In this guide, I’ve picked and ranked the best free and paid online Bug Bounty courses. Bug bounty programs reward anyone who reports an exploit or security vulnerability with cash, sometimes even paying up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Bug hunters help companies protect themselves by finding bugs and suggesting fixes before malicious actors do.

Here are my top picks. Click on one to skip to the course details:

Course	Workload	In Brief
1. Web Application Ethical Hacking – Penetration Testing Course for Beginners (freeCodeCamp)	5 hours long	Best free beginner’s course on ethical web app hacking and bug hunting
2. Intro to Bug Bounty Hunting and Web Application Hacking (Udemy)	5 hours long	Best in-depth course on practical bug bounty hunting with ethical hacking
3. Complete Bug Bounty | Ethical Hacking | Web Application Hacking Course (YouTube)	8 hours long	Best free in-depth course on bug hunting with some live examples
4. Ethical Hacking 101: Web App Penetration Testing – a full course for beginners (freeCodeCamp)	3 hour long	Best free crash crash for beginners
5. The Bug Hunter’s Methodology Full 2-hour Training (YouTube)	2 hours long	Best free course focusing on reconnaissance with live examples
6. Intigriti Hackademy (Intigriti)	N/A	Best collection of free learning resources on various web security topics
7. Hacker101 (HackerOne)	5 hours long	Free alternative to 2, covers more theory
8. Web Security Academy (PortSwigger)	N/A	Best collection of free text-based instruction with guided labs and exercises
9. BugBountyHunter (BugBountyHunter.com)	N/A	Best collection of free exercises to test your bug-hunting skills
10. Bug Bounty Hunter Job Role Path (Hack The Box)	N/A	Best advanced collection of hands-on CTF and HTB exercises

What is Bug Bounty?

Bug bounties are a form of crowdsourcing program offered by organizations to encourage anyone who finds security vulnerabilities and bugs in their system to report it to the organization by rewarding them with prize money or even a job.

Companies paying people to hack them sounds crazy, but these sorts of incentives actually work, potentially saving the company from losing millions of dollars to bad actors by leaking or misusing sensitive info. These programs operate under the principle of ‘to catch a thief, you need to think like a thief’, and rely on the good intentions of ethical hackers (also known as white hat hackers) to help them find and patch flaws in their systems before a bad thief is able to exploit them.

Organizations like Google, Apple, Microsoft, and even the United States Department Of Defense are giving out cash prizes ranging from $10 to $100,000 or even more depending on the severity of the vulnerability. Not only does bug bounty hunting pay well, it can also be extremely satisfying and it’s a creative activity, as it is their knowledge, curiosity, and ingenuity that ultimately rewards them with cash while also preventing malicious hackers from exploiting them.

Best Courses Guides Methodology

I built this ranking following the now tried-and-tested methodology used in previous Best Courses Guides (you can find them all here). It involves a three-step process:

1. Research: I started by leveraging Class Central’s database with 100K online courses and 200K+ reviews. Then, I made a preliminary selection of Bug Bounty courses by rating, reviews, and bookmarks.
2. Evaluate: I read through reviews on Class Central, Reddit, and course providers to understand what other learners thought about each course and combined it with my own experience as a learner.
3. Select: Well-made courses were picked if they presented valuable and engaging content and they have to fit in a set of criteria and be ranked accordingly: comprehensive curriculum, affordability, release date, ratings and enrollments.

Course Ranking Statistics

Here are some aggregate stats about the ranking:

• The most-viewed course in this ranking has over 1.5 million views.
• 8 courses are free or free-to-audit, 2 courses are paid.

1. Web Application Ethical Hacking – Penetration Testing Course for Beginners (freeCodeCamp)

My first pick for the best bug bounty course is Web Application Ethical Hacking – Penetration Testing Course for Beginners  by freeCodeCamp.

If you’ve never done anything with web application penetration testing, this course is for you. You’ll cover the fundamental aspects of penetration testing for web applications and in general. By the end of this free course, you’ll have a wide arsenal of testing tools to draw from.

