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

In 2024, 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 2000 free certificate courses for learning software development.

Dhawal Shah 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 250K online courses.

Having written about online education for over a decade, Dhawal remembers 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 10 million 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, CodeSignal, freeCodeCamp, and FutureLearn
• Leading universities — e.g. Harvard and the University of Helsinki
• Big tech companies — e.g. Google, Microsoft, and IBM.

Please note, Class Central is not involved in running the courses or issuing certificates. This is a dynamic field and you may discover that a course you choose is no longer available, or doesn’t have a free certificate any more. We recommend you always check before starting a course.

Click on the shortcuts for courses with free certificates or badges

• Cisco Free Badges
• CodeSignal Free Certificates
• freeCodeCamp Free Certificates
• FutureLearn Free Certificates
• Google Free Certificates and Badges
• HackerRank Free Certificates
• Harvard Free Certificates
• Hasso Plattner Institute Free Certificates
• IBM Free Certificates and Badges
• Kaggle Free Certificates
• LinkedIn Learning Courses with Free Certificates
• MATLAB Free Certificates
• Semrush Academy Free Certificates
• University of Helsinki Free Certificates
• upGrad Free Certificates
• Wolfram U Free Certificates
• More Free Certificates

Cisco Free Badges

Cisco, the IT and networking giant, offers a series of self-paced online courses through its Networking Academy platform; some include free badges for skills learned. Here’s a selection:

• Introduction to Cybersecurity
• Networking Essentials
• Cybersecurity Essentials
• Introduction to IoT
• Python Essentials 1

CodeSignal Free Certificates

CodeSignal is a growing platform that offers 1000+ courses and learning paths with free certificates in coding, AI & ML, data science, interview prep, and more. As well as developer and IT certificates, CodeSignal teaches valuable soft skills. You can find a list of courses offering certificates in our dedicated article.

Here’s a selection:

• Introduction to Programming with Python
• Four-Week Coding Interview Prep in Python
• Prompt Engineering for Everyone
• Comprehensive Introduction to Front-End Engineering
• JavaScript Programming for Beginners
• Java Programming for Beginners
• Implementing AI Algorithms from Scratch
• Introduction to Machine Learning with SciKit Learn
• Supercommunicators – Have Conversations that Matter
• Dare to Lead – Unlock Courageous Leadership

freeCodeCamp Free Certificates

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:

• Responsive Web Design
• JavaScript Algorithms and Data Structures
• JavaScript Algorithms and Data Structures (Beta)
• Data Analysis with Python
• Front End Development Libraries
• Machine Learning with Python
• Quality Assurance
• Information Security
• Relational Database (Beta)
• Scientific Computing with Python
• Back End Development and APIs
• Data Visualization
• Foundational C# with Microsoft
• College Algebra with Python

FutureLearn Free Certificates

FutureLearn, the European counterpart to Coursera and edX, offers some courses that include a free “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:

• Digital Skills: Digital Skills for Work and Life
• Digital Skills: Digital Marketing
• Digital Skills: Social Media
• Digital Skills: Artificial Intelligence
• Digital Skills: User Experience
• Introduction to Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality
• Introduction to Physical Computing
• Digital Skills: Reimagine Your Career
• Transforming Assessment and Recognition of Complex Learning Competencies
• Digital Skills: Mobile
• Digital Skills: Web Analytics
• Bioinformatics for Biologists: Analysing and Interpreting Genomics Datasets

Google Free Certificates and Badges

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

Here is a selection of Google’s offerings:

