Note
Access to this page requires authorization. You can try signing in or changing directories.
Access to this page requires authorization. You can try changing directories.
Congratulations on your new Visual Studio subscription. You now have access to a comprehensive set of tools and resources to speed up development, promote collaboration anywhere, and innovate on any platform.
If this subscription is your first, you might not be sure how to get started. This article introduces you to the Visual Studio subscription portal and some of the most popular benefits included in your subscription.
How to sign in to the portal
When you go to the Visual Studio subscription portal, signing in is simple. Which email address you use depends on how you got the subscription:
- Sign in by using your Microsoft account. This scenario is the most common when you purchased a subscription through the Microsoft Store.
- Sign in by using your work or school account. Use this address if your work or school assigned your subscription to you.
- Sign in by using GitHub. If your GitHub account has other email addresses linked to it, you can use your GitHub account in place of the address that's associated with the subscription.
Quick tour of the portal
Each tab in the portal opens a page that provides capabilities:
- Benefits: Use this page to see which benefits your subscription includes, and to activate them. You can filter the list of benefits by Tools, Professional Development, or Support to more easily find the benefits that you want to activate.
- Downloads: Depending on which subscription you have, you can access product updates, patches, and full versions of hundreds of products and versions.
- Product Keys: Use this page to access the product keys that you need for installing and activating the software that you download from the Downloads page.
- Subscriptions: If you have more than one subscription, you can view and switch between them on this page. You can also view expiration dates, find support information, and even renew certain types of subscriptions.
- Get Help: This page is your pathway to support for your subscriptions. You can view frequently asked questions, submit support cases, and access helpful information such as subscription and admin portal documentation.
- Marketplace: If you're looking for extensions for Visual Studio, this page is the place to find a large collection of the latest and most popular extensions for your integrated development environment (IDE).
Benefits
The benefits included in your subscription depend on which subscription you have. Most subscriptions include the Visual Studio IDE, individual Azure credits, and Azure DevOps. Some subscriptions also include benefits such as Pluralsight training, a Microsoft 365 E5 developer subscription, and Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise. Learn more about your benefits.
Visual Studio
Visual Studio is a comprehensive IDE for .NET and C++ developers on Windows. Its tools and features can elevate and enhance every stage of software development. Learn how to install Visual Studio.
Individual Azure credits
Most Visual Studio subscriptions include Azure credits every month that you can use to explore and try Azure services. When you activate your credits, you create a new Azure subscription where you can start using them right away. No credit card is required.
The number of Azure credits that you receive depends on the type of your Visual Studio subscription. When you reach the monthly cap for your credits, your Azure services stop until your next monthly credits are added. The alternative is to remove the spending cap by upgrading to pay-as-you-go pricing.
To learn more about what you can do with Azure credits, see the Monthly Azure credits for Visual Studio subscribers page.
To start using Azure, see the Get started with your individual Azure Credit Subscription article in the Azure documentation.
Azure DevOps
The concept of DevOps combines development and operations. DevOps is the union of people, process, and technology to continually provide value to customers.
What does DevOps mean for teams? DevOps enables formerly siloed roles (development, IT operations, quality engineering, and security) to coordinate and collaborate for the production of better, more reliable products. When teams adopt a DevOps culture along with DevOps practices and tools, they gain the ability to better respond to customer needs, increase confidence in the applications that they build, and achieve business goals faster.
As an active Visual Studio subscriber, you can use features in the Azure DevOps service that are included with your subscription. You can use these same features in each Azure DevOps organization in which you're a member, whether you created the organization or someone else added you. Get started with using Azure DevOps.