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.

In this Best Courses Guide, we’ve picked the best free and paid online Bug Bounty courses. Start finding the course that’s right for you and begin your journey to becoming a bug bounty hunter today.

Click on the shortcuts for more details:

• Top Picks
• What is Bug Bounty?
• Stats
• Why You Should Trust Us
• Best Courses Guides Methodology

Here are our top picks

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What is Bug Bounty?

Bug bounties are programs set up by organizations to motivate people to report security vulnerabilities and bugs in their systems — essentially crowdsourcing. In return, these individuals can receive cash rewards or even job offers.

Bug bounties might sound a bit like a wild concept at first — companies actually paying people to hack into their systems. But, believe it or not, this approach works. It’s all about turning potential threats into a proactive defense, saving organizations potentially millions by catching leaks or vulnerabilities before they turn into disasters. The whole idea is pretty much “it takes one to know one.” By inviting the good guys, aka ethical hackers, to test their defenses, companies are a step ahead in the security game.

Big names like Google, Apple, Microsoft, and even the Department of Defense are on board, offering up cash rewards that can range from a humble $10 to a whopping $100,000 or more, depending on how critical the bug is. But it’s not just about the money. Bug bounty hunting is also about the thrill of the chase, the satisfaction of solving a complex puzzle, and the knowledge that you’re outsmarting the bad guys. It’s a blend of challenge, creativity, and contribution that makes bounty hunting not just profitable but genuinely fulfilling.

Stats

• The most-viewed course in this ranking has over 1.8 million views
• 8 courses are free or free-to-audit, 2 courses are paid
• 3 courses offer a certificate of completion.

Best Web Application Ethical Hacking Course for Beginners (The Cyber Mentor)

Start with web application penetration testing in Web Application Ethical Hacking – Penetration Testing Course for Beginners. You’ll learn the fundamentals of penetration testing, exploring techniques, tools, and common attacks that every aspiring ethical hacker should know. By the end of this free course, you’ll have a wide arsenal of testing tools including Burp Suite, Nikto, Dirbuster, curl, sublist3r, and nmap, among others.

The Cyber Mentor, known for his ethical hacking content on YouTube and Twitter, brings real-world experience and knowledge to the course, making complex concepts accessible to beginners.

You’ll learn:

• Web application penetration testing fundamentals
• How to use key pentesting tools such as Burp Suite, Nikto, Dirbuster, and some bash commands
• Common web application attacks including XSS, SQL Injection, and Broken Access Control
• OWASP Top 10 — the most critical security risks to web applications
• Identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities through hands-on examples and live bug bounty hunting sessions.

Best Intro to Bug Bounty Hunting Course and Ethical Hacking Principles (Ben Sadeghipour)

Intro to Bug Bounty Hunting and Web Application Hacking is an insider’s guide to ethical web hacking and bug bounty hunting. In this paid course, you’ll learn the ethical hacking principles and techniques to get you started finding bugs.

Ben Sadeghipour brings his extensive experience as a former Research & Community executive and head of Hacker Education at HackerOne, alongside his passion for educating upcoming hackers through his content on Twitch and YouTube.

You’ll also gain insights into the basics of reconnaissance, how to approach targets, understand bug bounty programs, and write effective bug bounty reports. No knowledge of bug bounty hunting is required to take this course.

In this course, you’ll gain:

• Overview of vulnerabilities: open redirect, cross-site scripting (XSS), cross-site request forgery, SQL injection, and more
• Vulnerabilities: What they are and how to look for them
• Live demo: How to exploit and find vulnerabilities in different applications
• Hands-on lab: How to approach a target, recon, and look for each vulnerability type in a specific application.

Best Practical Bug Bounty Hunting Course with Live Examples (Ryan John)

Beginner to Advanced Bug Bounty Hunting Course by Ryan John is a free course that 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 be an intermediate. 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.

You’ll:

• Install Kali Linux, a Linux dist designed for penetration testing, and use it as your bug hunting base
• Learn a variety of tools and techniques to find security vulnerabilities like SQL and XML injection
• Learn the basics of Python and how to make and manipulate requests
• Understand 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.

Best Short Bug Bounty Course with Live Examples (HackerSploit)

In this concise free course, Ethical Hacking 101: Web App Penetration Testing, you’ll learn the art of bug bounty with a focus on web application penetration testing. 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.

The course is comprehensive, covering both the theoretical aspects and practical applications of ethical hacking, ensuring you come away with a solid foundation in web application penetration testing.

