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Prerequisites & Accounts

This page tells you exactly what accounts and tools you need for each lab level — and how to get them for free.

Quick Reference

You have You can run
Nothing (just a browser) L50 labs
Free GitHub account L50, L100, L200 labs
Free GitHub account + M365 Dev tenant L50–L200 + Teams labs
Azure free trial ($200 credit) Most L300 labs
Azure subscription (pay-as-you-go) All labs including L400

1. GitHub Account (Free)

Required for: L100 and above.

Sign up at github.com — it's free, no credit card needed.

With a free GitHub account you get access to:

  • ✅ GitHub Copilot Free Tier — 2,000 code completions/month + 50 chat messages/month
  • ✅ GitHub Models — free inference API for GPT-4o, Llama, Phi, and more (rate limited)
  • ✅ GitHub Codespaces — 60 hours/month free cloud dev environment
  • ✅ GitHub Actions — 2,000 minutes/month free CI/CD

GitHub Copilot for Students

If you're a student, get GitHub Copilot Pro for free via the GitHub Student Developer Pack.

2. GitHub Models (Free LLM Inference)

Required for: L200 labs that use LLMs without Azure.

GitHub Models provides free API access to frontier LLMs from your GitHub account. No credit card required.

Setup:

  1. Go to github.com/marketplace/models
  2. Pick a model (e.g., gpt-4o, Phi-4, Llama-3.3-70B)
  3. Click "Use this model" → "Get API key" to get your personal access token
  4. Store it as GITHUB_TOKEN in your environment

Available models include: - OpenAI: gpt-4o, gpt-4o-mini, o1-mini - Meta: Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct, Llama-3.2-90B-Vision - Microsoft: Phi-4, Phi-3.5-MoE - Mistral: Mistral-Large

Rate limits

GitHub Models is rate-limited for free accounts. For lab purposes this is more than sufficient. If you hit limits, wait a few minutes and retry.

3. Azure Free Account

Required for: L300 labs.

Azure offers a free account with:

  • ✅ $200 credit for 30 days
  • ✅ 12 months of popular free services
  • ✅ Always-free services (includes some compute, storage, AI)

Sign up at azure.microsoft.com/free — requires a credit card for identity verification, but you won't be charged during the free period.

Azure for Students

Students get $100 credit with no credit card via Azure for Students.

Azure Services used in L300 labs

Service Free tier? Notes
Azure AI Foundry ✅ Yes (limited) Some models require pay-as-you-go
Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server ✅ Yes (Burstable B1ms) pgvector extension available
Azure Container Apps ✅ Yes (limited) For hosting MCP servers
Application Insights ✅ Yes (5GB/month) For observability labs

4. Azure Subscription (Pay-as-you-go)

Required for: L400 labs and heavier L300 usage.

After your free credits run out, you'll need a pay-as-you-go subscription.

Watch your costs

L400 labs use more expensive services. Each lab includes an estimated monthly cost at the top. Always set budget alerts in the Azure portal.

→ How to set a budget alert in Azure

5. Microsoft 365 Developer Tenant (Optional)

Required for: Labs in the Agent Builder — Teams path.

Get a free M365 developer subscription:

  1. Join the Microsoft 365 Developer Program (free)
  2. Set up an instant sandbox with 25 user licenses
  3. Use it for Teams AI Library and Copilot Studio labs

6. Local Development Tools

All coding labs assume you have these installed locally (all free):

Tool Install link Labs
VS Code code.visualstudio.com All coding labs
Python 3.11+ python.org Python labs
.NET 8 SDK dotnet.microsoft.com C# labs
Docker Desktop docker.com Labs with local PostgreSQL
Node.js 20+ nodejs.org Some MCP labs
Git git-scm.com All labs

Use GitHub Codespaces to skip local setup

Many labs include a Open in Codespaces button. This gives you a fully configured cloud dev environment in your browser — included in the GitHub free tier (60 hrs/month).

Summary Table

Level Accounts needed Estimated cost
L50 None Free
L100 GitHub (free) Free
L200 GitHub (free) Free
L300 GitHub + Azure free trial ~$0–$10/lab
L400 GitHub + Azure paid ~$10–$50/lab