Free ad credit, explained properly

by Harry Watts · Last reviewed 4 September 2026

None of the three platforms will tell you in public what your credit is worth. Google's UK terms document does not contain a currency figure in any of its twelve clauses, its help pages say only that criteria vary and you should review your own offer, and its UK landing page currently serves the credit, the maximum and the spend that unlocks them as unfilled placeholders rather than numbers. Microsoft's support team say you cannot request an offer, and the terms article covering new-customer coupons is set to no-index and cannot be read outside a support reply. OpenAI's ad credit terms are a framework that defers every commercial term to whatever email you were sent. Yet every page ranking for "free Google Ads credit" quotes a confident fixed number, and those numbers contradict each other, because the universal coupon they describe has been replaced by an offer you are shown at signup rather than one that is published. What has not changed is that each credit is earned by spending first, on a deadline — and the deadlines are where the money goes. Below are the three current offers set against each other by what they require rather than what they promise, because the requirements are the part you can actually check.

The four numbers that matter

If you read nothing else: the spend you must commit, the deadline to claim, the window to accrue that spend, and the date the credit dies.

The credit amount is the fifth number and the least dependable — you cannot verify it in advance, and you cannot rely on anyone else's report of it. The other four decide whether the credit arrives at all, and each platform sets them differently: three different claim deadlines, three different accrual windows, three different expiry clocks, and between them a good deal that is documented nowhere a reader can find it. Everything below is either one of those four numbers or a reason you might not get them.

What the platforms actually publish

The most useful thing to know about this category, and the thing most pages writing about it get backwards.

Platform	What it publishes about the amount
Google Ads	No figure. The UK terms page carries no currency amount in any of its twelve clauses, the help pages say only that "criteria for promotions varies, so review your offer for details on the spend requirement and the potential credit amount", and the UK landing page ships the amount as a placeholder filled in on load. You are shown a set of offers at signup and pick one.
Microsoft Advertising	No figure, on any Microsoft-owned page. Support's answer to a request for a code is that offers cannot be requested; what is documented is that a minimum qualifying spend, excluding tax, is required before any credit appears. The article containing the new-customer terms is not indexed.
ChatGPT Ads	No figure. OpenAI's ad credit terms define "the Offer" as the email or communication that made the credit available, and place every amount, window and end date inside it. The framework is public; the numbers are in your inbox.

Which means a page telling a UK advertiser they will receive a specific sum is quoting one person's signup screen, or an offer that has since rotated, or a US dollar figure with the currency swapped. All three are happening in the results above this one.

The three offers, side by side

Figures from one UK signup screen and two UK promotional emails, 31 August 2026. No platform publishes any of them. Yours may differ, and your own screen or email governs.

	Google Ads	Microsoft Advertising	ChatGPT Ads
How it reaches you	Three tiers shown at signup, you choose one	A marketing email, headline figure prefixed "up to"	An invitation email
Amounts seen	£380 credit for £380 spend · £470 for £540 · £680 for £980	Up to £1,200	£500 for £500
Effective match	100% at the lowest tier, about 69% at the highest	Not stated in the email, not published anywhere	100%
Is the amount published?	No	No	No
Can you request one?	No	No	No, it is invitation-led

Read the Google row twice. Those tiers are not better and worse deals in the usual sense: the lowest returns a pound for every pound committed, the highest returns about thirty pence less on each one. The bigger offer is worth more in total and less per pound, and it is only worth anything at all if you were always going to spend that much. Choosing between them is the whole decision, and it is covered properly in the Google guide.

The clocks

The reason people lose these credits, in one table. Every platform runs different ones, and they start from different events.

	Google Ads	Microsoft Advertising	ChatGPT Ads
Deadline to claim	14 days, see the note below	Payment method within 30 days of opening the account	Set by your email, not published
When the spend window opens	When the offer is applied, not when you opened the account	Offer-specific, and sources disagree	Set by your email, not published
Time to hit the spend requirement	60 days	Offer-specific	Set by your email, not published
Before the credit appears	Up to 35 days after you qualify	Balance appears once the threshold is met	Applied automatically once issued
Time to spend it before it lapses	60 days	90 days from award	90 days from issue

The Google fortnight needs a caveat, because Google's own documents disagree. Its terms measure the 14 days from your first ad impression; its help pages measure them from the age of the account. Those can be a week apart, so work to the tighter reading and treat the clock as starting the day you open the account.

