Source: mspoweruser.com
Professional Developer Tools Are Expensive — GitHub Is Helping Students Bridge the Gap
Professional developer tools can carry steep price tags that put them out of reach for most students. To address this, GitHub launched its Student Developer Pack roughly six years before this announcement, giving students free access to a curated set of industry-standard tools in one place. The pack includes GitHub Pro along with exclusive offers from GitHub Education partners.
In February 2020, GitHub announced that 14 new partners had joined the Student Developer Pack, significantly expanding the range of tools available to eligible students.
The 14 New GitHub Student Developer Pack Partners
Here is the full list of newly added partners and what each one offers:
- Blockchair — A blockchain explorer and API provider supporting over 15 cryptocurrencies, useful for developers building or researching blockchain applications.
- Customerly — A customer engagement platform covering live chat, behavioural funnels, newsletters, and in-app surveys, aimed at SaaS products.
- DailyBot — A team automation tool for daily stand-ups, follow-ups, retrospectives, surveys, and team feedback workflows.
- Dashlane — A cloud-based password manager that helps developers and teams manage credentials securely.
- Freshpaint — A data integration layer that connects marketing and analytics tools without requiring custom code for each integration.
- Jaamly — A platform designed to help developers, designers, and startups prepare and launch their apps on the App Store.
- Kodika — A drag-and-drop iOS app builder that allows students to create native apps without writing Swift from scratch.
- MongoDB — A widely used general-purpose, document-oriented distributed database built for modern, cloud-native applications.
- Polypane — A developer-focused browser that renders multiple viewports simultaneously, helping teams build responsive and accessible websites more efficiently.
- Raygun — An error monitoring and crash reporting platform for detecting, diagnosing, and resolving application issues faster.
- Sider — An automated code review tool that analyses every pull request to enforce code quality standards and improve team productivity.
- Unity — The industry-leading real-time development platform for building 2D, 3D, AR, and VR experiences across dozens of platforms.
- Xojo — A cross-platform IDE for building native desktop applications for macOS, Windows, and Linux using a single codebase.
- Yakindu — An integrated modelling environment for specifying and developing reactive, event-driven systems using state machine concepts.
How to Apply for the GitHub Student Developer Pack
Students aged 13 and older are eligible to apply. GitHub accepts several forms of verification to confirm academic enrollment:
- A school-issued email address
- A student ID card
- Other official proof of current academic enrollment
Once verified, students gain access to the full pack — including GitHub Pro and all active partner offers — at no cost for the duration of their studies. You can apply at education.github.com/pack.
Why This Matters for Student Developers
The expanded pack gives students hands-on experience with tools they will encounter in real production environments — from database platforms like MongoDB to monitoring solutions like Raygun. Rather than learning on simplified or toy versions of tools, students can build projects using the same software used by professional engineering teams. This practical exposure is a meaningful advantage when entering the job market.
The addition of Unity is particularly notable for students interested in game development or spatial computing, while tools like Sider and DailyBot reflect modern collaborative software development practices such as automated code review and asynchronous team communication.