• Introduction to Generative AI
• Introduction to Responsible AI
• Introduction to Image Generation
• Planetary Scale Earth Observation with Google Earth Engine
• Introduction to Large Language Models
• Google Analytics Certification
• Build your first web app with Firebase
• Build apps with Flutter
• Introduction to SQL
• Get data from the internet
• Adapt for different screen sizes
• Kotlin fundamentals
• Develop locally with Firebase
• Make your Android app more accessible
• Build cross-platform apps with Angular
• Jetpack Compose basics
• Site Reliability Engineering: Measuring and Managing Reliability
• Attention Mechanism
• Transformer Models and BERT Model
• Create Image Captioning Models
• Encoder-Decoder Architecture
• Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure Foundations with Anthos
• Preparing for the Google Cloud Professional Data Engineer Exam
• Understanding Google Cloud Security and Operations
• Innovating with Data and Google Cloud
• Infrastructure and Application Modernization with Google Cloud
• Developing a Google SRE Culture
• Managing Change when Moving to Google Cloud
• Deploying SAP on Google Cloud
• The Modern Data Platform and LookML
• Digital Transformation with Google Cloud
• Managing and Securing the Apigee Hybrid API Platform
• Upgrading and Monitoring the Apigee Hybrid API Platform
• Preparing for Your Professional Cloud Security Engineer Journey
• Preparing for Your Associate Cloud Engineer Journey
• Preparing for your Professional Cloud Architect Journey
• Innovating with Data and Google Cloud
• Preparing for Your Professional Cloud Network Engineer Journey
• Design Foundations for Streaming with Google Cloud
• Introduction to Cloud Identity

HackerRank Free Certificates

HackerRank is 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 24 tests you may complete to earn a certificate:

• Problem Solving (Basic)
• Python (Basic) Skills Certification
• Java (Basic) Skills Certification
• C# (Basic) Skills Certification
• JavaScript (Basic) Skills Certification
• SQL (Basic) Skills Certification
• Go (Basic) Skills Certification
• R (Basic) Skills Certification
• Node (Basic) Skills Certification

Harvard Free Certificates

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 and how to receive your free certificate in our dedicated article.

Here are Harvard’s current free certificate offerings. Remember that while you need an account with edX to submit the assignments, the free certificate comes directly from CS50.

• Introduction to Computer Science
• Computer Science for Business Professionals
• Introduction to Artificial Intelligence with Python
• Web Programming with Python and JavaScript
• Computer Science for Lawyers
• Introduction to Programming with Python
• Introduction to Programming with Scratch
• Introduction to Cybersecurity
• Introduction to Databases with SQL
• Introduction to Programming with R

Hasso Plattner Institute Free Certificates

The Hasso Plattner Institute offers a range of self-paced courses with free certificates of participation and achievement. Most courses are in German, but some are in English.

Here’s a selection of courses in English:

• Understanding Embeddings for Natural Language Processing
• Data Science Bootcamp
• Introduction to Bayesian Data Analysis
• Introduction to Quantum Computing with Qiskit (with IBM Quantum)

IBM Free Certificates and Badges

IBM’s platform CognitiveClass.ai offers 100+ courses and 10 learning paths in data science, AI, big data, cloud computing, and blockchain. Some courses offer a completion badge or certificate. Check on the Cognitive Class.AI course page for details.

The platform also provides a virtual lab environment allowing users to practice what they’ve learned in the courses.

Here’s a selection:

• Accelerating Deep Learning with GPUs
• Introduction to Open Source
• Text Analytics 101
• Applied Data Science with R
• Big Data Foundations

Kaggle Free Certificates

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.

• Python
• Intro to SQL
• Advanced SQL
• Intro to Deep Learning
• Data Cleaning
• Time Series
• Computer Vision
• Intro to Machine Learning
• Pandas
• Data Visualization
• Intro to AI Ethics
• Machine Learning Explainability
• Feature Engineering
• Intermediate Machine Learning
• Intro to Game AI and Reinforcement Learning

LinkedIn Learning Courses with Free Certificates

LinkedIn Learning, the online learning platform integrated with the LinkedIn professional social network, offers more than a hundred 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:

• Programming Foundations: Fundamentals
• Programming Foundations: Beyond the Fundamentals
• Learning Data Analytics: 1 Foundations
• Learning Data Science: Understanding the Basics
• The Cybersecurity Threat Landscape

MATLAB Free Certificates

MathWorks, the company behind the MATLAB programming language and software, offers 23 free online courses with certificates through their MATLAB Academy platform.

