Do any of these free history courses give a certificate
None of the 17 courses on this page gives a free certificate. The Harvard courses on edX and Yale's Moral Foundations of Politics on Coursera sell one as an optional extra; every lecture archive, Khan Academy course, Yale YouTube course and the other Princeton and Yale courses on Coursera award nothing at all.
Harvard courses on edX with a paid certificate
Harvard lists each of these as free to audit, which opens the videos and readings while graded work and the certificate are paid, and audit access is time-limited. The cheapest certificate is on Tangible Things at $69. China's Political and Intellectual Foundations costs $149, Justice $209, Pyramids of Giza $219, The Architectural Imagination $249 and Masterpieces of World Literature $299. What you buy is an edX verified certificate, not Harvard credit; the Harvard free online courses page explains auditing across the whole catalogue.
Courses with no certificate at all
Open Yale Courses states that no course credit, degree or certificate is available through its site, which covers The American Revolution and The Civil War and Reconstruction Era. Khan Academy's US history and World history are free with no paid features and no certificate. Oxford's open lecture series mention no enrolment, assessment or certificate anywhere.
On Coursera, The Making of Modern Ukraine and Paradoxes of War both state that no certificates, credentials or reports are awarded, Princeton's by university policy; Yale's Moral Foundations of Politics, by contrast, is free in full on Coursera but sells its shareable certificate, and Yale's YouTube lecture course Power and Politics in Today's World awards nothing. If a credential matters, free online courses with certificates lists the subjects where one exists.
Where to study American history free: the Yale lectures and the Khan survey
The deepest American history on the list is at Yale. The American Revolution is Joanne Freeman's HIST 116, recorded as 25 lectures that follow how British colonists came to see themselves as revolutionaries and then as Americans, from the Stamp Act crisis through the war to the Constitutional Convention. The Civil War and Reconstruction Era is David Blight's HIST 119 in 27 lectures, giving as much weight to slavery, emancipation and Reconstruction as to the battles. Both carry the campus reading list, and every lecture is available as video, audio and transcript with no registration.
For a framework with practice rather than a lecture course, Khan Academy's US history runs in nine chronological units from Indigenous America to the modern era, with unit tests, a course challenge and a unit of primary documents. It suits a refresher before the Yale courses.
Where to study world history free: surveys and single-civilisation courses
Khan Academy's World history is the one true survey here: nine units from early humans and the first agrarian societies through empires, the first global age and the long nineteenth century to global conflict and globalization, with unit tests throughout. No duration is stated, so you can follow the chronology or drop into one era.
The Harvard courses each take one civilisation or theme. China's Political and Intellectual Foundations studies the bronze-age dynasties, Confucius and the schools that followed him, at 1 to 3 hours a week over fifteen weeks. Pyramids of Giza uses the Giza Plateau to teach Old Kingdom Egypt and how archaeology works, over eight weeks. Masterpieces of World Literature reads from Gilgamesh to Rushdie over twelve weeks at 5 to 7 hours a week, the heaviest reading load in the list.
For the modern era, Timothy Snyder's The Making of Modern Ukraine traces Ukraine from medieval Kyiv through the empires, the Soviet period and Nazi occupation to the present war, in about 24 hours of video that Coursera labels beginner level.
What the Yale and Oxford lecture archives include
Open Yale Courses publishes the lectures as recorded on campus, the syllabus with its books and articles, and descriptions of the papers and exams Yale students wrote; nothing is graded for online viewers. Oxford releases its open lecture series under a Creative Commons licence with a transcript on every episode page.
Two Oxford series sit on this page because the history of ideas is history. General Philosophy is Peter Millican's first-year course, from Galileo and Descartes through Locke, Hume and Kant before taking one problem per lecture. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is a guided reading for which some prior exposure to philosophy helps. Michael Sandel's Justice belongs with them: it reads Aristotle, Locke, Kant, Mill and Rawls against present-day controversies over twelve weeks, and is the one intermediate-rated course on the list. Steven Smith's Introduction to Political Philosophy, from Open Yale Courses, reads the tradition text by text from Plato to Tocqueville.
How much time these free history courses take
Every course here is self-paced, so durations are estimates rather than deadlines. The lightest weekly load among the Harvard courses is 1 to 3 hours a week on the China course; Tangible Things, which teaches historical analysis through objects from Harvard's collections, asks 2 to 6 hours a week over ten weeks. Princeton's Paradoxes of War, a conceptual course on why societies fight and what war does to them, is the shortest at two weeks on Coursera's estimate. Lecture archives state no duration. No course here states a formal prerequisite.
Where to learn history online next
Pyramids of Giza, Tangible Things and The Architectural Imagination also appear under free online art courses; Justice also appears on the free online law courses page; and the lecture archives and Khan Academy surveys are the backbone of free online courses for seniors, a selection of self-paced courses with no prerequisites. The Yale and Oxford pages list every lecture course from those universities.