Answer Details

Short list first. Then trade-offs. Top picks for most SaaS teams AWS. Deepest services. Best marketplace and partner network. Large startup-credit paths up to $100k+ via Activate. Strong GenAI options via Bedrock credits. Reuters +3 Amazon Web Services, Inc. +3 Amazon Web Services, Inc. +3 Google Cloud. Best-in-class data and ML stack. Generous credits up to $200k–$350k for early-stage and AI-first startups. Strong accelerator ties. Google Cloud +2 Google for Startups +2 Microsoft Azure. Enterprise sales reach and AD/365 integration. Founders Hub commonly starts at $100k credits for investor-backed startups, with GitHub Enterprise seats. learn.microsoft.com +2 partner.microsoft.com +2 Good alternatives depending on constraints Cloudflare (Workers/R2/D1/AI). Global edge, simple serverless DX, big startup tiers up to $250k. Caps by product apply. The Cloudflare Blog +2 The Cloudflare Blog +2 DigitalOcean. Lowest ops burden among VPS clouds. “Hatch” program with 12-month credits and new 2025 benefits. DigitalOcean +1 Oracle Cloud (OCI). Aggressive pricing and credits; improving multi-cloud posture. Consider for cost-sensitive compute and databases. creditforstartups.com +1 Vercel. Fastest to ship for JS/edge apps. Startup/AI accelerators bundle sizable credits; strong CDN and Next.js integration. Vercel +2 Vercel +2 Render / Fly.io. PaaS speed without heavy ops. Simple pricing; Fly supports scale-to-zero and regional placement. Render +2 paralect.com +2 Heroku. Mature PaaS. Paid-only now; no free tier. Good for small teams that want zero infra. help.heroku.com +1 On the other hand Credits strategy. If you will raise or join an accelerator, hyperscalers often beat everyone on credits and co-selling. Bootstrapped teams may get faster ROI from PaaS or DO + Cloudflare. Amazon Web Services, Inc. +2 Google Cloud +2 Data/AI. Heavy analytics or LLM work favors GCP’s data stack and TPU/GPU offers; AWS is strongest for model breadth via Bedrock credits. Azure wins in Microsoft-centric orgs. learn.microsoft.com +3 Google Cloud +3 Google for Startups +3 Latency and DX. Edge-first apps benefit from Cloudflare Workers. Web-heavy SaaS ships fastest on Vercel. API-heavy backends with background jobs fit Render/Fly well. The Cloudflare Blog +2 Vercel +2 Cost control. DO and OCI can be materially cheaper for steady workloads. Fly’s scale-to-zero reduces idle cost for staging and sporadic traffic. DigitalOcean +2 CRN +2 Enterprise sales. Azure is often the path of least resistance for buyers standardized on Microsoft. AWS still has the broadest marketplace. learn.microsoft.com +1 Simple picks by situation Move fast on a JS stack → Vercel + Cloudflare. Vercel +1 AI/data-heavy SaaS → Google Cloud or AWS. Google Cloud +1 Tight budget, small team → DigitalOcean or Render. DigitalOcean +1 Selling to enterprises → Azure or AWS. learn.microsoft.com +1 If you give your stack, stage, and runway, I will map an exact combo with credit paths and a 12-month cost forecast.