The courses introduce learners to the MATLAB language and tools — with a focus on machine learning — and MathWorks’ specialized software, such as Simulink. You can find all the details and how to receive your free certificate in our dedicated article.

Here’s a selection:

• MATLAB Onramp
• Machine Learning Onramp
• Reinforcement Learning Onramp
• Signal Processing Onramp
• Stateflow Onramp
• Circuit Simulation Onramp
• Deep Learning Onramp
• Wireless Communications Onramp
• Simscape Onramp
• Optimization Onramp
• App Building Onramp
• Object-Oriented Programming Onramp
• Computer Vision Onramp
• Simulink Onramp
• Control Design Onramp with Simulink
• System Composer Onramp
• Power Systems Simulation Onramp

Semrush Academy Free Certificates

Although Semrush is primarily a business and marketing specialist, some of their free certificate courses are relevant for developers and IT professionals:

• On-Page and Technical SEO Course
• Mobile SEO Course with Greg Gifford
• Semrush Site Audit Course
• Technical SEO course with Bastian Grimm
• Competitor Analysis with Semrush
• Backlink Management Course with Greg Gifford

University of Helsinki Free Certificates

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:

• Elements of AI
• Full Stack open
• Java Programming
• Cyber Security Base
• Ethics of AI

upGrad Free Certificates

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

An e-Certificate of Completion is provided in 30 days after you successfully finish all the modules within your program. Your phone number is required while registering a course so you may receive calls and messages from upGrad.

Here are some of the free programs offered on upGrad:

• Programming with Python: Introduction for Beginners
• Introduction to Natural Language Processing
• Introduction to Data Analysis using Excel
• Introduction to Database Design with MySQL
• Data Science in E-commerce
• Introduction to NFTs
• E-Skills in Healthcare
• Core Java Basics
• Introduction to Blockchain Technology

Wolfram U Free Certificates

The Wolfram Language is a powerful programming tool employed in science, engineering, data science, and finance. It combines math, data analysis, and general programming, and forms the core of Wolfram’s popular software, Mathematica. You can find all the details in our dedicated article.

Here is a selection of Wolfram U’s 40+ free certificate courses:

• Full Interactive Course for Introduction to Wolfram Language
• Quick Start to Wolfram Tech Course
• Wolfram Language Programming Proficiency
• Programming Fundamentals of Wolfram Language
• A Guide to Programming Course
• Practical Programming with Wolfram Language
• Wolfram Language Basics Course
• Wolfram Language Fast Introduction for Programmers Video Series
• Programming and Development in Wolfram Language Instructor Led Course
• Getting Started with Mathematica and Wolfram Language: Wolfram Daily Study Groups
• Wolfram Summer School Lectures: Online Course
• Visual Explorations in Data Science Course
• Multiparadigm Data Science, Interactive Online Video Course
• Introduction to Machine Learning
• Introduction to Neural Networks in Wolfram Language Class
• Introduction to Machine Learning: Daily Study Group
• Data Visualization with Wolfram Language
• Wolfram Language and LLMs Instructor-Led Course
• Computational Xplorations
• Creative Computation, Online Video Course
• Introduction to Notebooks, Interactive Online Video Course
• Notebooks as Instructional Tools—Wolfram U Instructor-Led Course
• Wolfram Notebooks: Building and Sharing Technical Workflows
• Introduction to Image Processing, Interactive Online Video Course
• Signals, Systems and Signal Processing Course

More Free Certificates

If you don’t find what you need here, browse Class Central’s catalog of 250K courses or visit our thematic collections:

• Stanford Medicine Offers Courses with Free Certificate & CME Credit
• 40+ Free Certificates from Wolfram U
• 30 Hours of MATLAB Courses with Free Certificate
• 1000+ Free Digital Marketing Certificates
• 1000 Open University Free Certificates
• 70+ FutureLearn Courses That Still Offer Free Certificates

You can find all our free certificates articles here.