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Massive List of MOOC Platforms Around the World in 2024

Comprehensive list of online course platforms worldwide, offering hundreds of thousands of courses.

MOOC platforms around the world

Back in October 2011, Stanford professors launched three free online courses, open to the public. One by one, these courses went massive, with enrollments topping 100,000 students each. Soon the media was calling these courses MOOCs, short for massive open online courses.

Since then, more than 1,300 universities around the world have launched free online courses. In addition to the larger global MOOC platforms (Coursera, edX, FutureLearn), many national governments around the world have launched their own country-specific MOOC platforms, including India, Italy, Israel, Mexico and Thailand.

Ten years after their popularization, in 2021, over 220 million students had signed up for at least one course on one of the these platforms, and 40 million did so in 2021 alone (excluding China). MOOCs and MOOC platforms continued to grow, even after the crazy “Year of the MOOC” prompted by the pandemic and travel restrictions.

At Class Central, we try to catalog as many MOOCs as possible, and our listing currently includes more than 200,000 online courses, from MOOC platforms and other online learning platforms. But due to limited resources (and sometimes a language barrier), we cannot index every single one. If you’re looking for online courses from around the world (many in languages other than English), this list is our best attempt to catalog all different platforms that are out there.

The list has been adapted with permission from Mindshift: Break Through Obstacles to Learning and Discover Your Hidden Potential by Barbara Oakley (Tarcher-Perigee, April 2017). We first published this list in 2017.

Table of Contents

MOOC Platforms from North America & United States

MOOC Platforms from Europe & United Kingdom

MOOC Platforms from Asia (excluding Chinese MOOC Platforms)

Chinese Language MOOC Platforms

MOOC Platforms from North America & United States

Coursera / United States

Coursera

Two Stanford professors, Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller, officially launched Coursera in January 2012. In March 2021, the Coursera monetization journey took an important turn, with an IPO (NYSE: COUR). More recently, we dove into Coursera’s financials.

With over 129 million learners and over $500 million raised in funding, Coursera is the biggest MOOC platform in the world. Currently, Coursera offers over 16,000 courses from over 300 partners. Beyond single courses, Coursera offers its own credential, known as a Specialization. Coursera’s catalog currently lists more than 1000 Specializations. The MOOC platform also hosts a flurry of fully-online master’s degrees in fields such as computer science, data science, business, and public health. Coursera for Business makes online courses available to business clients.

edX / United States

edX

Founded by Harvard University and MIT in 2012, edX used to be a nonprofit. But In 2021, edX was acquired by 2U for $800M. EdX is one of the largest MOOC platform in the world, with more than 80 million learners after its acquisition. The platform offers over 6000 courses and boasts more than 200 institution partners.

Additionally, edX offers different certificate programs, including MicroMasters and MicroBachelors (which offer a pathway to credit), XSeries, and Professional Certificates. Like Coursera, edX has launched multiple online degree programs.

Udacity / United States

Udacity

Udacity has pivoted away from its prior identity as a MOOC platform. It was the first of the original MOOC platforms to reach unicorn status (over $1 billion valuation), and it partners with technology companies to create Nanodegrees that train students for technology-focused jobs. Nanodegrees cost around $1,000, and they can take a few months to complete. Although Udacity has largely stopped releasing new free courses, it still has some courses in its catalog that are free to audit.

Kadenze / United States

Kadenze

Kadenze is a MOOC platform that specializes in creative and arts education. It partners with some of the best art institutions and universities around the world to launch online courses. It was co-founded by Ajay Kapur, a classically trained Indian musician and computer scientist. He is Associate Provost for Creative Technologies at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). In October 2013, he taught a course called “Introduction to Programming for Musicians and Digital Artists” on Coursera. However, he soon realized that some of the things he wanted to do with arts education were not possible with Coursera, so he created his own MOOC platform.

