Linode (Akamai) Free Trial [$100 Credit + 60 Days} April 2026

Wanna try Linode for free? In the post, I have covered all steps to claim a free $100 credit for your startup, SaaS, and website.

Linode (now renamed Akamai) is a quite popular cloud platform that provides a range of cloud products, such as VPS, dedicated servers, and block storage, at affordable prices.

No matter if you’re a blogger, student, developer, or business owner, you can try it and see if it meets your needs.

However, you can also explore 9 more VPSs that offer free monthly trials and collectively $700 credit.

and you can also explore some of best OpenClaw VPS with installation guide and Paperclip VPS with installation guide.

Now let’s dive into the tutorial.

Linode Startup Free Credits

Editor's Choice

9.8

Unlock 5x More Performance

• TTFB: 22 MS
• Uptime: 100% 
• 100+ One-Click App
• 24 Global Data Centers
• Managed Service: Yes 
• Server Build: Enterprise-Grade
• Firewall & Disaster Recovery Management
• Support: 24/7 Live Chat, Phone & Email
• Free 30-Day Trial with $100 Credit

Activate Trial

How Do I Claim Linode (Akamai)’s Free Cloud Trial?

Signing up with Linode is relatively easy. Just prepare your phone number and one payment method out of Google Play, Paypal, or Credit Card that authenticates the genuine users. Now get into the simple tutorial with a few steps.

1. Visit above link

2. Click on the email button.
3. Enter your email, username, and password.
4. Now confirm your email in your inbox.

5. Verify your phone number
6. Select a payment method and complete the payment setup
7. Enter your name and address.

8. Agree to the master services agreement

9. Click Create Account

Congratulations! Your account has been created with a free $100. You can check it out in the billing section.

Akamai Has Acquired Linode

Akamai has acquired Linode and rename the brand to Akamai, except domain “linode.com” on March 21, 2022.

The deals brings together Linode’s Infrastructure-as-a-Service solutions with
Akamai’s market-leading security and content delivery services to provide a
Comprehensive platform for building, running and security applications.

However, launching and managing server’s experience are intact.

What is Included in the Trial?

You will get the following items:

What Can You Do During the Linode-Free Tier Period?

Linode offers various products for start-ups, websites, AI, data analysis, streaming content, SAAS, and e-commerce. You can set up a base for these.

Linode Plan Pricing

While your trial period ends. You will be charged according to the plan that you have opted for.

They offer their plans in five major categories to fulfill almost all kinds of cloud customers, including bloggers, businessmen, scientists, gamers, etc.

Shared CPU Plan: The plan has been launched for beginners like bloggers and web admins. The higher plan of the group packs huge resources that are apt for a SaaS and medium-level e-commerce website.

Dedicated CPU Plan: The plan is designed to serve high CPU-intensive workloads that require 100% sustained CPU usage, like high-traffic websites, video rendering, machine learning, and data processing. You can run game servers like Minecraft and Team Fortress

Premium Plan: It is like a dedicated CPU plan. The only difference is that it adds the latest generation of AMD EPYC for consistent high performance.

It is ideal for enterprise-grade, business-critical, and latency-sensitive applications. As of now, the plan is only available in the USA and France.

High Memory Plan: The plan provides dedicated CPU instance resources with high memory capabilities, which are suitable for caching systems, high-performance databases, and in-memory data processing.

GPU Plan: The plan is GPU-optimized virtual machines accelerated by the NVIDIA Quadro RTX 6000, harnessing the power of CUDA, tensor, and core to execute complex processing, deep learning, and ray tracing workloads.

The plan is recommended for machine learning, AI, big data processing, video encoding, and graphic processing.

Data Centers

Like resources Linode is rich in the availability of data centers across the world. They have 14 data centers
in the USA, Canada, Germany, France, the UK, India, Singapore, Australia, and Japan.

• Newark
• Washington, DC
• Toronto
• Chicago
• Atlanta
• Dallas
• Fremont
• Frankfurt
• Peris
• London
• Mumbai
• Tokyo
• Singapore
• Sydney

Conclusion

Linode, the No. 1 IaaS provider on G2, has a slew of tools for beginners and developers, including Git, SSH, one-click apps, an uncluttered dashboard, a cloud firewall, and 24×7 support.

Even some features, such as 1-click server migration to another data center and server cloning, are not available on their main competitor, Kamatera.

Furthermore, you can use their cloud resource for 30 days with a free $100 credit.

FAQ

Q1. Does Linode (Akamai) have a permanently free tier like AWS or Google Cloud?
No, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Akamai does not offer a permanent free tier. What you get is a $100 credit valid for 60 days, that’s it. Once the credit runs out or the 60 days are up, whichever comes first, your linked payment method kicks in. If you need a forever-free nano instance to tinker with, look at Oracle Cloud instead. But if you want real infrastructure to actually test something meaningful, $100 on Linode will take you further than AWS’s free tier ever will.

Q2. Is the $100 credit enough to run a real website during the trial?
More than enough. The entry level Shared CPU plan costs just $5 a month, which means your $100 credit could theoretically run that instance for nearly two years if the trial had no expiry. In 60 days, you can comfortably host a WordPress site, set up a cloud firewall, configure a NodeBalancer, and still have credit left over to clone your server or experiment with Kubernetes. For bloggers and small business owners, the trial practically sells itself.

Q3. Which Linode plan should a first timer pick during the trial?
Start with the 2 GB Shared CPU plan at $10 a month. The 1 GB Nanode is fine for a static site but it will struggle the moment you add a database or install a CMS like WordPress or Drupal. The 2 GB plan gives you a comfortable buffer, 50 GB SSD storage, and 2 TB of transfer. At that rate, your $100 credit runs for 10 months worth of value in a 60 day window, so you have plenty of room to test without burning through credit fast.

Q4. What makes Akamai (Linode) different from DigitalOcean on the infrastructure side?
The biggest practical difference is the Dedicated CPU and Premium plan lineup. Linode’s Dedicated CPU plans start at $30 a month for 4 GB RAM and 2 cores, which is noticeably cheaper than comparable plans on DigitalOcean. On top of that, Linode’s Premium plan runs on the latest generation AMD EPYC processors, which is a meaningful advantage for latency sensitive or enterprise grade workloads. And with Akamai’s acquisition in 2022, Linode now sits on top of one of the world’s largest CDN and edge networks, which no pure cloud competitor can match. The downside is a thinner managed services catalog compared to DO, so if you need one click databases or native serverless functions, Linode is not the strongest choice.

Q5. Are there any billing risks I should know about before signing up?
Yes, and this is worth taking seriously. A growing number of users on Reddit and YouTube have reported that Linode continued charging their credit cards even after they cancelled their accounts. On top of that, a credit card is now apparently required in most regions. PayPal and Google Pay may work for some users but it is inconsistent. The safest move is to set a calendar reminder for day 55 of your trial, audit every active instance in your dashboard, and shut down anything you are not keeping before the billing cycle flips. Do not assume cancelling the account alone stops the charges. Shut down the instances first, then cancel.

Ravi Kumar

Ravi Kumar is a Server Performance Analyst with over 4 years of experience benchmarking cloud infrastructure. He has optimized and stress-tested over 150+ websites, digging deep into uptime, disk latency, and CPU performance. Whether you’re looking for a free trial or a high-performance production server, Ravi uses real-world data to help you find the perfect host.