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[2026] 270+ Coursera Courses Still Completely Free

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Free courses on Coursera

Is Coursera Free?

Yes, but only partially. Coursera has over 15,000 active courses, and the vast majority require payment to complete. But we found more than 270 courses that are still completely free, including graded assignments. No credit card required, no certificate at the end, just full access to the course.

At Class Central, we get the “Is Coursera free?” question so often that I wrote a guide to answer it.

Here’s the short version: Coursera’s entire catalog used to be free. In late 2015, they introduced a paywall. Over the following years, this monetization approach expanded to other online course providers, including edX. Most Coursera courses were free to audit, but completing graded assignments or earning a certificate required payment.

In mid-2025, Coursera replaced Audit Mode with Preview Mode, which allows full access to the first module of a course including graded items. To progress further, you need to pay.

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

But a subset of courses on Coursera remained completely free. When you enroll in these courses, you see a “Full Course, No Certificate” option, meaning you get everything except the certificate at no cost.

The Preview Option (Free First Module)

Many courses now show a Preview option that lets you access the first module (including graded items) without entering payment details. This option is easy to miss: look for the “Preview” link at the very bottom of the enrollment pop-up window.

Free Preview option

Partner-Supported Free Access (6 Courses)

A small number of courses offer something called Partner-supported free access: full course access including graded items, completely free. This is different from Preview Mode.

Important: Do NOT click the Enroll for Free button. Instead, scroll down to the Frequently Asked Questions section on the Coursera page and select the learn more link. After completing the course, you can optionally purchase a certificate.

Currently, 6 courses have this option:

Scroll down to the Partner-supported free access link

Which Courses are Entirely Free?

Out of Coursera’s 15,000+ active courses, we found more than 270 fully free courses.

The biggest challenge is finding which Coursera courses are entirely free. Coursera’s website doesn’t offer a “free course” filter. To confirm a course is fully free, you have to log in, enroll, and look for the “Full Course, No Certificate” option.

With thousands of courses on Coursera, checking them one by one isn’t practical. So we used an automated approach. Originally, I used the browser automation tool Selenium to check courses for me. My colleague Bob set me up with an AWS instance and Cloud9 IDE. (Yes, I prefer PHP.)

Automating the search for free Coursera courses with Selenium

Out of Coursera’s 15,000+ active courses, we found more than 270 fully free courses with full access including graded assignments, but no certificate.

Free Coursera Courses: Stats

Here are the stats for the 270+ completely free courses on Coursera:

  • Combined, these courses have 8M enrollments, with an average of 29K enrollments
  • Enrollments range from 2 to 1.4M. 2 courses have over 1M enrollments
  • 835 Class Central reviews across all courses, averaging 13 reviews each
  • Average rating: 4.64/5.0
  • 2,500+ hours of learning content in total

By level:

  • Beginner: 222 courses
  • Intermediate: 46 courses
  • Advanced: 3 courses

By language:

  • English: 212
  • Spanish: 24
  • Portuguese: 17
  • Hindi: 10
  • French: 4
  • Catalan: 2
  • Swedish: 1
  • Arabic: 1

Browse the Free Coursera Course List

Below, I’ve compiled all 270+ entirely free Coursera courses. Note: none of these courses include a certificate option.

To help you navigate, I’ve broken the list down by subject. Click to jump to the relevant section.

Free Certificate Courses

If you don’t find what you need in the course list below or you are looking for free certificate courses, browse Class Central’s catalog of 250K courses or visit our thematic collections:

You can find all our free certificates articles here.

Artificial Intelligence (16)

Programming (77)

Data Science (6)

Information Security (InfoSec) (8)

Business (45)

Computer Science (26)

Health & Medicine (13)

Art & Design (4)

Humanities (14)

Education & Teaching (9)

Mathematics (5)

Science (11)

Social Sciences (30)

Engineering (3)

Personal Development (2)

Certifications (2)

The post [2026] 270+ Coursera Courses Still Completely Free appeared first on The Report by Class Central.

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