Kadenze has also launched its own certificate initiative, which is called Kadenze Programs. Typically, the first course in a Program is free. Students can also earn academic credit for many Kadenze courses and Programs.

Canvas Network / United States

Canvas Network

Canvas Network might not have the big names, but the MOOC platform does have a number of free online courses taught by various institutions around the world. Some of their courses still offer completely free certificates and badges. They shifted their focus to professional development (PD) courses for educators, removing some courses that were not in this specific field and currently listing 600 courses. Some courses have paid options that can be used for official credit for licensure renewal (LR) or university credits.

Canvas Network is based on the Canvas LMS, which was developed by Instructure.

Complexity Explorer / United States

Complexity Explorer

The MOOC platform Complexity Explorer provides online courses and educational materials about complexity science. Complexity Explorer is based out of the Sante Fe Institute. Three of their courses, Introduction to Complexity, Introduction to Dynamical Systems and Chaos, and Fractals and Scaling, have been part of Class Central’s Best Online Courses of All Time.

MéxicoX / Mexico

MéxicoX

MéxicoX is a MOOC platform funded by the Mexican government, and it has more than 40 partners (universities and institutions from the Federal Public Administration). It has more than 2.6 million registered learners, a majority of whom are located in Mexico.

MOOC Platforms from Europe & United Kingdom

FutureLearn / United Kingdom

FutureLearn

FutureLearn is a UK-based MOOC platform with 19 million users. The Open University launched FutureLearn at the end of 2012. It was later jointly owned by the Open University and the Australia-based SEEK Group. And more recently, it was acquired by GUS after a tumultuous year. Most of its university partners are located in the UK and Europe, but it also has a few university partners in other countries, including the United States, Australia, and South Korea.

FutureLearn offers its own credential program, which is known as FutureLearn Programs. In 2021, FutureLearn launched a new type of microcredential, ExpertTrack.

France Université Numérique (FUN) / France

France Université Numérique

FUN is the official MOOC platform for France. The French Ministry of Higher Education launched the project in July 2013. FUN has more than 100 partners among higher education institutions that create MOOCs, including three universities in Belgium, one in Switzerland, and two in Tunisia. FUN has more than 700 MOOCs and has more than two million registered students.

Miríadax / Spain

Miríadax

Miríada X is a regional MOOC platform that has more than 600 courses in Spanish and Portuguese. These courses are created by its university partners, which are located in Spain, Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, and other Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries.

EduOpen / Italy

EduOpen

EduOpen is a MOOC platform funded by the Italian government, launched in April 2016. EduOpen is a network of Italian universities, but it is also open to EU universities. At the moment it involves nineteen institutes, which include a mixture of larger and smaller institutions from both northern and southern Italy.

Federica Web Learning / Italy

Federica Web Learning

Federica.eu is a MOOC platform created by the University of Naples Federico II. Currently it has over 80 free online courses listed on its platform. One of its courses, Connectivism and Learning, is taught by Stephen Downes, who is credited with teaching the first ever MOOC.

European Multiple MOOC Aggregator (EMMA) / European Union

European Multiple MOOC Aggregator

EMMA, which started as a 30-month pilot action supported by the European Union, aggregates and hosts courses provided by European universities that wish to provide their courses in multiple languages.

OpenHPI / Germany

OpenHPI

OpenHPI is a MOOC platform hosted by Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) in Potsdam, Germany. It offers courses in English and German. It was one of the early players in the MOOC space and was launched in September 2012.

MOOC.fi / Finland

MOOC.fi

MOOC.fi is a MOOC platform from University of Helsinki’s Department of Computer Science. The MOOC platform offers around 20 open, free and beginner-friendly courses in computer science such as Elements of AIPython Programming and Ethics of AI. Around 8 courses provide free certificates. The course Elements of AI is on Class Central’s The Best Free Online Courses of All Time list.

