Pick one editor-level assistant, not all three
GitHub Copilot Free, Cursor's Hobby plan, and Windsurf Free all give you a genuinely free, no-card-required way to code with AI — but they overlap almost completely. Copilot Free gives 2,000 completions and 50 chat requests a month. Cursor Hobby gives limited Agent requests and Tab completions. Windsurf Free gives unlimited Tab completions plus 25 credits and 5 daily Cascade agent sessions. Running all three at once just splits your usage across dashboards for no benefit — pick the one whose editor you already like, and treat the other two as backups if you hit a monthly cap.
What changed in 2026
Both Cursor and Windsurf used to offer a full free year of their Pro plan to verified students. Cursor closed that program to new sign-ups on June 25, 2026 (existing students keep their rate). Windsurf's student deal has similarly wound down. If you're a student today, the GitHub Student Developer Pack is the more reliable route — it bundles free JetBrains IDEs, cloud credits, a free domain, and other dev tooling, verified through SheerID.
API-side: don't mistake trial credits for a free tier
New Anthropic Console accounts get a small starter credit balance to test Claude models via API — enough for an afternoon of experimentation, not daily use. If you're coding with Claude regularly, Claude Pro at $20/month is the real entry point once you're past evaluation.
The underused path: Anthropic's Open Source Program
If you maintain an open source project with real traction (roughly 5,000+ GitHub stars or 1M+ monthly npm downloads), Anthropic's Open Source Program grants six months of Claude Max 20x for free — a $1,200 value. Critical infrastructure packages with smaller star counts but heavy downstream usage have reportedly been accepted under exception too. Worth an application even if you're not sure you qualify.