Despite its age, C’s relevance in the tech world hasn’t waned a bit, boasting a developer community of 6 million. Yet, why is it so difficult to find a good introductory course for C, especially for newcomers to programming?

Well, I don’t know the answer to that question, but what I do know is that your search ends here.

In this Best Courses Guide (BCG), I’ve combed through the internet to bring you the crème de la crème of free or free-to-audit C courses. For those of you who are dipping your toes into the programming world for the first time, I’ve selected courses that offer a well-rounded education, not just in programming techniques, but in computer science principles as well. And for the seasoned programmers eager to add C to their repertoire, I’ve found courses rich with practical exercises and real-world examples to get your hands dirty.

Click on the shortcuts for more details:

• Top Picks
• What is C?
• BCG Stats
• Why You Should Trust Us
• How We Made Our Picks and Tested Them

Here are my top picks. Click on one to skip to the course details:

What is C?

C is a procedural programming language that operates closer to computer hardware, developed by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs in the early 1970s. It was designed for the Unix operating system, and thus had to strike a balance between efficiency and ease of use, enabling the direct manipulation of hardware with a syntax accessible to a broad range of applications. This balance has made C the language of choice for system-level programming across various platforms, such as MacOS and Linux operating systems.

From powering the operating systems that manage our computers to driving the embedded systems in appliances and vehicles, C’s influence is everywhere. C has the 4th largest developer community, with close to 6 million developers according to the 25th State of the Developer Nation Report.

Learning C offers a pathway to a diverse and rewarding career in technology. According to Glassdoor, the estimated median salary of a C developer in 2024 is $130K.

What’s C++? And what’s the difference between C++ and C?

C++ is an extension of C that supports both procedural and object-oriented programming. Some key differences include:

• Programming Paradigm: C is procedural, while C++ supports object-oriented programming.
• Classes and Objects: C++ uses classes and objects for data encapsulation; C does not.
• Standard Template Library (STL): C++ includes STL for data structures and algorithms; C lacks this feature.
• Exception Handling: C++ has built-in mechanisms for handling errors gracefully; C relies on manual error checking.

If you’re planning to develop complex software like games and GUI applications, C++ is a better choice. See our C++ BCG! But if you’re aiming to develop embedded or IoT applications, then C is the way to go — read on.

BCG Stats

• All of the courses in this ranking are free or free-to-audit
• Eight of the courses require no prior programming experience whatsoever, whereas two do.
• One of the courses offers a free certificate of completion.
• The most represented course provider is Coursera, with three courses in total.
• Around 14.5K people are following Class Central’s C Programming Subject.

Best Free Comprehensive Course For Absolute Beginners with Free Certificate (Harvard)

Reasons to Take
Most comprehensive CS course High-quality video lectures and articles Challenging graded projects No setup needed — coding done in the browser Active support from mentors and learners No programming experience required

Ask the Internet for the best programming language for beginners, and you’ll hear Python, JavaScript, and Ruby mentioned before anyone even brings up C. Why’s that?

It’s not because C is inherently difficult to learn. It’s just that C expects you to know a bit about how computers and programs work, or in other words, computer science basics.

But where do you start if you don’t have the fundamentals? My answer: CS50’s Introduction to Computer Science, the free online course from none other than Harvard.

Millions of beginners (myself included) came out from the course instilled with the knowledge of what computer science is all about, from algorithms to data structures. We also explored the various domains of programming and put what we learned into practice, from databases to websites. Don’t trust me? The social proof is in the thousands of final projects submitted by students all over the world.

If you have the time and energy to take this huge course, and don’t mind not only learning C programming, here are the the main reasons why you should take this course:

1. Syllabus: CS50x’s syllabus is equivalent to on-campus CS50 course at Harvard. That means it doesn’t cut corners. You’ll be introduced to 5 programming languages, various frameworks, and multiple subdomains of computer science (such as AI and cybersecurity)
2. Course Material: Mainly video-lecture based. They are long, but you definitely won’t doze off while watching them due to David Malan’s excellent teaching style and presentation. He even makes use of props and skits to make the lectures more fun.
3. Graded Projects: Arguably — actually, no — objectively the best selling point of this course. There are 10 problem sets to be submitted, and unless you’re a super genius, you’ll probably spend hours solving each. They involve a fair amount of programming and thinking. All of these will be automatically graded and given feedback on, which is crucial for the fledgling developer. Also, all of these takes place in the comfort of the browser, greatly reducing starting friction.
4. Final Project: This serves as proof of your newfound savvy with programming. Working solo or as a team, you’ll submit a video demo of your far-from-trivial software project which will then be reviewed by a human.
5. Community: Running annually since 2008, CS50x has accumulated a large and friendly community of learners. Get help or advice from their official forum or Discord.

