The best online coding courses offer a great way to get started as a coder – and to develop and update your existing skills. Unfortunately, there are a lot of poor training materials online, which can make it hard to choose a reliable course. So to help you avoid wasting your time, we've brought together the best coding courses available.
Below you'll find both free and paid-for course suppliers covering a range of coding topics, from CSS animation and parallax scrolling to how to make the best website layout. These providers all offer quality courses designed and taught by experts in the field. They should enable you to learn the skills you need quickly and efficiently.
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You can use the form below to find your perfect coding course, or scroll down to see our 15 top picks for the best courses available.
We work with industry-leading providers to match your requirements with their courses. Just tell us what you need to develop your career, and our most suitable partners will contact you to see if you want to take things forward.
Simply tell us a bit about you, what your career goals are, and leave some contact details.
We'll match your requirements with the services our partners offer.
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The best online coding courses in 2021
Founded by Stanford professors, Coursera works with universities, colleges and other major corporations to offer all kinds of online courses, specialisations, and degrees. If you're looking for academic rigour from your coding courses, you'll certainly find it here.
When it comes to coding, there are a number of free courses, although you’ll generally have to pay to receive a certificate. Topics range from beginner level courses, such as Web Design for Everybody: Basics of Web Development & Coding by the University of Michigan, to more advanced options such as IBM’s course in Applied AI with Deep Learning.
Of all the tools we've dug into, Pluralsight's is one of the most pleasing to use. Not only does the website look great, but it offers quality content and a great experience for the student. You can follow a clear 'path', which guides you through a succession of different courses, or you can opt for a single course on its own. The videos are quirky and fun in an after-school club kind of way, offering a refreshing break from the usual dry video tutorials. It's like watching Bill Nye explain things, which we have to say, is very comforting.
After viewing a video, you work on your own tasks – relating back to the video if required. If you get really stuck you can 'buy' answers with points earned from other classes.
If you'd prefer not to spend any money, Free Code Camp is a non-profit, interactive learning platform with 6,000+ tutorials that claims to have more than 40,000 graduates working at tech firms such as Google and Microsoft.
Learning is based on an integrated code editor, and you can save your work as you go. Its focus is very much on the basics, with certificated, 300-hour courses on responsive web design, JavaScript algorithms and data structures, front end libraries, data visualisation, and APIs and microservices. There’s also a useful set of challenges to prepare you for interviews for coding jobs.
Shaw Academy offers online courses in a range of subjects, including web design and development. They're mainly aimed at beginners, and they're certified by Austin Peay University.
The coding and technology class covers creating your first app, plus making a site using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. This is a great way to get started, and the first four weeks are free so you can give it a try before deciding whether you want to sign up. Various payment plans are available. Shaw Academy also has courses in Python programming, web design and coding for kids.
Envato Tuts+ is a broad training platform that offers courses on several aspects of design, from coding and web design to 3D and illustration. What's great is that you can choose exactly how you want to learn, whether that's by video-based lessons, tutorials or ebooks, including the ever-popular A Book Apart series. An Envato Tuts+ monthly subscription gives you access to all these learning materials, plus its excellent design resource library, Envato Elements.
Skillshare is a subscription-based service that offers thousands of courses in different subjects. Many of its best coding courses are taught by world-class web developers such as Rachel Andrew, Christian Heilmann, and Jenn Lukas.
Courses come complete with supplementary materials created by the instructors, and they include projects for you to apply your new skills to. There's also an iOS or Android app that allows you to stream courses on the go.
Fancy live coding workshops? General Assembly organises livestreams, ranging from 'Intro to coding' to 'Python Programming Crash Course'. Some of them are free but most are paid for. To access them, you need to buy an e-ticket and then log in to the livestream when it starts (just be aware of timezone differences!).
For those who lack the motivation to learn at their own pace, live workshops offer a good way to 'force' yourself to learn. On top of that, having something in the calendar means you're more likely to find the time to do it. If you do miss the class, however, you'll usually be able to get hold of a recording later.
Udacity offers solid guides on many different subjects, with big selection of free courses. It also has a range of 'nanodegrees', which cover in-demand skills. One thing that's very useful is that all of Udacity's coding courses are summarised before you begin, outlining the difficulty level, why the course is important, any prerequisites for taking it and the project you'll complete at the end.
Udemy offers an expansive catalogue of courses, filled with thousands of other topics besides web and technology. Whatever area of coding you're looking to learn about, we're pretty confident that you'll find a course for it here.
On the downside, the vast number of courses available (over 80,000 at the time of writing) does make it tricky to dig out the good stuff. Also, the prices range from free to hundreds of dollars.
Treehouse aims to make learning fun. The structure is simple: learn from the video courses (which are regularly refreshed to reflect industry changes), practise your new skills through quizzes and challenges, and earn badges to reflect the skills you've already mastered. This gamification is well designed and can really help to motivate learning.
It actually has one of the most comprehensive libraries of educational materials on this list. Not only does it offer a large variety of coding courses, but it also includes 'workspaces' where you can try out new projects in your own time and a library with videos of talks from industry professionals. It offers an iPad app to continue your learning there, too.
Codecademy is another fun option. It's a free source of coding courses that's easy to set up, and it allows you to create goals for yourself and find the skills you want to learn. These may range from applicable things like creating a portfolio site to silly, fun things like animating your name or building a CSS galaxy. There's also a paid Pro version, which gives you access to exclusive quizzes, projects, and customised learning paths.
Mijingo is an online learning resource that features step-by-step video tutorials for both web design and development. Its online coding courses aren't for beginners: they're specifically aimed at helping web professionals get up to date with the latest developments.
Current courses focus on topics including Git, Craft, ExpressionEngine, Twig. Alternatively, you can pick a lesson on a small, specific element of a broader topic. Stream the videos or download them to any device to watch at your leisure. The courses are cohesive and thorough, and some offer transcripts, starter files and other resources.
Sitepoint offers a range of 'paths' to follow to learn particular coding skills. These offer a clear journey through a specific subject, such as HTML and CSS, Angular, or JavaScript. You follow these online coding courses at your own pace to complete your goals. Sitepoint also offers a range of books, courses and screencasts to supplement your learning.
If you have kids between the ages of six and 11 that are interested in learning to code, BT has found a way of teaching online coding in a way that's great fun for youngsters. At Code A Cake, a colourful website created by AnalogFolk, you create a robot-staffed bakery in order to bake a cake, using the art of coding.
Yes, it sounds strange, but it's a clever way to get your kids to pick up some basic coding skills. Parents may well learn a thing or two along the way, too.
EDX brings together coding courses from top universities such as MIT, Georgia Tech, UC Berkeley, and Harvard, as well as A-list companies like IBM, Microsoft, W3C and Linux, for you to learn online. There are a number of free coding courses to get you started and help you choose your path for future learning, although you'll need to pay to get a validated certificate upon completion.
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We work with industry-leading providers to match your requirements with their courses. Just tell us what you need to develop your career, and our most suitable partners will contact you to see if you want to take things forward.
Simply tell us a bit about you, what your career goals are, and leave some contact details.
We'll match your requirements with the services our partners offer.
Only the companies who match your requirements will reach out.
