Free when the rules say so. Paid when they do not.
Each page says who it is for, what you actually receive, and how to ask. Dated rounds include a calendar file. Rolling programs do not pretend to have a deadline.
Nectar is a cloud of virtual computers for Australian research. You sign in with your university account, ask for a project, then launch a machine. It is the usual first stop when your laptop is too small and you do not want to wait for a national supercomputer.
Free when your project is approved. You do not get a machine just by having a login.
NCMAS is the annual grant of computing time on Australia’s two national supercomputers: Gadi at NCI, and Setonix at Pawsey. It is for research that needs far more than a laptop or a campus cluster. The 2027 round has already closed.
Free if you are awarded time. The competition is real: the 2027 call was more than 2.5 times oversubscribed.
Setonix is the national supercomputer in Perth, run by Pawsey. Australian researchers get time through merit schemes, mainly NCMAS. It is free when a scheme awards it. It is not a machine you can switch on with a credit card.
Free for awarded research projects. Commercial use is a separate conversation, and a free allocation for any ABN holder was not found.
Gadi is the national supercomputer in Canberra, run by NCI. Most research time is awarded through NCMAS. NCI also has a small startup scheme for people testing the machine, and a paid door for companies.
Research schemes are free if awarded. Industry access is paid. The startup scheme was listed as closed.
TRC lends free Cloud TPU time to people doing machine-learning research they will share in public. You do not need a .edu.au address to express interest. Google invites people from the waiting list. It is not a blank credit on every Google Cloud product.
TPU time is free for invited participants. Budget a small amount for the virtual machine and storage, or attach research credits if you have them.
Founders Hub offers Azure credits and startup support, including credits that can pay for GPU virtual machines. It is for a privately held software startup. It is not a grant for a thesis, and it is not limited to people with a university email.
Free to apply. No equity is mentioned on the signup page. You still have to qualify, and Azure will bill anything the credits do not cover.
Inception is NVIDIA’s free startup program. Members get training, preferred prices on some NVIDIA hardware and software, and cloud credits from NVIDIA and its partners. There is no published dollar amount, no application fee, and no equity.
Free to join. Hardware you buy, and any cloud use beyond the credits, is paid.
Google gives Cloud credits to eligible academic research. Faculty, postdoctoral researchers, and nonprofit lab researchers can ask for up to USD $5,000. PhD students can ask for up to USD $1,000. Credits last up to a year and must be used on the project in the application.
The awarded credit is free. Anything beyond it, or anything outside the proposal, is billed.
AWS offers promotional credit for research projects that test the cloud, build a shared research tool, or teach other people to use it. Graduate students can receive up to USD $5,000. Faculty and research staff are not capped. Reviews often take 90 to 120 days, so this is a poor plan for a job you need this week.
Awarded credit is free. The review is slow, and usage past the credit is billed.
Kick-Start is matched funding for an early research project done with CSIRO. It is for a small Australian company, not for a student laptop and not for a free cloud account. CSIRO puts in $20,000 to $60,000 and the company puts in the same amount in cash.
You pay the same amount CSIRO contributes. The smallest combined project is $40,000. External services are capped at 20 percent of the project.
Kaggle gives you a free notebook in the browser with an optional GPU. The weekly GPU quota is 30 hours, and sometimes more when Kaggle has spare machines. No university email is required. It is the most reliable way to start an AI or data job today.
Free. There is no credit card. Hours you waste on an idle session are still subtracted from the weekly quota.
ZeroGPU is a shared GPU behind demos on Hugging Face Spaces. A free account can run those demos for a few minutes a day. It is a way to try a model, not a place to train one.
Free at the published daily quota. Paid plans raise the quota. Over-quota time for paying users is billed.
RunPod and Vast.ai rent GPUs by the hour. You need a card, not a university email. This is the fast alternative when a grant will take weeks and Kaggle is too small. It is also the easiest way to accidentally spend more than you meant.
Paid by the hour, plus storage if you keep a disk. There is no standard education discount to assume. Stop the machine when the job finishes.
The committee meets to set 2027 allocations on NCI Gadi and Pawsey Setonix. This is not a public event.
NCMAS publishes 2027 computing allocations for NCI Gadi and Pawsey Setonix.
NCMAS publishes 2027 allocations. Pawsey Setonix is one of the two machines in that call.
NCMAS publishes 2027 allocations. NCI Gadi is one of the two machines in that call.