Table of Contents

1. Catalyst Is 100% Free for Students
2. Take Your Projects Beyond Localhost
3. What You Get with Catalyst
4. The First Catalyst Student Clubs
5. Want a Catalyst Student Club at Your College?
6. Take Your Project from Localhost to Live at $0

There's a specific moment that kills a lot of student projects: the code works fine on localhost, but when you want to put it somewhere a professor, recruiter, hackathon judge, or even your friends can actually open, deployment gets complicated. 

You need hosting, a backend, a database, authentication, and sometimes even a credit card just to get started.

That’s why Catalyst is now free for students. 

“By putting Catalyst 3.0 in the hands of student developers, we are freeing them from the burden of traditional development cycles, so they can thrive in a rapidly shifting landscape. Ultimately, our aim is to remove technical friction so they can instantly convert their ideas into tangible outcomes."

— Anand Nergunam, VP Revenue Growth, Zoho

If you are a student building something non-commercial, Catalyst is free. No subscription. No credit card. Just a full-stack cloud platform where you can build, deploy, and keep experimenting.

Take your projects beyond localhost

A student project does not have to stop at a GitHub repository or a demo running from your laptop.
With Catalyst, you can deploy your frontend, build your backend, manage data, add authentication, integrate AI and ML capabilities, and take your application live, all on one platform.

You get:

• Full-stack hosting for your applications
• Serverless functions for back-end logic
• Managed data services
• Built-in authentication
• AI and ML capabilities
• Free bandwidth
• Free collaborators for team projects

Whether it's coursework, a hackathon build, a portfolio app, or a side project, Catalyst gives it somewhere real to live.

Bring your framework. Use your AI tool.

Build with Next.js, React, Vue, Nuxt, Angular, or the framework you already know, and use Catalyst for the backend and infrastructure.
If AI is already part of the way you code, bring that, too.Catalyst works with tools such as Codex, Claude, Gemini, Cursor, and Copilot, with capabilities designed to help coding agents understand and work with the platform.

• Catalyst Agent Skills gives AI tools context about Catalyst services and development patterns.
• Catalyst MCP lets compatible agents interact directly with your Catalyst project and services.
   

And the non-interactive Catalyst CLI helps agents execute multi-step development and deployment workflows with less manual intervention.
Together, they shorten the path from an idea to an application running on the cloud.

Build something worth showing

Catalyst gives you a place to build projects that go beyond assignments running on a laptop.
Deploy your coursework and share a live URL during placements. Build and ship a hackathon project without spending the final hours figuring out infrastructure. Launch a side project and see whether people actually use it. Experiment with AI-powered applications without assembling the entire stack yourself.
At the same time, you get hands-on experience with the parts of software development that matter once an application goes live, including authentication, deployments, environments, logs, and versioning.
Student projects should be a place to experiment, break things, rebuild them, and try ambitious ideas without worrying about a cloud budget.

The first Catalyst Student Clubs

The student program is launching with the first cohort of Catalyst Student Clubs at three colleges in Chennai, India:

1. R.M.K. Engineering College (RMKEC): Sanjana M S and Siva
2. R.M.K. College of Engineering and Technology (RMKCET): Dhaarini
3. R.M.D. Engineering College (RMDEC): Danny Soundarraj and Pooja Y

Catalyst Student Clubs are student-run builder communities focused on helping students turn ideas into real, deployed projects.
Student captains lead the communities on campus, help others get started, and organize opportunities to build together.

Want a Catalyst Student Club at your college?

If you're a student, faculty member, or community lead interested in starting a Catalyst Student Club,write to us at studentclubs@zohocatalyst.com, and we'll help you get started.
And you don't need a Catalyst Student Club on your campus to start building. Catalyst is free for students everywhere.

Take your project from localhost to live at $0

Getting started is simple:

1. Visit the Catalyst for Students page.
2. Sign in to the Catalyst console and create your first project.
3. Bring an existing application or start something new.
4. If you build with AI, add Catalyst Agent Skills and connect Catalyst MCP.
5. Build, deploy, and share what you made.
6. Your student projects deserve more than localhost.

Your student projects deserve more than localhost.

Build something. Ship it on Catalyst. Put it in front of the world. For free.