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Course Report

1000+ Free Developer and IT Certifications

Massive list of free certificates and badges for developers in data science, software development, and more.

Free Developer & IT Certificates

As avid online learners, my Class Central colleagues and I have completed hundreds of online courses over the years, including many with free certificates, as you can see in the collage below.

In 2023, free certificates have become rarer. But if you know where to look, there is still an abundance of free certificates available online for learning software development.

In this article, we bring together all the free certificates and badges that are scattered across the web. In total, the platforms below offer over 1000 free certificate courses for learning software development.

Some of the free certificates earned by the Class Central team

I started Class Central back in 2011, when universities such as Stanford began to offer some of their courses online for free. Since then, the Class Central database has grown to over 100K online courses.

Having written about online education for over a decade, I remember when platforms like Coursera and edX offered free certificates. Then, rather abruptly, free certificates seemed to pretty much disappear.

This inspired us to write a Massive List of Free Certificates and Badges. To our surprise, we discovered there were still thousands of free certificates available online. To date, that article has received 2M views.

In the same vein, this article aims to draw attention to the organizations that continue to support open education in software development by offering free certificate courses. These include:

  • Learning platforms — e.g. LinkedIn Learning, freeCodeCamp, and FutureLearn.
  • Leading universities — e.g. Harvard, the University of Helsinki, and HPI.
  • Big tech companies — e.g. Google, Microsoft, and IBM.

More Free Certificates

If you don’t find what you need here, browse Class Central’s catalog of 100K courses or visit our thematic collections:

You can find all our free certificates articles here.

Without further ado, here are the platforms where you can find 1000+ free developer certifications.


700+ Free Google Certifications

Rui‘s free Google certificate

Google has launched several initiatives to teach people skills such as coding, digital marketing, and data analytics. You can find a complete list in our dedicated article.

Below is a selection of Google’s offerings:

freeCodeCamp’s Free Certifications

freeCodeCamp free certificate from my colleague Archisha

freeCodeCamp platform offers thousands of hours of learning content, broken down into certifications on subjects such as web development and data science.

Here are the certifications currently offered:

Harvard Free Certificate Courses

Harvard free certificate

Harvard offers a series of academic online courses exploring various facets of computer science, including programming fundamentals and AI. You can find all the details in our dedicated article.

Here are Harvard’s current free certificate offerings:

1000+ of Free Microsoft Badges

Rui‘s Microsoft badges

Microsoft offers thousands of modules and hundreds of learning paths to explore the company’s products, including Office 365, Visual Studio, and Azure. Once you finish a course, you’ll get a badge on your learner profile.

Here are some of the courses offered by Microsoft:

1000+ of Hours of LinkedIn Learning Courses with Free Certification

LinkedIn Learning free certificate from my colleague Suparn

LinkedIn Learning, the online learning platform integrated with the LinkedIn professional social network, offers hundreds of online courses and learning paths that include a free certificate. Here too, we have a dedicated article with a full list.

Here’s a selection of LinkedIn Learning free certificate courses:

University of Helsinki Free Certificates

Elements of AI free certificate from my colleague Pat

The University of Helsinki offers academic online courses through its independent course platform, MOOC.fi, including the following courses which include a free certificate of completion:

1000+ of Free Salesforce Badges

Rui‘s Salesforce badges

Salesforce, the cloud-based software provider, offers online courses through its Trailhead platform. You can learn skills related to Salesforce products. But you can also find courses on broader topics, such as blockchain or IOS development.

There are 1300+ modules and 100+ hands-on projects accessible free of charge on the platform. After finishing a module, you will get a free badge for your profile.

MongoDB Free Certificates

MongoDB free certificate from my colleague Suparn

MongoDB, the popular NoSQL database, offers free certificate courses through its learning platform, MongoDB University. Through these, you’ll learn database fundamentals of databases, and how to interact with them using various programming languages.

Here are some of the certificate courses MongoDB offers:

Redis Free Certificates

Redis free certificate from my colleague Vishnu

Redis is a flexible data storage solution, akin to a lightweight database, that is used a lot in web development. Redis has a dedicated online learning platform, Redis University, where they offer free certificate courses to learn how to use Redis. These include:

Cisco Free Certifications

Cisco Network Academy

Cisco, the IT and networking giant, offers a series of self-paced online courses through its Networking Academy platform that include a free certificate of completion. Here’s the list:

90+ IBM Free Certificates

The CognitiveClass.ai homepage in 2023

IBM’s platform CognitiveClass.ai offers 90 courses and 10 learning paths in data science, AI, big data, cloud computing, and blockchain.