Prometheus / Ukraine

Prometheus

Like many other MOOC platforms, Prometheus is a non-profit organization. It was launched in October 2014 and it partners with Ukrainian universities and companies to launch free online courses. It has over 400 courses and more than 2.8 million registered users.

Open Education (openedu.ru) / Russia

Open Education

This MOOC platform was created by the Association “National Platform of Open Education,” founded by leading universities: MSU, SPbPU, St. Petersburg State University, NUST, MISA, NRU “Higher School of Economics”, MIPT, UFU, and ITMO. It currently lists more than 1200 courses.

MOOC Platforms from Asia (excluding Chinese Language MOOC Platforms)

SWAYAM / India

SWAYAM

SWAYAM is India’s national MOOC platform. It offers over 2600 courses taught by over 1,300 instructors from 200 Indian universities. One aspect that sets it apart from other platforms is that it allows students in India to earn academic credit online. Since the platform was launched in 2017, over 30 million learners have enrolled on SWAYAM, making it one of the largest MOOC platforms in the world.

NPTEL / India

NPTEL

The National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) is a collaborative project of some of India’s best higher education institutions to deliver university-level online courses covering engineering and science. NPTEL’s catalog has now been integrated into SWAYAM, India’s national MOOC platform. NPTEL also has a YouTube channel with over 2.1 million subscribers where you can watch the video-lessons comprised in their courses.

JMOOC / Japan

JMOOC

JMOOC is not really a MOOC platform, but it is a non-profit association aimed at promoting MOOC education in Japan. It has its own certification standards process which assesses the quality of MOOCs in Japan. The courses that pass this examination process are qualified as JMOOC-certified courses. The three Japanese MOOC platforms listed above all have courses that have been JMOOC certified. JMOOC currently offers over 600 courses.

gacco / Japan

gacco

Gacco is a MOOC platform part of JMOOC (Japan Massive Open Online Education Promotion Council) that partners with universities in Japan to offer online courses in Japanese. Gacco has over 950k students enrolled on its platform. The MOOC platform has other features like peer grading and a premium face-to-face learning service.

OpenLearning / Japan

OpenLearning

OpenLearning Japan, as the name suggests, is a MOOC platform. It was launched by Net Learning Inc., an education service company based in Japan.

K-MOOC / Korea

K-MOOC

K-MOOC, or Korean MOOC, is the official MOOC platform of Korea. The MOOC platform was initiated by the Ministry of Education and first went live in 2015. Currently, it lists over 4000 courses. Over 3 million learners have registered on the MOOC platform.

ThaiMOOC / Thailand

ThaiMOOC

ThaiMOOC is one of the newest MOOC platforms in this list. It was launched in March 2017. It is the official MOOC platform for Thailand. The ThaiMOOC platform is built on Open edX and currently lists more than 700 courses.

Edraak (Arabic) / Jordan

Edraak

Edraak means “realization” in Arabic, and this is a non-profit Arabic MOOC platform. It was launched in May 2014 and is affiliated with the Queen Rania Foundation for Education and Development (QRF). Edraak has more than two million learners registered on the MOOC  platform.

Campus-Il / Israel

Campus-Il

Campus-Il is the national MOOC platform of Israel. The MOOC platform offers courses in Hebrew and Arabic. It is run by the Israeli Ministry of Social Equality. Courses are directed at an Israeli audience that includes university students and professors, high school students preparing for university, job seekers, and government workers. The MOOC platform also includes courses designed to serve underprivileged communities, on topics such as digital literacy and financial literacy.

Chinese Language MOOC Platforms

XuetangX / China

XuetangX

XuetangX is China’s first and biggest MOOC platform. It was founded in 2013 by Tsinghua University under the supervision of China’s Ministry of Education Research. It’s probably the fastest growing MOOC platform. When Class Central interviewed XuetangX’s Chairman of the Board back in October 2016, the MOOC platform had five million users. By the end of its 8th birthday on October 10 2021, XuetangX had crossed 80 million registered users.

