Disclosure: Class Central is learner-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Course Report

[2024] 1700 Coursera Courses Still Completely Free

Did you know Coursera has many courses that are still completely free? Class Central has the complete list.

Free courses on Coursera

Is Coursera Free?

At Class Central, we get that question so often that I wrote a guide to answer it. Nowadays, most Coursera courses are free to audit. But if you want to complete graded assignments or get a course certificate, you have to pay.

Coursera’s entire catalog used to be entirely free. But in late 2015, they introduced a paywall. Over the following years, this monetization approach expanded to other online course providers, including edX.

Free Coursera course: “Full Course, No Certificate” option (with graded assignments)

But I always knew that there were a few courses on Coursera that remained completely free. When you enroll in these courses, they offer a “Full Course, No Certificate” option, as you can see above.

By contrast, other courses tend to offer a more restrictive free-to-audit option, which doesn’t include graded assignments. This option is also quite easy to miss. You have to look for the “audit” link at the very bottom of the window that pops up when you enroll.
Free Coursera course: Free audit option (without graded assignments)

Which Courses are Entirely Free?

Out of Coursera’s 7000 or so active courses, I expected to find about 50 fully-free courses. Imagine my surprise (shock, really) when I found that close to 1700 Coursera courses are still completely free

The biggest challenge is finding which Coursera courses are entirely free. The Coursera website doesn’t provide any “free course” filter (Class Central does though 😊). To know if a course is fully free, you have to log into Coursera, enroll in the course, and look for the “Full Course, No Certificate” option.

But there are thousands of courses on Coursera, so short of checking them one by one, it’s tricky to manually put together a list of their fully-free courses. So instead, we went with an automated approach.

Originally, I used the browser automation tool Selenium to check the courses for me. My colleague Bob set me up with an AWS instance and Cloud9 IDE, where I could do this automation. Below is a screenshot of the setup. (Yes, I prefer PHP.)

Automating the search for free Coursera courses with Selenium

Out of Coursera’s 7000 or so active courses, I expected to find about 50 fully-free courses. Imagine my surprise (shock, really) when I found that close to 1700 Coursera courses are still completely free (that is, including the graded assignments, minus only the free certificate).

Free Coursera Courses

Below, I’ve compiled the 1700 entirely free courses offered on Coursera. It includes a number of highly-rated courses, including a few from Class Central’s Best Online Courses of All Time, such as Barbara Oakley’s Learning How to Learn.

Here are some stats about the course list:

  • Combined, these courses have 76M enrollments.
  • Combined, they have received 41K reviews on Class Central.
  • There are 9 courses with over 1M enrollments.
  • The most popular one, Yale’s Science of Well-Being, has 4.3M enrollments.
  • 58% of the courses are in English and 14% are in Spanish.

To help you navigate the course list, I’ve broken it down by subject. Click on one to jump to the corresponding courses.

Free Certificate Courses

If you don’t find what you need in the course list below, browse Class Central’s catalog of over 100K courses or visit our thematic collections:

You can find all our free certificates articles here.


Personal Development (78)

Health & Medicine (196)

Science (194)

Humanities (197)

Computer Science (103)

Programming (81)

Mathematics (44)

Engineering (88)

Social Sciences (212)

Business (255)

Art & Design (67)

Data Science (45)

Education & Teaching (85)

Information Security (InfoSec) (16)

Dhawal Shah Profile Image

Dhawal Shah

Dhawal is the CEO of Class Central, the most popular search engine and review site for online courses and MOOCs. He has completed over a dozen MOOCs and has written over 200 articles about the MOOC space, including contributions to TechCrunch, EdSurge, Quartz, and VentureBeat.

Comments 47

  1. JP Miller

    Dhawal, this is awesome. Thank you so much for putting this list together!

    Reply
  2. garuba ojo Fredericks

    beautiful….i love it

    Reply
  3. Festus OTUONYE.

    This is a good development. There’s no end to learning and improvement in knowledge. Thanks for your work.

    Reply
  4. Jude Lumala

    Dhawal, you are most appreciated for this.

