discount television the same way, and the mechanism is identical: a flat monthly perk, or an inclusion, that costs less than the service does on its own.
On Verizon’s myPlan, the streaming perks start at $10/month — the Disney Bundle, a Netflix and HBO Max bundle, YouTube Premium, Apple TV+ and others, each priced below what the same subscription costs bought directly. One price moves on Oct. 21, 2026: Verizon’s Disney perk FAQ, read Oct. 17, says the legacy Disney+ Basic add-on rises from $11.99 to $12.49 a month and the legacy Disney+ Premium add-on from $18.99 to $21.49. Its current terms list the Disney+ Premium, Hulu and ESPN+ perk at $15 a month. T-Mobile takes the other approach and bundles them into the plan instead, and it now prices them by the year: reading its own benefits page on Sept. 28, 2026 we found Netflix On Us (Netflix Standard with ads, a $107/yr value) on Experience Beyond and Experience More, Hulu On Us on Experience Beyond — now quoted monthly, at a $12.49/mo value rather than the $143/yr it showed a fortnight ago — and DashPass free for 12 months ($120/yr value), plus Apple TV on Experience Beyond — which the page prices at $3/mo (an $11.99/mo value), not free — SiriusXM for six months and Pandora Premium for four. Read the renewal prices under those last three, because they are where the bill appears: DashPass rolls to $9.99/mo, SiriusXM to $11.99/mo, Pandora to $10.99/mo. What that page still does not contain, after nine straight weeks of checking (most recently Oct. 10, 2026 — on Oct. 17 the page refused our requests, so that count was not repeated — when we counted zero occurrences of Gemini, ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude or Perplexity anywhere on it), is any AI subscription at all. The closest thing on it is a “coming soon” Live Translation feature in 80-plus languages — a property of the network, not a subscription you can claim. That is why the T-Mobile row sits in the expired table below.
How to check what you already have, in five minutes
- Amazon Prime. If your household has Prime, Alexa+ is already included — across Echo devices, the app and Alexa.com. Do this one first, because it costs nothing and changes whether you need an assistant subscription at all.
- Your carrier app. Verizon: myPlan → Perks. T-Mobile: the benefits section. AT&T: your plan’s included features. Look for anything labelled Google AI, Gemini, or a streaming bundle.
- Your Google account. Visit one.google.com → membership. If storage is above 100 GB you may already hold an AI plan you are not using — and if you also hold the Verizon perk, you are paying twice.
- Your Microsoft account. Microsoft 365 Personal and Family include AI features for the subscription owner only. Everyone else in the family gets nothing from it. As of its September 2026 rewrite Microsoft no longer publishes how much use that buys — the old figure of 60 AI credits a month is gone from its own page, so check your allowance under Services & subscriptions in your Microsoft account rather than trusting any number you read elsewhere.
- Your school. If you or your child is enrolled, the Google year, the four ChatGPT Plus months, the GitHub Copilot Student plan and the OpenAI Codex credit are four separate things that do not conflict — but the Google and ChatGPT ones both take a card and renew on different dates. Educators should check Perplexity, which counts them too.
- Your bank and card portals. This is where the payment-app offers appeared in 2025 and where the Amex ChatGPT Business credit sits now. Business cards in particular are worth reading twice a year.
Which plan you actually need
Before you claim anything, it helps to know which tier your work requires. Two companion pieces: when to use agentic AI and when not to decides the mode, and what AI really costs you per month turns that into a monthly number using the offers on this page.
What this page is for
Prices tell you what something costs. Perks tell you what you can stop paying. We keep both: the AI price tracker for list prices, this page for the discounts hiding in bills you already pay.
If you know of a US offer we have missed — a carrier, a bank, an employer or a university programme — tell us on the Ask page and we will verify it and add it with a date.