The other thing in that table worth pausing on is the 35 days. A credit that has not arrived is a recurring complaint on Google's own support forum, and some of those threads are people still inside a processing window nobody told them about.

The one that catches people out: the spend requirement is cash

The credit cannot pay for the spend that earns it. Google states it directly. OpenAI's terms say only fees incurred after the credit is issued are eligible, which comes to the same thing. There is no version of any of these offers in which the platform funds your qualifying spend.

So the real shape of all three is two phases rather than a discount. Phase one is your own money, spent at a pace someone else set. Phase two is the platform's money, spent inside a window someone else set. If phase one is money you were going to spend anyway, on a platform you had already decided to test, the credit is genuinely free and you should take it. If phase one is money you would not otherwise have committed, nothing has been given to you — something has been sold to you at a discount, on a deadline. And committing real money to a platform on somebody else's timetable is exactly the condition in which budgets leak.

Where to look: Google Ads, Billing → Promotions. Microsoft Advertising, Billing → Coupon. ChatGPT Ads Manager shows spend, but reconciling credit against cash currently means reading your invoices.

The one that catches people out: eligibility is not always checked first

Both Google and Microsoft have arrangements where the money goes out before anyone confirms you qualified.

On Google's Partners programme, which is how an agency or consultant issues a much larger offer than the public one, the current rules move new-customer verification from before the offer is applied to after the client reaches the required spend. Read that in the order it happens to you. It matters because of who is selling it: several pages currently pitching UK businesses a credit "from our pool" are agencies whose actual ask is that you link your account to their manager account, and a partner can only issue offers up to a percentage of their own recent spend, so there is no pool in the sense the word implies.

Microsoft's version is quieter. A dormant account does not restore your new-customer status, and there is an unresolved complaint on Microsoft's own forum from a UK advertiser who spent against an offer and was told afterwards that they had not qualified. The Microsoft guide goes through what happened.

What the credit will not cover

Tax. All three measure the spend requirement net of VAT, so the requirement costs more than it says. Google's credit cannot be used to pay tax, and OpenAI calculates VAT on fees net of any credit with the balance charged to your card.
Anything spent before the credit existed. Google counts only spend after redemption. OpenAI counts only fees incurred after issue. Microsoft states separately that an offer cannot be used to pay an existing balance.
A second offer. Microsoft allows one active offer at a time and holds the rest on standby behind it. OpenAI forbids stacking with any other credit, coupon, discount or rebate.
Anything after the expiry date. All three forfeit unused credit. OpenAI states in terms that it will not replace or reinstate it; Microsoft states the balance is nonrefundable.

Offers worth ignoring

The category attracts a grey market, and the tells are consistent.

Codes for sale. Marketplace listings and blog comment threads sell promotional codes for a few pounds. They are single-use and one per advertiser, so they are usually dead on arrival, and Google's policies list using more than one promotional credit per customer as unacceptable, with account suspension as the stated risk. Buying one is downside with no upside.
Coupon aggregator pages. Automatically generated, and it shows: one large aggregator's Microsoft Advertising coupon page currently lists discounts on Surface laptops and printed books. Another displays a "verified 10 hours ago" stamp on the same page that states no codes are currently available.
Four-figure numbers with no spend requirement attached. Where these resolve at all, they often turn out to be Google Ad Grants, which is a non-profit programme and nothing to do with a commercial advertiser. A real four-figure offer, like Microsoft's, always has a spend requirement behind it — even when the requirement is not stated.
Undated pages, and dated ones that cannot be true. One page still ranking was last updated in November 2022 and says in its own body that the codes are gone.

Quick answers

Is free ad credit actually free?

The credit is free. The spend that unlocks it is not, and it cannot be paid with the credit. Treat it as a discount on a test you had already decided to run, not as a budget.

Which of the three is the best offer?

Not a question that can be answered in the abstract, because only one of the three publishes anything about the amount and none of them publishes what it costs. The better question is which platform you had already decided to advertise on.

Do I have to spend money to get free ad credit?

Yes, on all three. Every one of these is a spend-match: you fund the qualifying amount yourself, in full, before any credit exists.

What happens if I miss the spend requirement?

Nothing arrives. There is no partial credit on any of the three, so falling short of the threshold pays the same as not starting.

Can I get an offer if I was not sent one?

No. Google and Microsoft both state that promotional offers cannot be requested, and OpenAI's are invitation-led.

Every one of these offers is built to make a decision feel free when it is not, and all three work, because a number with a deadline attached is very good at making people spend. The question worth asking before you accept any of them is the one the offer is designed to skip.