What You’ll Learn

You’ll begin the course by going through the pentesting techniques. The methodology for these techniques is the same for all kinds of application testing. Some of the techniques you’ll pick up are information gathering, scanning and enumeration, exploitation, maintaining access, and cleanup. Not only that, but you’ll also discover several popular tools used for testing like Burp Suite, NIkto, Dirbuster, as well as some bash commands.

OWASP Top 10 is a standard awareness document about the most critical security risks to web applications. You’ll discuss all the top 10 vulnerabilities, from broken access control to injection all the way to server-side request forgery. Finally, you’ll be given a handy list of resources for beginners for you to get up to speed with the world of penetration testing.

How You’ll Learn

This course is 5 hours long. You’ll learn by watching the lecture videos and following along with the instructor as he goes through the materials.

Institution	freeCodeCamp
Provider	YouTube
Instructor	Heath Adams
Level	Beginner
Workload	5 hours total
Views	260K
Likes	7.K
Certificate	None

Fun Facts

• The course has 22 bookmarks on Class Central.
• Check out his YouTube channel, The Cyber Mentor, where he posts about hacking.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

2. Intro to Bug Bounty Hunting and Web Application Hacking (Udemy)

My second pick for the best bug bounty course Intro to Bug Bounty Hunting and Web Application Hacking.

This is an introductory course on practical bug bounty hunting. In this paid course, you’ll learn the ethical hacking principles and techniques to get you started finding bugs.

No knowledge of bug bounty hunting is required to take this course.

What You’ll Learn

In this course, you’ll be given an overview of vulnerabilities like open redirect, cross-site scripting, cross-site request forgery, SQL injection, and so on.

In each chapter, you’ll focus on understanding what the vulnerabilities are and how to look for them. Then, you’ll be given a live demo of how to exploit and find these vulnerabilities in different applications. Later, you’ll have a hands-on lab where you’ll be shown how to approach a target, how to do recon, and how to look for each vulnerability type in a specific application.

How You’ll Learn

This course is 5 hours long. You’ll learn by watching the lecture videos and by doing the hands-on laboratory exercises.

Provider	Udemy
Instructor	Ben Sadeghipour
Level	Intermediate
Workload	5 hours total
Enrollments	21K
Rating	4.5 / 5.0 (2K)
Certificate	Paid

Fun Facts

• Ben Sadeghipour is the head of education at HackerOne, having successfully hacked into organizations like Airbnb, Apple, Valve, Lyft, Snapchat, and The US Department of Defense.
• You can find him streaming on Twitch and making YouTube videos.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

3. Complete Bug Bounty | Ethical Hacking | Web Application Hacking Course (YouTube)

My third pick is Complete Bug Bounty | Ethical Hacking | Web Application Hacking Course by Ryan John.

This free course will help beginners start finding bugs right away!

You’ll learn the skills needed to become a bounty hunter, starting from the basics and working your way up to an intermediate level. By the end of this course, you’ll have the tools needed to tackle most common vulnerabilities.

No prior knowledge of bug bounty is required to take this course.

What You’ll Learn

The first part of the course asks the question “What can I do that I’m not supposed to do with an application?”. You’ll install Kali Linux, a Linux distribution designed for penetration testing, and use it as your bug hunting base. You’ll then learn a variety of tools and techniques to find security vulnerabilities like SQL and XML injection. A crash course on Python is also included where you’ll learn how to make and manipulate requests.

Moving on to the intermediate topics, you’ll focus on understanding what’s going on behind the scenes when exploiting flaws in an application. Topics covered include command injection, uploading files, as well as a demonstration of attacking WordPress.

How You’ll Learn

This course is 8 hours long. You’ll learn by watching the videos and following along with the instructor as he demonstrates the tools and techniques throughout the course.

Provider	YouTube
Instructor	Ryan John
Level	Beginner
Workload	8 hours total
Views	37K
Likes	2.4K
Certificate	None

Fun Facts

• You can find the instructor’s other courses here: Phd Security.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

4. Ethical Hacking 101: Web App Penetration Testing – a full course for beginners (freeCodeCamp)

In this comprehensive free course, you’ll learn the art of bug bounty starting from the ground up. By the end of the course, you’ll be equipped with a wide range of tools and techniques needed to become a professional bounty hunter.