The first half of the course focuses on C and CS fundamentals, while the other half focuses more on applications using other languages: Python, SQL, and JavaScript. If you’re not interested in any other languages, feel free to skip them.

And if you’re unsure how to earn your free certificate, see Harvard CS50: How to Get a Free Certificate.

Institution	Harvard University
Provider	edX
Instructors	David J. Malan, Doug Lloyd, and Brian Yu
Prerequisites	None
Workload	72–216 hours
Enrollments	5.5M
Cost	Free
Exercises	Autograded problem sets and final projects
Certificate	Free (Unverified) or Paid (Verified)

Best Free Concise Course for Programmers (learn-c.org)

Reasons to Take
Accessible, easy to start Short and sweet topic-focused chapters In-browser coding exercises

No signups, no nonsense — that’s the charm of learn-c.org’s text-based tutorials.

Just like this overview, this free course is short and sweet, spanning from the bare basics to more intermediate programming concepts like linked lists and pointer arithmetics. At the end of each chapter, you’ll find an interactive in-browser programming exercise, allowing you to apply what you’ve just learned.

I recommend this course for programmers who need a refresher of C, or those who are currently learning to program and want to supplement their learning.

Provider	learn-c.org
Prerequisites	None
Workload	N/A
Github Stars	3.7K
Cost	Free
Exercises	Autograded coding exercises
Certificate	None

Best Hands-On Course for Absolute Beginners (Dartmouth College)

Reasons to Take
Teaches both C programming and Linux Interactive audio/text-based lessons Auditor-friendly in-browser coding and terminal platform Available in French and English No programming experience required

Dartmouth College’s Professional Certificate in C Programming with Linux is without a doubt, the most interactive and hands-on C and Linux course in this BCG. And best part of all, you can take it for free by enrolling in the audit track of each individual course.

Made in collaboration with Institut Mines-Télécom, this course aims to get you job-ready as a C programmer. That is one tall order, sure, but there are several compelling reasons to believe that this course will do what it says.

1. Comprehensive: It’ll take around 9 months to complete the entire course. You won’t just learn the basics and advanced techniques of C programming; the course also delves into essential computer science topics such as algorithms and data structures, all while teaching you to navigate and use Linux — an operating system you’ll frequently encounter in your career.
2. Hands-on and Interactive: Through Codecasts, you can watch live coding sessions, pause at any moment, and directly experiment with the code in your browser. And similarly with WebLinux, you don’t need to set up or install anything on your computer, giving a hassle-free experience.
3. Auditor-friendly: Almost everything in these courses is accessible to audit for free, save for final assessments. You’ll find many ungraded coding exercises and quizzes that come with hints and solutions. You can also find a discussions page where you can interact with fellow learners, as well as the active staff.

Institution	Dartmouth College and Institut Mines-Télécom
Provider	edX
Instructors	Petra Bonfert-Taylor and Rémi Sharrock
Prerequisites	None
Workload	70–140 hours
Cost	Free-to-audit
Exercises	Autograded coding  exercises, quizzes, and final assessments
Certificate	Paid

Best Free Low-Level Deep-Dive Course for Programmers (Charles Severance)

Reasons to Take
Focuses on “classic” C, including its UNIX background Delves into C as the mother for modern programming languages Hands-on in-browser coding lessons Covers the legendary K&R book

The C language stands ancient at half a century old. It witnessed the shift of programmers writing for specialized computer hardware such as mainframes, to focusing on developing portable and efficient software. There is much to learn from its rich history, so says Charles Severance in his free course, C Programming for Everybody (CC4E).

Charles Severance’s course explores computer architecture and low-level programming through the “classic” version of the C language. With the C Bible, K&R’s The C Programming Language as the guide, you’ll learn and reflect on C’s role in the genesis of modern programming languages such as Python or Java. This will involve a deep dive into the language, and thus you’ll study the basics like C’s program structure and syntax, to bigger concepts like data structures, I/O, and Object Oriented Programming.

This is another rare course that provides interactive and graded coding exercises / quizzes in the browser for all learners. These can be found on CC4E’s website.

If you want to earn a certificate, enroll in the CC4E Coursera Specialization.

Channel	freeCodeCamp
Provider	YouTube
Instructor	Charles Severance
Prerequisites	Experience with Python or similar languages
Workload	9–10 hours
Views	511K
Likes	16K
Cost	Free
Exercises	Autograded coding exercises and quizzes
Certificate	Paid

Best Textbook for Beginners (K. N. King)

Reasons to Take
Comprehensive, in-depth Excellent reference material One-third of programming exercises comes with solutions No programming experience required

Do you love textbooks? I absolutely do. With enough discipline, they’re extremely useful for self-paced studying and deep diving into a subject.