    Reply
  5. SUMIT

    This is amazing Dhawal. Pretty cool. thanks for helping all of us out here.

    kudos

    Reply
  6. thehealthylifestyleexpo

    Courses from 166 universities, including Stanford, Georgia Tech, Yale, Duke, and Michigan, are part of the list. Around 35% of the courses are not in English.

    Reply
  7. ck cheung

    Amazing!!! Thanks for putting this together.

    I’ve forwarded this to all my close friends.

    Reply
  8. AMehta

    Fantastic list, Dhawal. I’m sure this changes over time, and I do hope you update your list. Thanks so much for your efforts!

    Reply
  9. Edidiong

    This has been VERY helpful! Thanks a million!

    Reply
  10. Maksim Toropygin

    Your work is amazing, thank you very much.

    Reply
  11. Jay

    Extremely helpful. Thanks for the ground work. You’re a true gentleman and scholar

    Reply
  12. moa

    Thank you so much, very helpful. Last time I checked out Coursera it was still for free (except for the certificates). 🙂

    Reply
  13. Pambili

    Thank you for such a comprehensive breakdown. It’s not always easy to see what is on the platform because we always go looking for something specific.

    Reply
  14. Athina T.

    Amazing work.!

    Reply
  15. ChenWoon

    Wonderful!!

    Reply
  16. Kombe malombola

    Dhawal,
    Firstly I would like to thank you so much for your tireless efforts to teach us the masses, then secondly I would like free online course on contract law

    Reply
  17. Mrs. McDonell

    Thank you for compiling this information. Is there any way to determine courses are from a Secular vs Christian institution ?

    Reply
  18. Ryan

    Thank you! Is it possible to have a similar list for edX as well?

    Reply
  19. Lionel

    Best thing I have ever read

    Reply
  20. annissa maulina

    This is really helpful, based on this tip i’m preparing a resource list for my team in our museum. Due to the pandemic most of our budget are being slashed heavily. Thankyou so much 🙂

    Reply
  21. Mahlenk

    Thank You, Thank You, Thank You. I found so many courses I didn’t know I was looking for. Excited to get started.

    Reply
  22. Roberta (Robin) Sullivan

    Hello, Another free Coursera MOOC without a certificate is SUNY’s Exploring Emerging Technologies for Lifelong Learning and Success (#EmTechMOOC)
    http://suny.edu/emtech
    https://www.coursera.org/learn/emerging-technologies-lifelong-learning

    Coursera is also running a COVID inspired promotion that has 35 of their 3,500+ MOOCs being offered for FREE, including a certificate (through 5/31/2020.). EmTech is included in this offer.

    Coursera Together: enroll today and get this course for free.
    https://www.coursera.org/promo/career-development-free

    SUNY affiliated students, faculty, staff, and alumni always are eligible to take this MOOC and earn a free certificate.

    Reply
  23. Tiffany

    Hello, How long will you continue to have free courses? Thanks!

    Reply
  24. Amanda

    Is there a limit with how many courses you can enroll in with a free certificate? I signed up for two and want to enroll in another but the site isn’t displaying the promotion at the top of the screen as per your GIFs instructions. Thanks

    Reply
  25. Veron

    Hii! I have a question. Can you enroll different courses at the same time? I mean courses with free lessons and free certificate. And in some courses that I’d tried to enroll, when I click to purchase course, says that I have to write my bank account so its not free, that’s not checkout option… Looking forward to hearing from you!

    Thanks

    Reply
  26. Akshita Agarkar

    Wow, I’m just so impressed by your article. Thank you for putting everything in one place. It is helpful, amazing, and informative. Thank You again!

    Reply
  27. Paulin

    Hi, I’m finishing Brand Management: Aligning Business, Brand and Behaviour MOOC that also mentioned above.
    Yet, I don’t know how to get free certification, can someone help me? 🙁
    Thanks.

    Reply
  28. Annabel Saldanha

    Very impressive and informative article Dhawal!
    Would you be able to provide an update for July 2020?

    Reply
  29. Viviana Emile

    This list was so effective and convenient . Thank you so much for your time. Smart people do exist

    Reply
  30. Mr. Scrooge

    Hello,
    Anynew courses added to this list?