What You’ll Learn

You’ll begin the course by setting up Burp Suite, an integrated platform for performing security testing of web applications. The application allows you to intercept data sent between the client and the server and see how attacks against the client and server can manipulate the data sent between them. You’ll also be acquainted with other penetration testing tools too, like ZAP and WAFW00F.

From there, you’ll be taught a variety of tools within the Burp Suite like spidering to crawl and collect pages within a website. Understanding the terminology bounty hunters use is also essential, so by the end of the course, you’ll learn what it means by reverse engineering, SQL injection, cookie stealing, and more.

How You’ll Learn

This course is 3 hours long. You’ll learn by watching and following along with the YouTube lecture.

Institution	freeCodeCamp
Provider	YouTube
Instructor	HackerSploit
Level	Beginner
Workload	3 hours total
Views	1.5M
Likes	34K
Certificate	None

Fun Facts

• The course has 29 bookmarks on Class Central.

• freeCodeCamp offers many other courses on various programming languages on their YouTube channel as well as on their website.

• Check out the HackerSploit YouTube channel and HackerSploit Blog where they post all things hacking.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

5. The Bug Hunter’s Methodology Full 2-hour Training (YouTube)

This free short course from Defcon 2020 focuses on reconnaissance which in the world of bug bounty hunting means collecting as much information as possible about the target to help you penetrate into the system. This is a critical step in the bug hunting process, and you’ll be given live examples using Office Depot.

What You’ll Learn

The course begins by going through some of the steps you should take before looking for bugs in a system. You’ll learn how to find root domains and subdomains, use ASN enumeration and reverse WHOIS to get valuable metadata about a website.

Automating recon can be a time-saver. A few techniques you’ll be acquainted with are sub-domain enumeration and scrapping, port analysis, and screenshots.

How You’ll Learn

This course is 2 hours long. You’ll learn by watching the lecture videos and following along with the instructor.

Provider	YouTube
Instructor	Jason Haddix
Level	Beginner
Workload	2 hours total
Views	122K
Likes	3.7K
Certificate	None

Fun Facts

• The course has 96 bookmarks on Class Central.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

6. Intigriti Hackademy (Intigriti)

Intigriti Hackademy is a collection of free online learning resources in the field of web security. It contains bug bounty articles for virtually every vulnerability category with short explainer videos and challenges. And, there are also guides and tutorials on hacking tools and platforms that you can follow along.

What You’ll Learn

The course covers 11 vulnerability types: cross-site scripting, server-side request, cross-site request forgery, XML external entity injection, insecure direct object reference, clickjacking, directory traversal, file upload vulnerabilities, open redirect, HTTP parameter pollution, and SQL injection. Each type comes with video examples and challenges for you to complete.

How You’ll Learn

This course is divided into topic-wise chapters, so you may go through one chapter and skip another as you please. You’ll learn by reading the articles, trying out the code examples, and watching the instructional videos.

Institution	Intigriti
Level	Beginner
Workload	N/A
Certificate	None

Fun Facts

• Integriti is an ethical hacking and bug bounty platform helping companies protect themselves from cybercrime.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

7. Hacker101 (HackerOne) 

This free YouTube playlist covers a broad range of topics teaching everything you need to know to become a bug bounty hunter. You’ll learn how to identify, exploit, and remediate the top web security vulnerabilities, how to properly handle cryptography, how to design and review applications from a security standpoint, how to operate as a bug bounty hunter or a security consultant, and much more.

To take this course, you should have some knowledge performing web requests with a language you know.

