Explore our credit programs for startups and researchers.
Get up to $25K in free credits
RunPod for Academic Research
Accelerate research, support instruction, and run real-world AI workloads — all without the overhead of traditional cloud platforms.
Trusted by researchers at the world’s top universities
WHY RUNPOD
Why universities choose RunPod
From labs to lecture halls, RunPod powers every academic workload without the cloud complexity.
Instant Access to GPUs
Remove bottlenecks and enable students, researchers, and labs to work on-demand.
Lab-Level Billing
Custom invoicing aligned to academic calendars, grants, or shared lab accounts.
Research-Ready Infrastructure
Run foundation model training, inference, and data-intensive simulations with ease.
No Setup or Infra Maintenance
Focus on learning and discovery — we’ll handle the infrastructure.
OPTIONS
Flexible deployment options
More throughput, faster scaling, and higher efficiency—with RunPod, every dollar works harder.
Pods
On-demand compute for students or researchers.
Serverless
Cost-efficient, auto-scaling inference.
Instant Clusters
Multi-node setups for high-performance experiments.
Bare Metal
Persistent environments for large-scale research initiatives.
FAQ
Questions? Answers.
Curious about unlocking GPU power in the cloud? Get clear answers to accelerate your projects with on-demand high-performance compute.
Who is this program for?
This program is designed for universities, academic departments, and research labs working on AI/ML or compute-intensive workloads. We also welcome educators and affiliated researchers advancing applied or experimental work.
Do you support individual students or solo researchers?
We prioritize lab- and department-level projects to ensure meaningful, sustained usage. However, if you're an educator or student with a clear use case and technical scope, we encourage you to reach out — we evaluate access on a case-by-case basis.
How does access work?
Once your institution is enrolled, we provide mechanisms for managing user accounts and allocating resources, often integrating with existing university SSO systems. Specific access details are tailored during the onboarding process.
Can we use RunPod for teaching or coursework?
Yes — we support instruction-focused projects such as class demos, student workloads, or AI/ML curricula. We just ask that usage is structured and purposeful.
What kinds of projects are a good fit?
RunPod supports all major deep learning frameworks, including TensorFlow, PyTorch, JAX, and ONNX. Any framework that runs on NVIDIA GPUs works seamlessly on RunPod, with pre-configured container options available for easy deployment.
How is billing handled for universities?
We offer flexible billing and invoicing tailored to academic grant cycles, department funding, or shared lab accounts. Let us know how your institution manages budgets, and we'll work with you.
What happens after we apply?
Our team will review your submission and follow up within 7–10 business days. If there's a fit, we'll schedule a quick call to understand your needs and help you get started.
Get started with RunPod
today.
We handle millions of gpu requests a day. Scale your machine learning workloads while keeping costs low with RunPod.
Get Started