If you searched for free AI coding tools for students in India and landed on a list that reads like it was written in early 2025, be careful. This entire category reshuffled itself in the last six months. A tool that gave away a free year of its Pro plan to students earlier this year may not be doing that anymore. Another one quietly discontinued its individual free tier and rerouted everyone to a new product. A third closed new signups altogether.
This guide only covers what is actually true right now, checked directly against each company's own pricing, student, and documentation pages rather than other blog posts. Availability checked: September 26, 2026. Offers, quotas, and eligibility lists change on short notice in this space, so treat every number here as current as of that date and worth a quick re-check on the official page before you sign up.
One more thing before the list: "free" means different things depending on the tool. Some of what follows is a permanent free tier open to anyone. Some is a student-only free plan that needs verification. Some is a time-limited student offer that can expire or roll back to a smaller tier. And a couple are discounted paid plans, not free at all. The distinction matters more than the word "free" in the marketing copy, so each section below says plainly which kind you're getting.
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Quick answer: for most Indian college students, GitHub Copilot's permanent free tier or the Copilot Student plan through GitHub Education is the safest starting point since it needs no foreign college email. Cursor's free Hobby tier is excellent for agentic project work, but don't count on the old "free year of Pro" student deal since it no longer appears to be guaranteed. If you want a generous free agent tier with no student proof at all, AWS Kiro's base tier fits, though its premium student program currently skips Indian universities.
The Free AI Coding Tool Landscape Changed a Lot This Year
A few things happened between January and September 2026 that most "best free AI tools" roundups haven't caught up with yet. Google discontinued Gemini Code Assist's free tier for individual developers on June 18, 2026, and replaced it with a new product called Antigravity. AWS closed new signups for Amazon Q Developer on May 15, 2026, ahead of retiring the product's IDE plugins in 2027. Windsurf, a name a lot of students still search for, got rebranded to Devin Desktop after Cognition acquired it. And Cursor's official page for students no longer states the free year of Pro that was common knowledge for most of last year.
None of this means AI coding help got harder to access for free. It just means the specific tool names and eligibility rules from six months ago are already stale. Here's what's real as of this writing.
GitHub Copilot: The Safest Free Pick for Indian Students
GitHub Copilot has a permanent free plan that needs no student status at all: 2,000 code completions and 50 chat requests every month, with access to Copilot Chat, Copilot CLI, and a limited amount of agent mode inside VS Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs, and Xcode. That's the plan anyone can sign up for today with a regular GitHub account, and you can check the current limits yourself on GitHub's own Copilot plans page.
On top of that, there's Copilot Student, given through GitHub Education to verified students, which raises the completion limit considerably and adds more chat and agent headroom. GitHub briefly paused new applications for Copilot's paid and student plans starting April 20, 2026, which caused a wave of confused Reddit threads about the pack "not working." Signups reopened in stages from mid-June 2026 onward, and as of now the application flow is back to normal.
The part that actually matters for Indian students: unlike some of the tools below, GitHub Education never required a foreign-style .edu email. Most Indian colleges don't issue academic email addresses in that format, so GitHub's fallback path lets you upload a current student ID card, a fee receipt, or a bonafide/enrollment letter instead. Applications from tier-2 and tier-3 colleges get approved through this manual route regularly; it just takes a bit longer than an instant email match. If you already have a GitHub Student Developer Pack from an earlier signup, Copilot Student is one of the benefits bundled inside it, alongside JetBrains IDEs and cloud credits.
Cursor: The Free Tier Holds Up, But Don't Bank on the Student Upgrade
Cursor's free Hobby plan is real and doesn't expire: limited Tab completions and a capped number of Agent requests each month, no credit card needed to start. For students doing project-based work rather than line-by-line completions, this is arguably the most capable permanent free agentic editor on the list, since it can read and edit across multiple files in one request.
Where things get murky is the student discount. For most of 2025 and early 2026, Cursor was widely known for giving verified students a full year of its Pro plan through school email verification. A lot of Indian-focused blogs, including some ranking for this exact search right now, still describe that offer as active and even name specific Indian colleges as eligible. Two things complicate that claim. First, multiple students verifying with Indian institutional emails as recently as January 2026 reported their college domains being rejected as ineligible, suggesting India was often left off the supported country list even while the program ran elsewhere. Second, and more importantly, Cursor's own students page right now doesn't promise a standing free year at all. It states that anyone can start on Cursor for free, and to watch for promotions at campus events instead of describing an automatic student upgrade.
So the honest, documented difference is this: Cursor's Hobby tier is a genuine, permanent free tier open to everyone, including Indian students. The Pro-for-a-year student perk that used to be common knowledge is not currently guaranteed on Cursor's own page, regardless of what older blog posts say. Verify directly before counting on it.