Sources, re-read on Oct. 17, 2026. New this week: Claude Help Center, “Monthly API credits for Max and Team plans,” the Claude release notes (Oct. 7, 2026) and the Claude Platform docs page “API credits for Max and Team plans”; OpenAI, “Accelerating scientific discovery with ChatGPT for Academic Researchers” (update of Aug. 10, 2026); Google One Help, “Use Google AI Pro benefits”; GSA, Buy AI; Verizon News, “Verizon delivers extra value with free safety, family and AI perks” (Oct. 14, 2026); Verizon, Disney perk FAQ and terms. Added Oct. 10, 2026: Google Gemini Apps Help, “Changes to Gemini model access and limits” and the US Google AI plans page; Samsung US, Galaxy Tab S12 offer terms; Google, Googlebook app offer terms and conditions; OpenAI Help Center, “ChatGPT for Teachers.” Added Oct. 3, 2026: Anthropic, “Claude Team plan for scientists” (Claude Help Center) and the claude.com pricing page; OpenAI Help Center, “OpenAI for Nonprofits” and “ChatGPT Business: General FAQ”; claude.com/solutions/nonprofits and Anthropic’s “Claude for Nonprofits” (Dec. 2, 2025); Google, “Googlebook is here and ready for pre-order” (Sept. 21, 2026); Verizon News, “Verizon offers new Motorola foldable phones” (Sept. 24, 2026) and the Verizon Google AI Pro perk FAQ; OpenAI’s Codex pages for Ohio, Michigan and Georgia college students; OpenAI Help Center, “About ChatGPT Pro tiers” (updated Oct. 2, 2026); the Microsoft Store page for Microsoft 365 Pro. Carried from Sept. 26–Oct. 10, 2026 and re-read this week where they loaded: OpenAI Help Center, “ChatGPT Back to School offer for students” (article 20001493 — the URL we cited last week now 404s), “ChatGPT for Academic Researchers,” “About ChatGPT Pro tiers” and “ChatGPT Business Premium seat waitlist promotion” and “ChatGPT Plus for Service Members, Veterans & Retirees – Terms of Service”; Google Pixel Help, “Google One offers for Pixel devices”; Samsung US, Galaxy Z Fold8 offers page; Microsoft Store, Microsoft 365 Pro; OpenAI, “A free version of ChatGPT built for teachers” and the ChatGPT for Teachers help-centre article; Anthropic, “Introducing Claude for Teachers,” the Claude for K–12 teachers page and the school-and-district setup guide; OpenAI’s PORTS-Pike announcement (Aug. 17, 2026) and the Codex for Ohio college students page; the Codex credits for Students terms of service; the Microsoft 365 plan comparison page; Verizon Google AI Pro perk FAQ and Terms & Conditions; Google’s student offer announcement and Google AI Plus availability post on blog.google; Amazon’s Alexa+ newsroom post; Microsoft Support, “AI credits and limits for Microsoft 365 subscriptions” (last updated October 2026); American Express Business Platinum and Business Gold benefit page; OpenAI Codex for Students; GitHub Docs on free Copilot access for students; Perplexity’s help centre, “What is Education Pro?” (last modified Sept. 3, 2026); GSA’s newsroom release on the Perplexity OneGov agreement (Nov. 19, 2025); the official YouTube blog on the student AI Pro and Premium bundle (Aug. 19, 2026); Google One support on YouTube Premium Lite; Perplexity’s Xfinity Rewards post; GitHub Docs, “Plans for GitHub Copilot”; the Gemini for Students page at gemini.google/us/students; Handshake’s own post on the Google AI Plus student offer, which now records its Aug. 21, 2026 close; T-Mobile’s US benefits page; zed.dev/education, zed.dev/pricing and the Zed for Education launch post (March 9, 2026); kiro.dev/students, its Terms & Conditions (last updated Sept. 8, 2026) and kiro.dev/pricing, with the AWS Weekly Roundup of Sept. 14, 2026 for the university expansion; Google AI for Developers, “Accelerate discovery with Gemini for Research”; Perplexity’s help-centre article “Which Perplexity Subscription Plan is right for you?” (last modified Oct. 9, 2026), which carries the $10 Education Pro price; Verizon’s Google AI Pro perk FAQ and Terms & Conditions (rewritten this week); the Microsoft 365 consumer comparison page and Microsoft 365 for Individuals pricing page; PayPal newsroom (Sept. 2025); Deutsche Telekom Magenta Moments materials. Nothing on this page is investment, tax or legal advice, and we take no commission from any provider listed — there are no affiliate links here.