You’ll learn:

• How to set up and use key penetration testing tools such as Burp Suite, ZAP, and Kali Linux
• Identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities in web applications, including brute force attacks, XSS, CSRF, and SQL injection
• Practical experience in web application firewall detection, discovering hidden files, and cookie collection and reverse engineering
• A solid foundation in ethical hacking principles and web application security.

Best Bug Bounty Training for Learning Recon (Jason Haddix)

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 before searching for vulnerabilities. This is a critical step in the bug hunting process, and you’ll be given live examples using Office Depot.

You’ll learn to:

1. Identify key details: Find root domains, subdomains, and metadata using techniques like ASN enumeration and reverse WHOIS.
2. Automate tasks: Save time by using tools to automatically enumerate subdomains, scrape data, analyze ports, and capture screenshots.

By mastering these techniques, you’ll be better prepared to discover and report security weaknesses.

Best Text-based Bug Bounty Tutorials with Challenges (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.

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

This course covers 11 common web vulnerabilities:

• Cross-site scripting (XSS) and server-side request forgery (SSRF): Learn how attackers can inject malicious code or manipulate requests.
• XML injection and insecure references: Understand how flaws in data processing can lead to attacks.
• Clickjacking and directory traversal: Discover how attackers can trick users or access unauthorized data.
• File upload vulnerabilities and open redirects: Learn the risks of insecure file handling and improper redirects.
• HTTP parameter pollution and SQL injection: Explore how attackers can manipulate parameters or inject code into databases.

Each vulnerability is explained with video examples and hands-on challenges, allowing you to learn by doing. The course is flexible, letting you focus on specific topics as needed.

Best Bug Bounty Hunter YouTube Playlist (HackerOne) 

Hacker101 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.

You’ll learn:

• Web Fundamentals: Understand HTTP requests, HTML parsing, cookies, and their security implications.
• Vulnerability Exploits: Learn to identify and exploit common vulnerabilities including XSS, SQL injection, clickjacking, and file uploads.
• Practical Tools: Master Burp Suite for active vulnerability scanning.
• Cryptography Crash Course: Gain basic cryptography understanding for security analysis.
• Professional Skills: Develop threat modeling and report writing skills.

Best Text-based Burp Suite Instruction with Guided Labs (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.

This course explores both server-side and client-side vulnerabilities:

Server-Side:

• Injections: Master exploiting SQL, command, and XXE injections to gain unauthorized access.
• Authentication & Access Control: Learn how attackers bypass common authentication methods and exploit access control flaws.
• Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF): Understand how to manipulate server requests for malicious purposes.

Client-Side:

• Cross-Site Scripting (XSS): Identify and exploit vulnerabilities to inject malicious code into user browsers.
• Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF): Learn how attackers can trick users into performing unauthorized actions.
• Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS): Understand CORS’ impact on security and potential exploitation routes.

Advanced Topics:

• Insecure Deserialization: Learn about the risks of deserializing untrusted data and potential attacks.
• Web Cache Poisoning: Understand how attackers can manipulate website caches for malicious purposes.

Best Collection of Bug Hunting Exercises (BugBountyHunter.com)

BugBountyHunter.com is a free-to-audit course that 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.

This course provides different challenge tiers to cater to various skill levels:

Newcomer Challenges:

• Perfect for beginners, offering practice with common vulnerabilities.
• Ease into bug bounty hunting with accessible tasks.

Advanced Challenges:

• Test your skills with more complex and obscure vulnerabilities.
• Suitable for experienced hunters seeking a deeper dive.

zseano’s Playground:

• An interactive practice ground with 15+ unique vulnerabilities on a website.
• Learn in a fun and hands-on environment.

Best Bug Bounty Hunting Interactive Lab (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.

You’ll learn:

• Foundational Knowledge: Core web application security concepts and bug bounty hunting methodology.
• Structured Learning: All stages of the bug bounty process, from initial recon to reporting vulnerabilities.
• Interactive learning: Practical experience through 257 browser-based exercises and tutorials.
• Self-paced: Tailor your learning journey by studying at your own pace.

Why You Should Trust Us

Class Central, a Tripadvisor for online education, has helped 60 million learners find their next course. We’ve been combing through online education for more than a decade to aggregate a catalog of 200,000 online courses and 200,000 reviews written by our users. And we’re online learners ourselves: combined, the Class Central team has completed over 400 online courses, including online degrees.

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. 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.

Fabio revised the research and the latest version of this article.