Google Antigravity: What Replaced the Free Gemini Code Assist
If you've read older advice recommending Gemini Code Assist's generous free tier for individual developers, that specific product stopped serving requests on June 18, 2026. Google's own developer documentation confirms the IDE extensions and CLI for the individual, AI Pro, and AI Ultra tiers of Gemini Code Assist were shut off, with users pointed toward a new agent-first IDE called Antigravity.
Antigravity, built on a VS Code foundation, has its own permanent free Individual tier at $0/month: unlimited Tab completions and Command requests, plus access to models including Gemini and Claude, with what Google's own Antigravity pricing page describes as "basic weekly rate limits" on full agent tasks. It's a genuine free option for building and editing full projects, just don't expect unlimited agentic runs the way the old Code Assist free tier sometimes allowed.
There's also a fresh, India-specific development worth knowing about, and it's worth being precise about what it actually includes. In August 2026, Google's official India student offer gave verified college students one year of Google AI Plus at no cost, mainly a Gemini app and storage upgrade, redeemable until December 31, 2026. Separately, Google also offers eligible students a discounted Google AI Pro plan (bundled with YouTube Premium at up to 70% off) valid for up to four years with annual SheerID reverification. It's specifically the Google AI Pro tier, not the free AI Plus tier, that unlocks priority access and paid credit top-ups inside Antigravity once you hit the free tier's weekly limits, so if agentic coding headroom is what you're after, the paid-but-discounted Pro bundle is the one to look at rather than the free Plus tier.
JetBrains AI Assistant: Best If You Already Live in an IDE
If your coursework already has you inside IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, or WebStorm, JetBrains' own AI Assistant is worth checking before installing a separate editor. One correction to a common assumption first: AI Assistant is not switched on by default in JetBrains IDEs. It's a plugin you install and activate yourself, and it needs a JetBrains AI license (Free, Pro, or Enterprise) before it touches your code.
The Free license tier gives you unlimited local, offline-style code completion plus a modest cloud quota, currently 3 AI credits every 30 days, for chat and code generation, no separate account tier required to start. Students get a meaningfully better deal through the JetBrains Student Pack: free access to every JetBrains IDE (normally worth roughly $289 a year as an individual All Products Pack subscription), plus a 30-day AI Pro trial with a much larger cloud quota when you first activate AI Assistant, after which it reverts to the same AI Free allowance everyone else gets. Verification works with a university email, an ISIC or ITIC student card, or an existing GitHub Student Developer Pack membership, all detailed on JetBrains' own Student Pack page. That flexibility matters for Indian students specifically, since the ISIC/ITIC and GitHub Pack routes both work without needing an institutional email address.
AWS Kiro: A Real Free Tier, But India Isn't on the Student List Yet
Kiro is AWS's spec-driven agentic coding tool, and its base Free tier is open to literally anyone: 50 credits a month, no student verification, no credit card, just a Google, GitHub, or AWS Builder ID login. Fifty credits sounds small, but it's enough for two or three complete small feature builds a month, which is plenty for learning how spec-driven AI coding actually works before deciding whether to invest more time in it.
Heads up!
AWS expanded its Kiro for Students program in September 2026 to a total of 132 partner universities across 18 countries, up from an 11-university pilot in March. Eligible students there get 1,000 credits a month free for a full year. As of this writing, no Indian university appears on the published list, a gap multiple outlets covering the expansion specifically flagged alongside China, so this particular perk isn't accessible with an Indian college email yet. Check the current, live list on Kiro's own students page since AWS has said it plans to keep adding schools. The base 50-credit Free tier remains open to Indian students regardless.
Tools That Changed or Are Being Phased Out
A couple of names still show up on older "best free AI coding tools" lists that deserve a caveat.
Amazon Q Developer did have a solid perpetual free tier, but that changed this year. According to AWS's own end-of-support announcement, new Q Developer Free Tier account creation and new paid subscription creation were both blocked starting May 15, 2026, and the IDE plugins reach full end of support on April 30, 2027, with AWS pointing everyone toward Kiro instead. If you already have an active Q Developer account, you can keep using it during the transition window, but if you don't already have one, you simply can't start fresh today, so skip any guide that recommends signing up for it anew.
