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Learning new job skills online: the main course providers in the US
Free courses, monthly subscriptions and bootcamps with upfront tuition: how the big platforms, the tech schools and the career programs compare on cost and on the certificate at the end.
Learning a job skill online can cost nothing or several thousand dollars. Two questions help when choosing: who stands behind the certificate, whether a university, a company or the provider itself, and whether you can start a course for free before paying.
The fifteen providers below fall into five groups: the large platforms with courses from universities and companies, a community for creative skills, the schools for tech and data skills, the free options, and the career programs and bootcamps. Costs are in US dollars.
The large platforms
Coursera offers courses, Specializations, Professional Certificates and degrees from more than 325 university and company partners. Courses start from free, and Professional Certificates from $49 a month. Its programs are built so that the job-ready skills and certificates you earn now can count toward a degree later.
edX, run by 2U, offers online courses, certificates, boot camps and degrees from more than 250 partners, including Harvard, Stanford and Google, with more than 5,300 career-relevant programs and 100 million learners. Courses are free to audit, but the free audit track has no certificate or graded work; the paid verified track adds a certificate, usually for $90 to $300.
Udemy is an online course marketplace where you can buy single courses or subscribe to a plan. The Personal Plan, from $14.00 a month, includes more than 28,000 courses. They run from workplace skills to technical topics, with an instructor Q&A.
LinkedIn Learning has 26,400 business, technology and creative courses taught by more than 3,900 industry experts and thought leaders. The first month is free, and then it costs $29.99 a month. You can set career goals and use Skill Evaluations to find learning for your current role and your next one.
FutureLearn, run by Global University Systems, offers free and paid online courses, online degrees and microcredentials from universities and other organizations, and has more than 22 million registered learners. Limited access is free, with paid Unlimited plans above it. Its certifications cover business and management, teaching, psychology, project management, STEM, finance and the creative arts.
Creative skills
Skillshare is an online learning community with more than 30,000 classes for creative people, on topics including illustration, design, photography, video and freelancing. Membership costs $167.88 a year, which works out at $13.99 a month paid yearly, and it has no ads.
Tech, coding and data
Pluralsight teaches technology skills, including AI, cloud computing, software development, cybersecurity, data, IT operations and DevOps, plus soft skills for technical roles and preparation for certification exams. It has more than 6,500 courses, from $29 a month.
Codecademy teaches coding and other tech skills and lets you start free, and it has more than 50 million learners. Paid access costs $19.99 a month billed yearly, or $39.99 billed monthly, and it also offers preparation for industry certifications from AWS, Microsoft, CompTIA, ISC2 and more.
DataCamp teaches the skills to work with data, with more than 790 hands-on data, AI, cloud and software engineering courses for all skill levels and 21 million learners. The first chapters are free, and Premium costs $14 a month billed yearly.
Google Career Certificates is an online training program from Google with professional certificates in high-paying technology fields such as IT, user experience design and project management, taught by experts with hands-on practice. In the US and Canada it costs $49 a month after a seven-day free trial.
Learning for free
Several providers are free, or largely free. freeCodeCamp, a 501(c)(3) public charity, teaches the skills most developers use on the job, such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, Linux, Git and SQL, through free courses and projects that lead to its eleven certifications, which are also free.
Alison offers free Certificate and Diploma courses across nine core subject areas, more than 6,000 courses in all, accredited by CPD UK. Studying is free; unlimited offline downloads cost $5 a month. edX's audit track, Coursera's free courses, DataCamp's first chapters and FutureLearn's limited access are other ways to learn without paying, though on edX the certificate costs extra.
Career programs and bootcamps
At the top of the price range are programs built to change careers. Springboard, run by SlideRule Labs, offers online programs in fields such as data science, AI, cybersecurity, UI/UX design, software engineering and tech sales, learning with experts. Its coding bootcamp costs $9,900 paid upfront, and 18,394 students have taken its Career Tracks since 2016.
Udacity, run by Accenture, teaches tech skills through courses and Nanodegree programs, which are project-based learning built around the skills employers need. It has hundreds of Nanodegrees and courses, at $249 a month or $846 for four months.
Simplilearn, owned by Blackstone, is a digital skills training provider with learning paths in AI, data science, cloud computing, cybersecurity, project management, digital marketing and more, plus some free courses with a completion certificate.
Choosing a provider
The certificate is the first thing to look at. Coursera and edX work with universities and companies, Google Career Certificates come from Google itself, and Codecademy prepares learners for industry certifications from AWS, Microsoft, CompTIA and ISC2. Alison's courses are accredited by CPD UK, while freeCodeCamp and others issue their own.
The second is how the price is set. A monthly subscription, such as LinkedIn Learning, Pluralsight or Google Career Certificates, suits a learner who can finish quickly; a yearly plan, such as Skillshare's, is paid for the whole year at once; and a bootcamp such as Springboard asks for the full tuition up front. Most of the large platforms also have a free starting point.