    Reply
  31. stephanie

    Thank you so much, but will you add later on more free couses? and also could you add courses for architecture and interior design and their progams (3dsmax, Revit, Sketchup…)

    Reply
  32. ravi srinivasan

    Access is one thing, but a complete course experience is another. we need to distinguish between a course like CS50 on Edx, which offers a complete experience for free, vs many courses on Coursera (or lately Edx), that allow access to videos but not much else. The AI for Medicine, for e.g. offers an audit experience, but also hides some course exercises, quizzes etc.

    Reply
  33. Kj

    Everyone of these I’ve tried requires a payment for certificate

    Reply
    • Dhawal Shah

      As we note in the article, the certificates are paid but all the contents of the course including graded assignments are free. For other Coursera courses, the graded assignments are also behind the certificate paywall.

      Reply
  34. Fernando Lanas

    Thank you very much, this was incredibly helpful!!

    Reply
  35. Xander

    Are there still courses with free certificates in April 2021.. like till 30th April 2021. Please can you update the dates, none are with free certificates.

    Reply
  36. Jesus

    Are there free courses still available, can you update this list please. It was so helpful.

    Reply
  37. Benjamin Parkin

    With Coursera it is pretty fair because you can apply for financial aid. The big issue I had is edX does not have this option. If you wait two weeks you can get into a lot of courses. I did this when I was working in a factory and it was great as it enabled me to go back over college courses I had struggled with when I was younger.

    Reply
    • Nat Jureczko

      Actually, from what I’ve heard, getting financial aid from edX for a course isn’t that hard. The downsides are that 1) the aid doesn’t cover the entirety of the certificate price (the maximum amount is 90%), and 2) you can apply for it for no more than 5 courses per year.

      And that’s why agree with your take on Coursera. Their FA has helped me a lot too, and besides that, it’s pretty cool they still have so many courses with open assignments freely available. IMO that’s the biggest problem with the route edX has taken, even bigger than the lack of affordable access to certificates.

      Often, you might not need the certificate. But if you truly intend to work through the material, a course with locked-up assignments/exams isn’t than much different from watching YT or a good documentary series. Combine that with no subcription model on edX and it’s 1:0 to Coursera, as far as I’m concerned.

      Reply
  38. ALVIN NADEN

    Dear Dhawal,

    Your list is awesome! Thank you.

    However, every course from your list requires a minimum payment of USD19 – USD 49 for obtaining each institutions certificate. Now, as you are much aware, these are challenging/difficult times and forking out even a mimimum can be really tough 🙁

    Therefore, I remember from your previous link https://www.classcentral.com/report/coursera-free-certificates/ you did help us all with really FREE Certificates and I mean really FREE ie. you study and upon completion, you get your prestigious certificates from renowned universities. I was fortunate to find it and achieve many for FREE!

    Is there something like this coming soon? Can you please share with all of us ASAP?

    I am very sure all of us will like that alot 🙂

    Reply
    • Dhawal Shah

      Unfortunately I have no information when and if Coursera will offer free certificates again. But if they do, it will be available on the link you shared.

      Reply
      • ALVIN NADEN

        Dear Dhawal,

        Sorry for the delayed response but I am very grateful to your site for all that you have done and continue to do so. Its people like you give is all additional learning with ease. So thank you and keep sharing!

        Reply
        • ALVIN NADEN

          Typo error amended

          Dear Dhawal,

          Sorry for the delayed response but I am very grateful to your site for all that you have done and continue to do so. Its people like you that give us all additional learning with ease. So thank you and keep sharing!

          Reply
  39. Marvin

    thank you so much!

    Reply
  40. Nassali Sarah

    Thank you so much.

    Reply
  41. Daniel

    Bless you, Dhawal, for your effort in gathering this awesome list.

    Reply

Leave a reply

Your email address will not be published. All comments go through moderation, so your comment won't display immediately.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Browse our catalog

Discover thousands of free online courses from top universities around the world like MIT, Stanford, and Harvard.

Browse all subjects