What free means for the courses listed here
Free online courses come in four shapes, combining the cost model with the certificate terms, and the directory records both for every course. The badge on each row tells you the cost model; the certificate column tells you whether the credential costs anything on top.
- Free. The whole course, including any assessments, costs nothing. 217 of the listed courses work this way, from Khan Academy and MIT OpenCourseWare to Alison and the Coursera courses that still offer the full course without a certificate.
- Free to audit. You enrol at no cost and get the readings and lectures, but graded work and any certificate sit behind a paid track or are not offered at all, and on edX the access expires after the course's estimated length, counted from the day you enrol. 78 courses are audit-only.
- Free certificate. The course and the credential both cost nothing; most of these credentials can be checked at a public link or badge, and the table marks which. 74 courses qualify, and they are the whole of the free certification courses hub.
- Paid certificate. The course is free or free to audit, but the certificate is a purchase. Of the 186 courses that offer a certificate at all, the rest charge for it; free online courses with certificates separates the two groups.
Which providers and subjects are covered
The index draws on 19 providers of four kinds: universities, course platforms, companies and non-profits. The largest single source is edX, with 64 courses once the university courses hosted there are included, followed by Harvard (40), MIT (40) and Coursera (29). Company training sites such as Google and IBM contribute fewer courses, and every course listed from those two carries a free certificate. The providers page explains what free means at each one.
Courses are also grouped into 26 subjects, each with its own ranked comparison. Computer science (58), business (50), programming (50) and data science (42) are the deepest; the subjects page lists the rest.
University course or company certification
Free university courses online are mostly about the teaching, not the credential. MIT OpenCourseWare, Open Yale Courses, Stanford Engineering Everywhere and Oxford's open podcasts publish complete lecture courses with no certificate at all, and Princeton states that none of its open courses offers a credential. University courses on edX and Coursera usually add a certificate, and on almost every one we list it is paid; the exceptions are Stanford medical-education activities on edX, whose certificate comes through Stanford's CME portal, and Harvard's CS50, which, taken through the CS50 site rather than edX, makes anyone scoring at least 70% on the graded work eligible for a free verifiable certificate.
Company certifications run the other way. Google Skillshop, HubSpot Academy and freeCodeCamp issue their certificates free, and each credential can be checked at a public link; IBM Cognitive Class issues a free certificate of completion without one. The trade-off is scope: these courses are short and tied to one tool or one job task, whereas a university course covers a discipline. Microsoft Learn sits between the two, with free learning paths that end in a trophy rather than a certificate.
A practical rule: if you need a line on a CV within weeks, start with a company certification; if you want to understand a field, start with a university course and treat the paid certificate as optional.
Where to start for the most common goals
Three aims account for most visits, and each has a page built for it.
A free certificate you can show
Go to free certification courses, which lists only courses whose certificate costs nothing, and filter by provider or skill. The for jobs and résumé pages narrow that list by the use you have for the credential, and the IBM, HubSpot and Google pages cover the largest issuers that have a page of their own.
Job skills in a specific field
The IT, digital marketing, cyber security and data science hubs mix vendor certifications with university courses (digital marketing is vendor-only), in an editorial order in which fully free courses generally come before audit-only ones. Each hub has a provider breakdown and a filter for level.
A single subject, taught well
Pick the subject from the subjects page. In our keyword research, free online courses in mathematics and Excel are the most searched, followed by Python and computer science; English serves learners of the language and fluent speakers alike, and the courses for seniors page selects self-paced courses with no prerequisites. The editors' picks list the 30 courses we would take ourselves, and the blog answers questions such as how to take Harvard's free courses and whether MIT OpenCourseWare gives certificates.