I was scrolling on Instagram and I saw a screencap of a tweet about 15 sites where you can learn coding for free.
I am leaving out who tweeted it for privacy purposes. Also, I counted 14 and not 15.
I am going to go through each one of them to see if any of these courses are really free.
Table Of Contents
Codecademy
Treehouse
Udemy
Coursera
Khan Academy
W3Schools
EdX
FreeCodeCamp
Evanto tuts+
Codeconquest
Udacity
Sololearn
Code Avengers
Learnenough
TLDR
Codecademy
Is it free?: Yes and No.
What do you mean?: There is a premium service called Codecademy Pro. In fact, they highly encourage you to purchase it through ads on the site.
How much is Pro?:
$39.99 a month
$239.88 annually.
If you are a college student, Codecademy Pro Student is the option you want to go to for premium service. They advertise that it's 35% less than a normal Pro membership. Since I am not a student I don't have easy access to the price.
Treehouse
Is it free?: No
How Much is it?: It depends on what you want...
Courses
After a 7 day trial period, 29.99 a month.
Techdegree
After a 7 day trial period, $199 a month
Keep in mind, there are sales throughout the year so if you want it for cheaper, keep checking the site.
Udemy
Is it free?: No, however, if you search on Twitter hard enough you might find some free courses but I would be wary of that in case it contains outdated information.
How much is it?: Courses start a $9.99 and they have sales all the time.
From personal experience, if you buy one course you will likely get more sales than if you weren't are buying a course for the first time.
Coursea
Is it free?: Yes and no
What do you mean?: There are free courses you can search for here. The rest are free trials of 7 days before payment. There is financial aid available.
If you want to enroll in MasterTrack™ Certificates or a Bachelors' degree with them that is not free. The cost of them depends on the institution and course.
Khan Academy
Is it free?: Yes!
What's the catch?: Nothing as far as cost. However, it's aimed towards kids. I recommended it for true novice learners but you probably won't get a lot out of it if you are a little bit more experienced. They have a really good SQL course that I recommend.
W3Schools
Is it free?: Yes!
What's the catch?: Nothing. You can get certified through them at but they aren't pushy about it. It's a good site for true beginners along with the Mozilla Developers Network Web Docs aka MDN.
EdX
Is it free?: Yes and no
What do you mean?: Similar to Coursera, there are free courses you can search for here but it's mostly paid.
FreeCodeCamp
Is it--: YES!
What's th--: There is no catch the word free is in the name. I actually very highly recommend it.
Are you su---: It's 100% free. There is also a Youtube channel of free content in addition to the free courses on the website.
Evanto tuts+
Is it free?: Yes and no.
What do you mean?: I would compare this site to Skillshare the site is a subscription-based site. There are some free courses here
Codeconquest
Is it free?: Yes!
What's the catch?: If you are more of a visual and auditory learner, there are other options. It's similar to W3Schools and good for beginners.
Udacity
Is it free?: Yes and no.
What do you mean?: Similar to EdX and Coursera there are free courses here but it's more like Treehouse's tech degrees except Udacity's courses are called "nanodegrees."
However, there offer scholarships into certain nanodegrees. An example of what going through a nanodegree on scholarship is here.
Sololearn
Is it free?: YES!
What's the catch?: No catches. In fact, I used this site before to learn on the go with my phone while I was in my web development Bootcamp.
Code Avengers
Is it free?: No.
How much is it?:
From their pricing site:
$29 for a monthly plan
$150 for a semi-annual (6 months) plan
$240 for an annual (1 year) plan
You do have a 7-day trial before payment.
The cool thing about it is Code Avengers aim towards everyone with separate tiers. JR for kids, EDU for Teachers, and PRO for everyone else. I am not sure if the prices are just for the PRO tier, this is all I could find on the pricing page.
Learnenough
Is it free?: No.
How much is it?: Learnenough offers a unique price structure in comparison to the other paid sites:
Starting at $5 one time for À La Carte Downloads for downloads of their ebooks.
Starting at $9 a month for À La Carte Courses
$49 dollars for All Access (after a 7-day free trial.)
I know nothing about this site except that you can learn Ruby on Rails on it from looking at the navigation footer.
TLDR
Out of the 15 sites mentioned in the tweet, only 5 of them are truly free FreeCodeCamp, Sololearn, Codeconquest, W3Schools, and Khan Academy.
The freemium sites (paid with free courses) are Codecademy, Coursera, EdX, Udacity, and Evanto tuts+.
The sites that aren't free are Udemy, Treehouse, Learnenough, and Code Avengers.
A lesson for beginners to not believe everything on the internet especially related to free coding classes.
Cover Photo by NESA by Makers on Unsplash
EDIT (12/1/2020): I counted 14 sites even though the post said 15 so the title had to change. I also fixed the conclusion and called it a TLDR in case you don't want to read all of it.
Top comments (4)
Hi Angel,
I liked the idea of the article very much. I have often wondered if all the coding sites that are out there are free. But I have to say it but I got restless and did not finish the article. I actually skipped to the conclusion, BUT the conclusion did not have the list of 'free-be' sites. It may seem redundant but conclusions are usually a wrap-up and state the results too.
Which 5?
Just my 2 cents ;)
That's good advice. I wrote this article most of the day yesterday up until I had to go to work so the conclusion was rushed. I will edit it to include your suggestion.
Good, I'm happy to help.
I have also been struggling with the curse of online classes.
There is one hack I will share about Coursera. If you join in Coursera class and you get to the 'money' page look below. If you look hard for the 'fine print', Coursera has a box or link for 'financial assistance'. If you follow that link they give you the criteria for getting free classes. You have to be unemployed, or a student and something else... But you write a page telling them why you should get the course for free and they'll let you know in two weeks. My friend and I have both used it and gotten free classes.
Best of luck,
;)
That is a good hack.