Understand the official compliance requirements, credit tiers, and baseline rules established by Amazon Web Services before submitting your application.
AWS offers two distinct pathways for startups depending on their funding status and association with startup ecosystem partners.
Designed for early-stage startups that have not raised institutional funding and are not associated with a venture capital firm or accelerator.
Designed for startups associated with an active AWS Activate Provider (such as VCs, accelerators, incubators, or economic development agencies).
Startups must meet these four core technical and organizational requirements to be eligible for either AWS Activate tier. Applications that fail these checks are automatically rejected by AWS.
Your startup must have a fully functional website that describes your product, business model, or service. Under-construction landing pages, social media profiles, or parking pages will result in immediate rejection.
You must submit your application using an email address registered on your startup's custom domain (e.g., founder@yourstartup.com). Generic addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, or Outlook are not permitted.
Your startup must have been incorporated or founded within the last 10 years to qualify for the AWS Activate program benefits.
AWS enforces a lifetime limit of $100,000 in Activate credits per startup. If your company has previously received this maximum amount under any program pathway, it cannot receive further credits.
Before submitting, it is critical to ensure that your company's records are fully aligned. Discrepancies between your business details and your AWS account metadata are a primary cause of delays.
Our Commitment: We work diligently to evaluate your startup details and optimize your submission materials for compliance. We do our absolute best to set you up for success, though please note that final credit allocations are determined solely at the discretion of Amazon Web Services and its program administrators.
Schedule a review with our cloud advisory team to verify your application materials against the official guidelines.
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