In this video I quickly show you how to get free SOL for Solana devnet so you can actually build and test without spending real money. Devnet is your development environment (not production), but you still need SOL to pay gas fees for things like deploying programs, running transactions, and redeploying when you iterate. I start by checking how much SOL I already have using a balance command pointed at devnet, because if your balance is zero (or just too low), you’ll hit friction fast when you try to upload and test. Then I walk through two ways to get SOL: the command line airdrop and the web faucet. On the CLI side, you request an airdrop (like 1 or 2 SOL) and then verify your balance again. If you see “airdrop request failed,” that’s usually just rate limiting—super common. When that happens, I switch to faucet.solana.com, paste my devnet wallet address, choose an amount, and confirm. Just keep in mind the faucet enforces limits (like two airdrops in 8 hours), so if you’ve already requested recently you may need to wait. Once it lands, you’ll have enough devnet SOL to deploy and keep moving.