Windsurf is the other one. If you've seen it recommended as a cheap or generous alternative to Cursor, know that Cognition renamed the product Devin Desktop in June 2026 after acquiring it. Its free tier now runs on a small monthly prompt-credit allowance, reported at around 25 credits a month by pricing trackers tied to Devin's own credit-based usage model, rather than the more generous limits Windsurf once had.
| Tool | Free Without Student Proof | Student Offer | India Eligibility | Free Type | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub Copilot | Yes: 2,000 completions + 50 chats/month | Copilot Student: higher limits via GitHub Education | Yes, ID/enrollment letter accepted, no country restriction | Permanent free tier + student upgrade | Daily coding practice, DSA, resume-building |
| Cursor | Yes: Hobby tier, limited Tab + Agent requests | Official page points to campus promotions, not a guaranteed free year | Free tier yes; discounted student plan unconfirmed for India | Permanent free tier; student perk not currently standing | Multi-file agentic project work |
| Google Antigravity | Yes: unlimited Tab/Command requests, basic weekly agent limits | Priority access + credit top-ups via the discounted Google AI Pro student bundle | Yes, SheerID-verified India offer confirmed for AI Plus/Pro | Permanent free tier + discounted student plan | Full small-app builds in an agent IDE |
| JetBrains AI Assistant | Yes: AI Free tier, 3 AI credits/30 days + unlimited local completion | Student Pack: full IDE suite + 30-day AI Pro trial, then reverts to AI Free | Yes, university email, ISIC/ITIC, or GitHub Pack all accepted | Permanent free tier + time-limited student trial | Java/Kotlin/Python coursework in JetBrains IDEs |
| AWS Kiro | Yes: 50 credits/month, no student status required | 1,000 credits/month for a year at 132 partner universities | Base tier: yes; student program list excludes India so far | Permanent free tier; student program not yet available in India | Learning spec-driven agentic development |
| Amazon Q Developer | No new signups since May 15, 2026 | Not applicable | Existing accounts only, until April 2027 | Discontinued for new users | Skip for a new setup; migrate to Kiro if already using it |
Which One Should You Actually Start With?
If you're doing regular DSA practice or college assignments and want something that just works without any verification hassle, start with GitHub Copilot's free tier and apply for GitHub Education in parallel since approval can take a few days for manual document review.
If you're building a full project, whether for a hackathon, a resume portfolio piece, or a final-year submission, Cursor's free Hobby tier and Google Antigravity's free Individual tier both handle multi-file agentic edits better than plain autocomplete tools. Between the two, the documented difference for Indian students is this: Antigravity has a confirmed, official India student pathway to more headroom, while Cursor's own page currently offers only its permanent free tier plus a vague promise of campus promotions rather than a guaranteed upgrade.
If you're already inside a JetBrains IDE for coursework, the Student Pack is close to a no-brainer since it's free regardless of AI usage. And if your laptop is older or lacks a dedicated GPU and you'd rather explore free, fully local AI coding help instead of cloud quotas, that's a different setup entirely; our guide to running AI on a laptop without a GPU in India walks through what's realistic on modest hardware. Pairing a local model with an open-source editor extension like Continue is a legitimate zero-quota alternative once you know what your machine can actually handle; REDRAG's VRAM calculator is a quick way to check that before you try.
Is GitHub Copilot really free for students in India?
Yes, in two layers. Anyone gets 2,000 free completions and 50 chat requests a month with a regular GitHub account, no student status needed. Verified students get higher limits through GitHub Education's Copilot Student plan, and Indian students without a college email can still verify using a student ID, fee receipt, or enrollment letter.
Do I need a college email address to claim these free tools?
Not always. GitHub Education and the JetBrains Student Pack both accept document-based verification, like a student ID card, an ISIC/ITIC card, or an admission letter, when your college doesn't issue an academic email. Google's 2026 student offer and AWS Kiro's university program rely on SheerID or a listed university partnership instead of email matching, though a university-affiliated email is Kiro's required sign-up method where it applies.
Is Cursor still giving students a free year of Pro in 2026?
Cursor's own students page currently doesn't state a guaranteed free year of Pro. It mentions that anyone can start free on the Hobby tier and to watch for promotions at campus events. Indian students have also reported institutional emails being marked ineligible in the past, so this offer shouldn't be assumed active without checking Cursor's page directly.
What happened to Gemini Code Assist's free tier?
Google stopped serving Gemini Code Assist requests for individual developers, AI Pro, and AI Ultra tiers on June 18, 2026. It has been replaced by Antigravity, a newer agent-first IDE with its own permanent free Individual tier that includes unlimited tab and command completions and basic weekly limits on full agent tasks.
Should I bother signing up for Amazon Q Developer?
No, not for a new account. AWS blocked new Q Developer Free Tier and subscription signups on May 15, 2026, ahead of the IDE plugins reaching full end of support on April 30, 2027, and is steering everyone toward Kiro instead. If you don't already have a Q Developer account, AWS Kiro's free tier is the direct replacement to use today.