What You’ll Learn

You’ll begin the course by taking a look at the basic concepts of the web and how they affect security — HTTP requests, HTML parsing, cookies, and more. You’ll learn how they work and how they can be exploited to reveal secret info or hijack an account. Then, you’ll learn about a few common security vulnerabilities like XSS, SQL injection, clickjacking, file upload bugs, and so on. Burp suite, a vulnerability scanning web security platform, will be covered to help you get looking for security flaws immediately. Finally, you’ll be given a crash course on cryptography in the field before acquiring some skills needed to become a professional, like threat modeling and report writing.

How You’ll Learn

This course is 5 hours long. You’ll learn by watching the lecture videos and following along with the demonstrations.

Institution	HackerOne
Provider	YouTube
Instructor	Cody Brocious
Level	Beginner
Workload	5 hours total
Views	276K
Certificate	None

Fun Facts

• Hacker101 is a free educational resource developed by HackerOne to grow and empower the hacker community at large. You can find more content from them on their website.
• They also have a Discord community for hackers.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

8. Web Security Academy (PortSwigger)

Web Security Academy by PortSwigger teaches beginners web security testing through free guided labs and exercises.

PortSwigger offers a Burp Suite Certified Practitioner accreditation for anyone who wants to put their skills to the test.

What You’ll Learn

First, you’ll study server-side vulnerabilities. You’ll learn a couple of vulnerabilities, starting with injections like SQL infection, command injection, and XXE injection. You’ll also learn how common authentication mechanisms used by websites can be hijacked by malicious actors, along with other things like access control and server-side request forgery (SSRF).

Next, you’ll move from the server to the client. You’ll be taught how to identify and exploit potential client-side vectors like cross-site scripting (XSS), cross-site request forgery (CSRF), and cross-origin resource sharing. Finally, you’ll end the course with a discussion on advanced topics like insecure deserialization and web cache poisoning.

How You’ll Learn

This course is self-paced. You’ll learn by going through the topic-wise articles and completing the labs.

Institution	PortSwigger
Level	Beginner
Workload	N/A
Certificate	Paid

Fun Facts

• PortSwigger is a web security company on a mission to enable the world to secure the web. One of their most famous products is Burp Suite.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

9. BugBountyHunter (BugBountyHunter.com)

My ninth pick for the best bug bounty course is BugBountyHunter.com.

This free-to-audit course offers guided hands-on challenges based on real-world scenarios to help you hone and master your web security skills.

You should have some experience with bug bounty hunting to excel in the challenges.

What You’ll Learn

This course offers three types of challenges: newcomer, advanced, and playground.

Newcomer challengers are for those who just got into bug bounty and want to dip their toes into the pool of common vulnerabilities.

Advanced challenges are for those who have a thing or two under their belt and want to test themselves with more obscure and difficult security vulnerabilities.

In zseano’s playground, there are 15+ unique vulnerabilities on a website and it is your job to try and find all of them while having fun at the same time.

How You’ll Learn

You’ll learn by completing the challenges provided in the course.

Website	BugBountyHunter.com
Instructor	zseano
Level	Intermediate
Workload	N/A
Certificate	None

Fun Facts

• The course has 95 bookmarks on Class Central.
• The course offers a paid membership where you’ll have access to a lot more exercises and lessons related to bug hunting.

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.

10. Bug Bounty Hunter Job Role Path (Hack The Box)

Hack The Box’s paid Bug Bounty Hunter course is for anyone looking to become a bug bounty hunter with little to no prior experience. By the end of the course, you’ll be proficient in the most common bug bounty hunting and attack techniques against web applications and be able to professionally report bugs to a vendor.

What You’ll Learn

The course begins by covering the background knowledge every bug bounty hunter should know. You’ll cover core web application security assessment and bug bounty hunting concepts to gain a deep understanding of the attack tactics used during bug bounty hunting. Then, you’ll explore the bug bounty hunting stages, from reconnaissance and bug identification to exploitation, documentation, and communication to vendors/programs.

How You’ll Learn

This course is self-paced and consists of 257 sections. You’ll learn by going through the interactive browser-based exercises and tutorials.

Institution	Hack The Box
Level	Advanced
Workload	N/A
Certificate	Paid

If you’re interested in this course, you can find more information about the course and how to enroll here.