Hosting and cloud bills: AWS, Google Cloud and Azure under Article 16
Server and cloud costs for serving your product abroad are reimbursed at 50%, capped at 5 million TL a year. The one rule that halves the claim, and what evidence the invoices need.
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Money back on marketing and UA
Hosting is the dullest item in the programme and one of the most dependable. Every software company has the bill, it turns up every month, and half of it comes back.
Article 16 of Decision No. 10962 covers server, cloud and hosting costs incurred to deliver your software, app, game or platform to users abroad. The rate is 50%, capped at 5,000,000 TL of support a year, which is around $105,000 at roughly 47.7 TRY to the dollar. Under the Branding Programme the cap rises to 7,500,000 TL, about $157,000.
At 50%, you can spend about $210,000 a year on hosting before you hit that cap. That covers a serious live-ops backend or a mid-sized SaaS platform.
Which providers qualify
All of them. The item is defined by what the spending does rather than by who issues the invoice, so AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, Hetzner, DigitalOcean, Cloudflare and dedicated game-hosting providers are all in scope on the same terms.
Cloud providers typically invoice Turkish customers from a European entity, and that is not an obstacle. What the file needs is an invoice issued to your Turkish company and payment from the company's own account or card.
The rule that catches people
One condition applies only to this item, and it can halve what you get:
If the product also has a Turkish-language version, support is calculated on 50% of the payment. Products offered only in foreign languages are calculated on the full payment.
The rate stays at 50%. What changes is the amount it is applied to. On a $200,000 yearly hosting bill, a product sold only in foreign languages gets you $100,000 back. The same bill for a product that also has a Turkish version gets you $50,000, because the 50% is worked out on half the bill.
Know that before you decide to add Turkish, not after. It is rarely a reason to skip it, because a Turkish version normally exists for a good commercial reason, but it does change the maths.
What the file needs
- Provider invoices, addressed to the Turkish company
- Proof of payment from the company account or company card
- Evidence of the product's availability in foreign markets, which is usually a store listing, the product's own site or a regional availability page
The third item is the one companies forget, because it feels obvious from the inside. A reviewer needs to see it stated somewhere.
Splitting a mixed account
Most engineering teams run one cloud account for everything, mixing the production servers that serve users abroad with CI runners, staging, internal tools and data warehousing. Only the first part counts, so a mixed account has to be split in a way you can show.
This is easier than it sounds, because the tools already exist. AWS cost allocation tags, GCP labels and Azure resource groups all produce monthly breakdowns by service and environment. If you tag production separately from everything else, your evidence gets produced automatically each month and nobody has to do anything.
If your account is currently untagged, that is a one-afternoon change that pays for itself in the first claim.
Filing rhythm
Hosting is billed monthly, so each payment starts its own six-month window. Twelve payments a year means twelve separate deadlines, which is exactly the situation a quarterly filing cycle exists to handle.
It also means the first claim is easier than people expect. Six months of cloud invoices already sits inside the window on the day you start, with no action needed beyond pulling the statements. Together with store commissions, it is the fastest part of a first filing to assemble.
The calculator will show where your own hosting spend sits against the cap.
Frequently asked
Our AWS bill covers development, internal tooling and production together. Can we claim all of it?
The item covers hosting that gets your product to users abroad. If one account mixes production servers with internal tools, claim the part that serves the product. AWS and GCP both have tagging and cost reports that let you show how you split it.
Does a Turkish-language version really halve the claim?
The rate stays at 50%, but it gets applied to half the bill instead of all of it, so you end up with a quarter of what you paid rather than half. Products sold only in foreign languages are worked out on the full bill.
Are CDN, database and storage services included?
They are all part of delivering the product to users, and they usually appear on the same provider invoice. What matters is that the spend supports the overseas availability of the product rather than being general office IT, which sits under software licences instead.
We pay AWS monthly on a company card. Is that enough?
Yes, provided the card is issued against the company's account rather than belonging to a founder personally. Each monthly payment starts its own six-month filing window, which is why hosting claims usually ride the quarterly filing cycle.
Is the invoice from an Irish or Luxembourg entity a problem?
No. Cloud providers commonly invoice from a European entity, and the claim rests on the invoice being issued to your Turkish company and paid from its account.
Sources
https://cyberscope.solutions/blog/hosting-and-cloud-costs/ · Updated August 4, 2026 · CyberScope Solutions