And one introductory C textbook that’s widely acclaimed is K. N. King’s C Programming: A Modern Approach. Used in over 225 colleges, it has staked its claim to programming textbook biblehood alongside the legendary K&R. But unlike K&R, it is far more approachable and digestible for complete beginners, with easy-to-follow writing, clear explanations, and practical examples.

By the time you finish this undergraduate-level book, you’ll have a complete understanding of both the basic and advanced features of C. You’ll be able to use what you learn for even more advanced topics in the future, from data structures, to compiler design, operating systems, computer graphics, embedded systems, and more.

What’s even better than a textbook with practice problems? A textbook with practice problems and solutions! The problems range from short exercises that don’t require any coding, to bigger programming projects that take a good amount of effort writing or modifying an entire program.

Instructor	K. N. King
Prerequisites	None
Workload	N/A
Rating (Amazon)	4.4 / 5.0 (330)
Cost	Paid
Exercises	Practice exercises and programming projects
Certificate	None

Best Free Systems Programming Course for Programmers (Brian Hall)

Reasons to Take
Casual writing-style Many coding examples, great for programmers In-depth

Beej’s Guides is a collection of free programming tutorials written by Brian Hall, a software developer with over 20 years of experience. They mainly focus on network programming and other systems programming topics using the C language.

His guides are thorough, packed with clear explanations and hands-on examples, and written in a casual, chatty style. He manages to make reading fun with his humor and makes even the trickiest topics easy to grasp for newbies, which speaks a lot about his teaching ability.

So if you’re a geek who loves learning in comprehensive detail but hates dry, dreary textbooks, why not give his guides a read?

Beej’s Guide to C—Tutorial

• Target Audience: Programmers with prior experience
• Content: Goes into far more detail into C programming than your average C 101 college course, including the compiler, multithreading, and atomics.

Beej’s Guide to Network Programming

• Target Audience: C programmers
• Content: Teaches socket (TCP/IP) programming in C and is considered a classic resource for learning how to write programs that communicate over a network.

Beej’s Guide to Unix Interprocess Communication

• Target Audience: C programmers
• Content: Covers inter-process communication in Unix/Linux environments, including pipes, message queues, shared memory, and semaphores.

Provider	Independent
Instructor	Brian “Beej” Hall
Prerequisites	Prior programming experience
Workload	N/A
Cost	Free
Exercises	None
Certificate	None

Best Course for STEM Students (University of Colorado System)

Reasons to Take
Emphasis on computational thinking than coding Humorous yet approachable teaching style Not overwhelming for non-programmers

Without the right approach to problem-solving, programming becomes tedious work.

Thus, University of Colorado System’s specialization aims to equip students, specifically those in STEM, with the basics of computational thinking, the process of formulating complex problems in a simple way that allows computers to solve them, and C programming.

Each course in this specialization can be audited individually for free. However, you won’t have access to the graded programming assignments which are given every week.

1. Algorithms, Data Collection, and Starting to Code: You’ll start learning how to develop C programs by writing your first C program; learning about data types, variables, and constants; and honing your C programming skills by implementing a variety of STEM computations.
2. Data Analysis and Representation, Selection and Iteration: Learn how to analyze and represent data to understand the story they tell. Additionally, you’ll implement selection for deciding which code to execute, and iteration for repeating chunks of code multiple times.
3. Abstraction, Problem Decomposition, and Functions: Breaking down large problems into smaller subproblems is the pinnacle of computational thinking. You’ll see how this helps you decompose problems when using arrays and functions.
4. Simulation, Algorithm Analysis, and Pointers: Given two codes that accomplish the same results, how do you tell which code runs faster? You’ll end this course with a discussion on saving and reading data, simulation and parallelization, and pointers.

Institution	University of Colorado System
Provider	Coursera
Instructor	Tim Chamillard
Prerequisites	None
Workload	>51 hours
Enrollments	14K
Rating	4.6 / 5.0 (308)
Cost	Free-to-audit
Exercises	Autograded coding exercises and quizzes
Certificate	Paid

Best Free Crash Course for Beginners (Mike Dane) 

Reasons to Take
Concise, but not rushed No programming experience required Easy-to-follow coding demonstrations

Short on time but eager to learn C programming?

In this less than 4-hours long free crash course, you’ll quickly learn everything you need to know to get started programming in C — no programming experience needed.

If you think that the course is only 4 hours long because the instructor is going to blitz through PowerPoint slides like a squirrel on steroids, think again. Mike, the instructor,  actually covers all the essential points a beginner needs, from installing a text editor, all the way to the more advanced stuff like structures, functions, and pointers. Heck, Mike will even demonstrate on-screen how to build simple text-based applications such as a basic calculator or the Mad Libs game.

