Free Online Courses with Certificates

Which free online courses with certificates cost nothing to certify

The first table is the short one, and it is the only part of this page that lists free certificate courses in the strict sense. Its 69 entries come from providers that issue their own credential instead of selling one through a marketplace: Google Skillshop certifications, HubSpot Academy certifications, IBM Cognitive Class certificates of completion and one SkillsBuild badge, AWS badges, freeCodeCamp certifications, Harvard's CS50 courses taken through the CS50 site, Stanford continuing medical education activities, one Google Applied Digital Skills lesson, and a single course from Alison's legacy free-certificate list, Microsoft Excel 2010. Google, HubSpot, IBM, AWS and Harvard each have a page under free certification courses; the Stanford activities are covered on the healthcare page and the Alison course on the data analytics page.

Paid certificates on free courses: what the universities charge

The second table is where most of the university names sit. The course is free to take, and the certificate is a separate purchase whose price the table shows wherever the provider prints it.

Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley and Oxford on edX, and MIT on MITx Online

Harvard's HarvardX courses carry a verified certificate priced from $69 to $299, with Tangible Things at the low end at $69 and Contract Law at the high end at $299. MIT's MITx courses, hosted on MITx Online rather than edX, span $49 to $549: Science of Learning and Memory costs $49, while Financial Accounting is $549. Stanford's edX courses run $149 to $249, Berkeley's $130 to $200 and Oxford's $189 to $249. Every one of these is free to audit; the price buys the certificate and, in most of them, the graded work.

Coursera, Yale and Alison: prices shown after you enrol

Not every paid certificate has a price in the table. On Coursera, the courses listed here are free in full and the shareable certificate is bought separately, but the price is not printed on the course page, and Coursera says financial aid can reduce or remove it. Yale's Coursera courses, such as The Science of Well-Being, follow that model, and Yale Online notes that the price varies by location. Alison shows the price of its CPD-accredited certificate or diploma inside your account rather than on the public course page, so records like Diploma in Project Management carry no figure.

edX's own catalogue behaves like the university courses: the Linux Foundation, W3C and other courses listed under edX itself can be audited at no cost, with certificates at $29 to $249, from How to Learn Online at $29 to HTML5 and CSS Fundamentals at $249.

What free to audit means, and what it leaves out

Across the site, 78 courses are marked free to audit against 217 marked free, and the difference is more than the certificate. On edX, auditing gives you the readings, video lectures, discussion forums and ungraded practice exercises; graded assignments and exams are locked to the paid verified track. Audit access also expires after the estimated course length has passed, so a self-paced course must be finished within its listed weeks from the day you enrol (or from the day the course opened, if you enrolled earlier), and edX shows the expiry date on the course page and inside the course. Upgrading before the upgrade deadline keeps the materials open until the course end date, with archived access afterwards, unlocks grading and makes the certificate available.

MITx courses on MIT's own platform give audit learners the core course material, with the certificate on the paid track and, in some MicroMasters courses, audit access ending shortly after the session. Coursera announced in August 2025 that a first-module preview replaced its audit experience; the courses listed here are the smaller set whose page states that every feature is free or offers Coursera's Full Course, No Certificate option, which its help centre describes as all course materials and graded assessments without a certificate.

When the same course is free in one place and paid in another

Several courses appear in the free table only because of where you enrol. Harvard's CS50 family is published as OpenCourseWare with a free certificate for scoring at least 70% on the graded work, and the same courses run on edX as free-to-audit courses with a paid verified certificate. CS50's Introduction to Computer Science costs $219 to certify on edX, CS50's Web Programming $199, and CS50's Introduction to Artificial Intelligence $299. Each course page lists the edX edition as an alternate so you can compare before enrolling.

Yale works the other way round. Financial Markets and Introduction to Psychology are free on Open Yale Courses with no certificate, and each has a Coursera edition that is free in full with an optional paid certificate. The Yale Coursera courses listed here in turn have YouTube playlists of the lectures with no credential, so the choice is mostly between the credential and the platform rather than the lectures.

Certificates of completion, printable certificates and learner records

The word certificate covers several documents. IBM's terms describe a certificate of completion for students who demonstrate mastery; HubSpot issues a certificate and a badge you can view, download and share; Google Skillshop awards show on a public profile; freeCodeCamp publishes each certification at a public URL. Alison sells its certificate as a digital or printed product and, if you do not buy it, lets you download a free Learner Record confirming the courses completed and the results achieved.

None of this is academic credit: Yale, Princeton and MIT state that their open courses carry no credit, and MIT OpenCourseWare and Open Yale Courses issue no certificate at all. For the courses where the certificate is free and verifiable, see free certification courses; for the courses we would take regardless of credential, see the editors' picks.