The platform also provides a virtual lab environment allowing users to practice what they’ve learned in the courses. To earn a badge or certificate of completion, you need to score at least 70% in a course.

Here’s a selection of their free certificate courses:

Kaggle Free Certificates

Kaggle free certificate courses

Kaggle is an online community for data scientists and aspiring data scientists alike. It offers over 50K public datasets, allowing you to build your own data science projects through Jupyter notebooks, and participate in competitions.

In addition, the platform offers a series of courses to learn the fundamentals of data science. Each leads to a certificate of completion.

HackerRank Free Certificates

HackerRank free certificate from my colleague Manoel

HackerRank, a platform for learning algorithms and data structures and preparing for coding interviews, provides skills certifications tests in topics such as problem solving, Python, and JavaScript.

Here are some of the tests you may complete to earn a certificate:

30+ DataCamp Free Certificates

Rui‘s free DataCamp certificate

DataCamp is a popular online platform for — you guessed it — learning about data science, but also general programming. The platform offers a series of courses that culminate in a statement of accomplishment. Here’s a selection:

100+ of Great Learning Free Certificates

Great Learning free certificate from my colleague Manoel

Great Learning offers over a hundred free certificate courses in a wide variety of subjects, such as AI, data science, programming, cloud computing, and digital marketing. Here’s a selection:

60+ upGrad Free Certificates

upGrad free certificate from my colleague Suparn

upGrad is an online learning platform that offers over 60 free programs on subjects such as data science, business analytics, and technology.

Once you complete all the modules of a program, you’ll receive a certificate of completion.

Here are some of the free programs offered on upGrad:

100+ FutureLearn Free Certificates

FutureLearn free certificate from my colleague Elham

FutureLearn, the European counterpart to Coursera and edX, offers hundreds of courses that include a “digital upgrade” — which, among others, entails a free certificate of completion. Again, you can find more details in our dedicated article.

Here’s a list of some of FutureLearn’s free offerings:

Jovian Free Certificates

Jovian free certificate courses

Jovian is an online data science bootcamp that offers a handful of free certificate courses. Here’s the list:

GitLab Free Certificates

A couple of GitLab free certifications

GitLab, the popular version control website for hosting your repos, also offers free online courses to grow your professional skills.

Here are the free certifications on the platform:

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.
Rui Ma Profile Image

Rui Ma

With a background in Health Statistics and Sociology, she has built a career path in Data Analytics.

Comments 13

  1. Lucio

    Manu many thanks!!

    So apreciated!

    Greetings from Argentina.

    Reply
  2. MESSAOUDI Mohamed

    Manu many thanks!!

    So apreciated!

    Greetings from tunisia

    Reply
  3. Nhan

    Many thanks for your effort creating such a great list.

    Reply
  4. Jennifer Burkhart

    Can Highschool students take these courses? Thank you

    Reply
    • Nick k

      Yes anybody can do it.

      Reply
  5. JK

    What an awesome share Rui Ma, for such rich content we couldn’t possibly thank you enough!! Many many thanks and God Bless You immensely!

    Reply
  6. Onesime Mbulayi

    A TikTok video of less than a minute my arrival here, I say thank you for the resources. Let’s develop knowledge and humanity.

    Reply
  7. Shawnm Sherzad

    Hello dear, thanks for the opportunity to learn, good luck to all and special thanks to the organizers of this course.

    Reply
  8. Aram Zap

    Wow! This is an amazing list. Thank you Rui Ma for sharing this to everyone. I’m starting a course right now!

    Greetings from Brazil.

    Reply
  9. meghna

    this website is literally a holygrail for me. thankyou so much for the informations provided.

    Reply
  10. Kshitiz Rai

    Loved this hard work of searching the best for us.

    Reply
  11. Mubin Al Muktadir

    You did a great job bro! It’s so helpful for all of us.

    Reply
  12. Dennis Njogu

    I am sincerely grateful for putting together all the pieces of power information on the FREE courses. I owe you much RESPECT. Won’t mind buying a coffee

    Reply

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