Channel	freeCodeCamp
Provider	YouTube
Instructor	Mike Dane (from Giraffe Academy)
Prerequisites	None
Workload	3–4 hours
Views	10M
Likes	188K
Cost	Free
Exercises	None
Certificate	None

Best Introductory Course for Absolute Beginners (Duke University)

Reasons to Take
Not too deep, yet not too shallow Accessible practice materials for auditors University-style format No programming experience required

Duke University’s Introductory C Programming Coursera Specialization is designed to equip you with a solid foundation in programming, guiding you from the basics to more advanced concepts. It’s the perfect tailwind to propel you into software development and other computational fields.

Following a university-styled course structure, you’ll do a heavy bit of reading, with the occasional coding demonstrations by the instructors. And even though the graded quizzes and programming exercises are locked, I find these courses to be useful to auditors nonetheless, as there are more ungraded practice quizzes than graded assignments.

Here are the four courses that make up the specialization, which can be taken individually:

1. Programming Fundamentals: Programming, taken to its very basics, is problem solving. In the first course, you’ll learn the Seven Steps, a powerful problem-solving process that’ll help you to develop your first algorithm.
2. Writing, Running, and Fixing Code in C: Get your feet wet by stepping into C in the  second course of this specialization. You’ll learn how to compile and run your program, and then how to test and debug it.
3. Pointers, Arrays, and Recursion: The third course introduces you to three fundamental programming concepts: Pointers that refer to the location of other data, Arrays that group together sequences of data, and recursive functions that call themselves in their body.
4. Interacting with the System and Managing Memory: The final and most important course of this specialization deals with memory management, essential for any non-trivial applications, one of them being to develop a Monte Carlo simulation, which you’ll end the course with.

Institution	Duke University
Provider	Coursera
Instructors	Andrew D. Hilton, Anne Bracy, Genevieve M. Lipp and Liz Wendland
Prerequisites	None
Workload	>110 hours
Enrollments	106K
Rating	4.6 / 5.0 (5.5K)
Cost	Free-to-audit
Exercises	Autograded coding exercises and quizzes
Certificate	Paid

Best C & C++ Course for Absolute Beginners (University of California, Santa Cruz)

Reasons to Take
Teaches both C and C++ programming No programming experience required

Learn C and C++ in the Coding for Everyone: C and C++ Coursera Specialization from University of California, Santa Cruz — no programming experience needed.

You’ll begin by mastering the fundamentals of programming in C before advancing to the more advanced semantics and syntax of C++. By the end, you’ll be equipped with the skills to tackle even bigger projects, including the application of AI algorithms and Monte Carlo evaluation in complex games.

You’ll learn by watching the recorded videos, where the professor uses whiteboard and code demonstrations. While there aren’t any autograded programming exercises in this course, the course does make heavy use of peer-reviews and discussion prompts to encourage reflection. If you’re freely auditing each course individually, keep in mind that you won’t have access to many of the graded materials.

The specialization consists of four courses, with the initial two focusing on C and the latter two on C++.

• C for Everyone (2 Parts): Kickstart your programming journey by learning how to compile, debug, and execute your code. You’ll grasp fundamental programming concepts and understand why programmers love the command line.
• C++ For C Programmers (2 Parts): Bridge the gap between C and C++ by learning how to convert C code into C++.  Furthermore, you’ll pick up a whole new paradigm called Object-Oriented Programming, as well as explore the massive Standard Template Library C++ has to offer.

Institution	University of California, Santa Cruz
Provider	Coursera
Instructor	Ira Pohl
Prerequisites	None
Workload	>40 hours
Enrollments	277K
Rating	4.6 / 5.0 (6.2K)
Cost	Free-to-audit
Exercises	Quizzes, Peer-graded assignments, Discussion prompts
Certificate	Paid

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 over 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.

How We Made Our Picks and Tested Them

Trying to find “the best” can be daunting, even for those of us who live and breathe online courses. Here’s how I approached this task.

First, I combed through Class Central’s Catalog, reddit communities, and the internet to find a variety of free open courses, some with certificates.

I extracted information from course syllabi and reviews, and compiled their ratings, leveraging the Class Central database with its thousands of course ratings and reviews written by our users as well as available course provider ratings. I watched some course videos to sample courses I hadn’t already taken.

Then, I defined the scope for these recommendations to find top-quality C programming courses.

Ultimately, I used a combination of data and my own judgment to make these picks. I’m confident these recommendations will serve as an excellent learning path to become a C programmer.