Stacks/ student-zero-budget
Student Stack: Zero Budget
Coursework, lecture notes, research and coding homework — everything on free tiers and student programs.
observed by @whysanesandersVerified 2026-08-19
$0/mo
difficulty: beginner
# Student Stack: Zero Budget $0/mo · difficulty: beginner | Tool | Pricing | | --- | --- | | [GitHub Copilot](https://github.com/features/copilot) | Free $0 (2,000 completions/mo, 50 chat requests, CLI, limited agent mode); Pro $10/mo ($15 credits); Pro+ $39/mo ($70 credits); Max $100/mo ($200 credits) | | [NotebookLM](https://notebook.google/) | free; Plus via Google AI Plus $4.99/mo; Pro via Google AI Pro $19.99/mo | | [Google AI Studio / Gemini API](https://aistudio.google.com) | free tier (text models); paid from $0.75/1M input (Gemini 3.7 Flash promo till 2027-01) | | [ChatGPT](https://chatgpt.com) | free tier; Go $8/mo, Plus $20/mo, Pro from $100/mo | | [Notion AI](https://www.notion.com/product/ai) | limited AI trial on free/Plus; full AI in Business $20/member/mo (yearly) | via https://noemium.com/stacks/student-zero-budget/
Studio twin → Student Coding Stack$23/moGLM Lite plus DeepSeek off-peak on top of free CLIs. Pay the $23 when free quotas die during finals. This $0 stack is already the shoestring.
The components — what each one costs
GitHub CopilotFree $0 (2,000 completions/mo, 50 chat requests, CLI, limited agent mode); Pro $10/mo ($15 credits); Pro+ $39/mo ($70 credits); Max $100/mo ($200 credits)
NotebookLMfree; Plus via Google AI Plus $4.99/mo; Pro via Google AI Pro $19.99/mo
Google AI Studio / Gemini APIfree tier (text models); paid from $0.75/1M input (Gemini 3.7 Flash promo till 2027-01)
ChatGPTfree tier; Go $8/mo, Plus $20/mo, Pro from $100/mo
Notion AIlimited AI trial on free/Plus; full AI in Business $20/member/mo (yearly)- Total$0/mo
The recipe
- Get GitHub Copilot free through GitHub Education. Verify your student status once and you get the full Copilot Pro feature set for free — completions, chat and basic PR help inside VS Code or JetBrains.
- Dump lecture notes and readings into NotebookLM. It answers grounded questions over your uploaded PDFs and slides, and the audio overview is a genuine study hack for commutes. Free tier is generous.
- Use Google AI Studio for coding help and long documents. The free Gemini API tier has huge context and decent quotas for homework-scale prompts. Keep an eye on the terms if you paste sensitive coursework.
- ChatGPT free tier for general questions. Good enough for explanations, brainstorming and rewrites. Save the deep coding conversations for Copilot and AI Studio so you do not burn the daily cap on trivial asks.
- Organize everything in Notion with the free AI trial. Notion AI is limited on the free/Plus plan, but the trial covers enough to summarize notes and draft outlines. Do not pay for Notion Business just for AI.
- Build a source habit. Free tools hallucinate too. Cite the source, verify the claim, and never turn in an AI-generated reference list without checking it.
What you pay
- GitHub Copilot — free via GitHub Education, $0/mo. The student program unlocks the paid Pro tier for verified students; without it, the free tier is too limited for real coursework.
- NotebookLM — free tier, $0/mo. Grounded reading and audio overviews are fully free for student-volume notebooks.
- Google AI Studio — free tier, $0/mo. The free Gemini API quota covers coding help and long-document questions at student scale.
- ChatGPT — free tier, $0/mo. General Q&A and brainstorming; the free daily cap is enough if you route coding to Copilot and AI Studio.
- Notion AI — limited trial on free/Plus, $0/mo. Use the trial credits for summaries and outlines; do not upgrade to Business unless your whole team already lives in Notion.
When this breaks down
Free tiers have daily caps, context limits and no support. The week before finals, when every tool throttles at once, is when you learn the real cost of $0. Plan ahead: queue bulk tasks overnight and keep local backups of anything you store in a free cloud tool.