Your 2025 Guide to Coding Bootcamps With Living Stipend Support
Key Takeaways
- Coding bootcamps with living stipends provide financial support to cover living expenses during the program, allowing students to focus fully on their studies.
- Some coding bootcamps offer free or subsidized housing in addition to living stipends, alleviating the burden of accommodation costs.
- Alternatives to coding bootcamps with living stipends include scholarships, deferred tuition programs, cost-of-living loans, and utilizing GI Bill benefits or government stipends.
Many coding bootcamps offer accessible payment plans for those who want to enter a tech career. However, when coding bootcamp students attend in-person courses in high-cost areas like San Francisco or New York—or if students need to step away from their jobs to immerse themselves in a bootcamp—financial challenges may come into play. To address this, some bootcamps provide living stipends, financial aid, or both.
A coding bootcamp that offers a living stipend empowers students to dedicate themselves fully to their studies, improving learning outcomes and job search success. In this article, you’ll learn about the few coding bootcamps left that offer tech stipends, free housing, or both. We also show what living expenses you’ll have during bootcamp and give you alternatives in case you don’t qualify for a learning stipend.
Coding Bootcamps With Living Stipends or Free Housing
Only a few bootcamps offer living stipends or free housing to students in need of some financial support. These are great options for students looking to minimize the tuition costs of their programs. A tech stipend can also make it possible for you to step away from your job so that you can devote all your energy to your studies. Below, we take a close look at coding bootcamps with living stipends or free housing.
42
- Type of Assistance: Free housing
- Eligibility Requirements: Bootcamp students must be 18 years old or over to get into this free program
This free tech school has multiple campuses around the world. Students benefit from a project-based curriculum that prioritizes interactive learning.1 42 has a private platform available for students looking to find accommodation. Some of its students are able to room for free but this is not always the case. Whether you are eligible for free housing will be determined by your individual circumstances and the campus you select.
Niantic Voyager Apprenticeship Program
- Type of Assistance: $3,000/month stipend + full scholarship
- Eligibility Requirements: Applicants must be located in the San Francisco Bay area or the Seattle area
This 12-week, virtual software engineering bootcamp is designed as a pathway to becoming a software engineer, offering a paid apprenticeship experience with direct industry exposure. The fully-funded bootcamp program launched in July 2024.2 Bootcamp students receive immersive coding training with a living stipend to help cover living costs. This is to ensure participants can focus their full attention on their studies rather than on both tuition and cost of living. The $3,000/month living stipend covers students for the duration of the three-month course.
Revature
- Type of Assistance: Paid training (salary)
- Eligibility Requirements: Students must have a bachelor’s degree
This paid, employer-sponsored program begins with 10–12 weeks of full-time coding training at no cost to students.3 Participants receive compensation during training and may also qualify for relocation support. In return, graduates commit to a two-year employment placement with Revature clients, gaining hands-on experience while advancing their tech careers.
What Is a Coding Bootcamp With Living Stipend?
Coding bootcamps with living stipends pay you a fixed amount to cover living expenses so that you can focus fully on your learning.
When a coding bootcamp offers a living stipend, it awards a fixed amount of money to the student on a weekly or monthly basis. Essentially, the coding bootcamp pays you to help you cover the living expenses you incur during the program. This money allows you to focus fully on your studies.
In the context of a coding bootcamp, living stipends are usually given out as part of a scholarship, as in the case of Nianic Voyager. In the list above, we also included coding bootcamps with free or subsidized housing because housing can be one of the biggest expenses that coding bootcamp students seek to cover. As most coding bootcamps shift to an online learning format, living stipends are becoming less common.
What Will My Living Expenses Be Like During Bootcamp?
The number one factor that will influence living expenses during a program is whether the bootcamp is in-person or online. An in-person coding bootcamp may require students to attend classes on campus, which can increase living expenses due to commuting, housing, and other logistical needs. Students will have to factor in the cost of gas or public transportation, as well as food, if the commute is considerably long.
Additionally, if you don’t live in a major city, like San Francisco, there may not be any bootcamps near you. If this is the case, you will either have to relocate or face extremely long commutes. Students who choose to move closer to the coding school will have to add the cost of renting the new property to their living expenses.
Online bootcamps and online coding bootcamps offer flexibility, allowing students to learn at their own pace and avoid the need to relocate to major cities.
What If You Don’t Qualify for a Coding Bootcamp With a Living Stipend?
If you can’t find a coding bootcamp that pays you a stipend or that provides free or subsidized housing, there are plenty of other options at your disposal. There are many ways to pay for a coding bootcamp. Below, we explore other alternatives if a coding bootcamp stipend is not an option.
