How To Get Free Developer Tools As A College Or High School Student

February 24, 2025

Take advantage of this resource while you still can

If you're a high school or college student, you have to take advantage of the [Github Student Developer Pack](https://education.github.com/pack) ## What Is It After confirming eligibility and enrollment, Github gives you free access to tons of different resources that you can use for personal projects or even projects that you want to sell. ## Building A Project With The Perks The best way to demonstrate the value of the student developer pack is to go through a sample project with the perks given. Let's say you want to build the next great to-do list app, here's how the [Github Student Developer Pack](https://education.github.com/pack) can help you: ### IDE [Jetbrains makes great IDEs](https://www.jetbrains.com/ides/) for languages and as a student, you get free access to their software. If you're writing Python, there's PyCharm, IntelliJ for Java, and many other IDEs for other languages and tooling. ### Learning Resources Before diving into the project, if you want to get up to speed with HTML, CSS, Javascript, and other modern frameworks, you get access to the following platforms which have programming lessons: - Educative - "Dive into 6 months of free access to over 70 practical courses, covering hot topics like Web Development, Python, Java, and Machine Learning. Plus, students enjoy an awesome 30% discount on any subscription they pick!" - Codedex - "Codédex is a brand new learn-to-code platform for Gen Z with courses in Python, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React, Git & GitHub, Command Line, and more. Start your coding adventure today. Verified students receive 6 months of Codédex Club, a premium membership for free." - Frontend Masters - "Advance your skills with in-depth JavaScript, Node.js & front-end engineering courses. Free 6-months access to all courses and workshops." - Scrimba - "Scrimba is an interactive learning platform for frontend developers. Level up your coding skills with interactive courses, projects, and challenges. Learn JavaScript, CSS, React, Python, and more. Enjoy 1 month of free access to Full access to Scrimba's Pro courses, projects, and coding challenges, which includes 40+ courses." ### Domain Names After you come up with an amazing name for your new killer app, you're going to want a memorable domain name. Github gives you three different options to choose from in this category: - .tech Domains - "A powerful domain extension to convey that you belong to the technology industry. One standard .TECH domain free for 1 year." - Name.com - "Domains, Google Workspace, WordPress, DigitalOcean hosting, and more. Build your online presence with a free .LIVE domain name, free privacy protection, and a free SSL certificate." - Namecheap - "Affordable registration, hosting, and domain management. 1 year domain name registration on the .me TLD." ## Backend and Hosting To host the backend of your amazing app, you can set up a VPS on DigitalOcean for your API and frontend or, you can opt to host your service in a Dyno on Heroku. - DigitalOcean - "Simple cloud hosting, built for developers. Enjoy $200 in platform credit for 1 year!" - Heroku - "A flexible, easy-to-use platform to deploy, run, and manage your apps. Enjoy a credit of $13 USD per month for 24 months." If you would prefer to use a pre-configured service for your backend, you can check out Appwrite which is a backend as a service product. - Appwrite - "Appwrite is an open-source Backend-as-a-Service platform for building web, mobile, native, or backend apps. Free access to Appwrite Pro (worth $15/month) throughout the course of your student career (i.e., as long as you remain a member of the GitHub Student Developer Pack)." To store all of the user's to-do list items, you can take advantage of the MongoDB Atlas Credits. - MongoDB - "A general purpose, document-based, distributed database built for modern application developers and for the cloud era. $50 in MongoDB Atlas Credits, plus access to MongoDB Compass and MongoDB University including free certification valued at $150." When you're ready to monetize your product and set up one-time payment or subscription, Stripe will waive the first $1000 of revenue processed. - Stripe - "Web and mobile payments, built for developers. Waived transaction fees on first $1000 in revenue processed." ## Other If you want to send promotional emails to your users or do cold outreach for new users, you can send up to 20,000 with Mailgun and verify the emails with testmail.app - Mailgun - "Powerful APIs that enable you to send, receive and track email effortlessly. 20,000 free emails and 100 free email validations each month for up to 12 months." - testmail.app - "Get unlimited email addresses and mailboxes for automating email tests with our powerful APIs. Free Essential plan while you're a student." After your product explodes in popularity and is making millions, you're going to need to monitor its performance and metrics. - Datadog Monitoring - "Cloud-based infrastructure monitoring. Pro Account, including 10 servers. Free for 2 years." - Honeybadger - "The web developer's secret weapon: exception, uptime, and cron monitoring that's so awesome, you'll wish your site had more errors. Free Small account for 1 year." ## Conclusion I encourage you to explore the [Github Student Developer Pack](https://education.github.com/pack) on your own, see which tools would help you, and get coding! Share what you've made on X, YouTube, and other socials and feel free to tag me as well.

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