Apply for a Scholarship
If you can’t find a coding bootcamp with living stipend programs that work for you, finding a coding bootcamp with scholarships may be the next best thing. While you aren’t technically getting paid, your education is being funded. There are plenty of scholarships available to fund your education and assist with your living expenses.
There are a variety of scholarships available. Some coding bootcamps offer rotating scholarships. These different scholarships may not cover the entire cost of your tuition, but the cost of your program will go down significantly. You may also be able to combine these scholarships with a training stipend to potentially cover the entire cost of attending the program.
Enter a Deferred Tuition Program
Deferred tuition programs allow you to delay payments for your program until you graduate and start working in your new field. This is a rapidly growing way to finance education, particularly in the bootcamp sector. The great thing about it is that, in many cases, if the student fails to get a job or gets a job that pays below a certain threshold, they are not required to repay the school.
Related to deferred tuition is an income share agreement (ISA). Deferred tuition and income share agreements function in much the same way. The major difference is that, with an ISA, the student pays back a percentage of their salary after graduation, instead of a fixed amount, as it’s the case with regular deferred tuition.
Consider Cost of Living Loans for Students
Another viable alternative to tech stipends is cost-of-living loans. If you take out a coding bootcamp loan, you might have the option to borrow additional money for things like transportation, rent, and food. You will then pay this money back in addition to your tuition after you graduate and enter the workforce.
Students can also use a personal loan or a traditional loan to finance both tuition and living expenses. In the bootcamp world, some of the available lenders are Ascent, Climb Credit, and Upstart. Before taking out a loan, make sure to check if your bootcamp has partnerships with any companies and compare payment methods to find the best fit for your needs. Taking out a loan with a lender that partners with your school could make the whole process much smoother.
Use Your GI Bill Benefits
If you are a veteran, you can use the GI Bill housing allowance to cover living expenses for some bootcamp programs. Whether or not you can use GI Bill Benefits for a coding bootcamp depends on the school. There are many coding bootcamps that accept the GI Bill, the most prominent being Code Platoon.
If you’ve run out of GI Bill benefits or don’t qualify, there are other options as a veteran. Many schools have tuition discounts or scholarships for people who have served in the military.
Can You Use Government Stipends Toward Your Bootcamp?
There are some government stipends or grants that can be applied toward a coding bootcamp education. For example, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) can be used to finance a coding bootcamp, although not all bootcamps qualify, so make sure to contact the program administrator.4
Should You Attend a Coding Bootcamp With a Living Stipend?
Coding bootcamps provide you with the education you need for a tech career. Coding bootcamps are short and intensive programs that will equip you with the skills that employers are currently demanding. If you can find a coding bootcamp that covers tuition while paying you a stipend, and it’s a reasonable situation for you and your circumstances, you may just learn a thing or two and meet fellow aspiring web developers.
Completing immersive programs in tech can lead to a significant salary increase and improve career prospects. Many bootcamps offer full-stack web development programs, providing hands-on training in both front-end and back-end web development. These programs often prepare bootcamp students with the skills—and sometimes the career support—they need to land entry-level jobs paying around $84,000/year.5
There are only a handful of coding bootcamps left that offer students a monthly income or free/subsidized housing to help cover living expenses while attending a coding bootcamp. Whichever you choose, make sure the training you receive is on the latest technologies and most in-demand skills in the tech field today. The coding bootcamp you pick should prepare you to apply to high-paying jobs as soon as you graduate.
Coding Bootcamp With Living Stipend FAQs
Established coding bootcamps tend to offer a variety of payment options. Instead of paying tuition upfront, you can often pay for a bootcamp using income share agreements (ISA), loans, deferred tuition plans, or scholarships. Each bootcamp offers different payment options, so be sure to check with the admissions department before enrolling. You may even find some programs, like the Grace Hopper Program, that work with underrepresented populations.
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What is a learning stipend?
A learning stipend, in the context of coding bootcamps, refers to financial support provided to students for their living expenses during the duration of the program. It enables learners to focus on intensive coding education without worrying about financial constraints, fostering an immersive and dedicated learning experience.
Are there coding schools that pay you to attend?
Yes, there are some schools that, in a way, pay you to attend. This is usually done via living stipends, also known as learning stipends, which are meant to cover a student’s living costs. For example, Revature offers its coding bootcamp students a monthly income to help relieve financial burdens.
Will my employer pay for a coding bootcamp?
Some employers will assist in paying bootcamp tuition or even cover the entire cost for their employees. This is especially true if the curriculum includes necessary technical training for the job. If your employer will not assist in funding your education, you can always look for a coding bootcamp with living stipend programs.
Sources:
1 https://www.42network.org/42-schools/
2 https://nianticlabs.com/careers/voyager?hl=en
3 https://www.revature.com/get-hired
4 https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/wioa
5 https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/entry-level-web-developer-salary-SRCH_KO0,25.htm
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