The MOOC platform was originally built upon a heavily customized version of Open edX but moved away from it, redesigned the platform and went international in the beginning of 2020. Over 7000 free courses, boot camps and certification programs are offered on the MOOC platform.

XuetangX also has a cloud learning management system (LMS) product that is used by universities across China, and which had been used by more than 48 million Chinese students by the end of 2020.

Chinese University MOOC / China

Chinese University MOOC

Chinese University MOOC, also often called iCourse, is the fruit of a collaboration between the Chinese internet giant NetEase and the original iCourse learning platform. The MOOC platform offers over 10,000 free university courses, including nationally-recognized MOOCs. Free digital certificates are automatically available when students pass quizzes and final exam.

Zhihuishu / China

Zhihuishu

Zhihui Shu, which translates to “Wisdom Tree”, was launched in December 2012. It has the particularity of allowing its university partners to share credit-bearing courses with one another, facilitating academic credit mobility across China.

Of the over 14,000 courses offered on the platform, about 75% are credit-granting courses only for on-campus students. And there are also microcredential programs available.

Xue Yin Online / China

Xue Yin Online

Xue Yin Online launched in November 2017. It was developed by The Open University of China and the Chaoxing Group. The purpose of this online course platform is to serve as a “credit bank” for vocational skills, facilitating the transfer of credit and the recognition of prior learning across different universities. The platform offers nearly over 16,000 course with a free digital certificate.

Open Education (openedu.tw) / Taiwan

Open Education

OpenEdu is a MOOC platform from Taiwan. The MOOC platform is based on Open edX and offers over 470 courses in subjects including computer science, business management, humanities and art.

eWant — education you want / Taiwan

eWant

eWant is a MOOC platform that was launched by National Chiao Tung University in 2013. National Chiao Tung University is one of Taiwan’s leading public research universities, located in Hsinchu, Taiwan. It hosts more than 3200 courses from over 90 different universities.

A massive list of all Chinese language MOOC platforms

Chinese Language MOOC Platforms

We have a complete article dedicated to MOOC platforms in China.

Laurie Pickard Profile Image

Laurie Pickard

I got into MOOCs when I started a project to replicate a traditional MBA using free online courses. My blog at NoPayMBA.com resulted in a book called Don't Pay For Your MBA.
Rui Ma Profile Image

Rui Ma

With a background in Health Statistics and Sociology, she has built a career path in Data Analytics.
Manoel Cortes Mendez Profile Image

Manoel Cortes Mendez

Software engineer and online graduate student in computer science passionate about education, technology, and their intersection.

Comments 27

  1. kewlking

    Your link to the Social Psychology course on Academic Torrents leads to a different course – Social Network Analysis. Pretty sure they are not the same.

    Reply
    • classcentral

      🙁

      You are correct. Updated the article. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find an alternate source for the course.

      Reply
  2. Sary

    I have (hopefully all) the course materials of Social Psychology. I will try to upload them somewhere soon, and post the link here.

    Reply
    • anurag kapale

      Amazing!!! Cant wait 🙂

      Reply
  3. Chaiwat Naktang

    Stat2x: Introduction to Statistics . I hopefully this course will coming back soon

    Reply
  4. Jean Dang

    Hi guys! Thanks for the post. GOOD NEWS to the 8th course:A History of the World since 1300 / Global History Lab: I’ve inbox the course fanpage and they said the course will re-open in September 2017, not mentioning on which platform but just stay tune to updates on the page! https://www.facebook.com/globalhistorylab/
    Also, I’ve searched the web for the course and found there are torrents of the materials online (I’m downloading it, super slow but hope it works)

    To all the lifelong learners out there m/ m/ !!

    Reply
    • classcentral

      Thanks for the information! We will keep an eye out for the course.

      Reply
  5. Andrew paappi

    Is Udemy an mooc ?

    Reply
    • Muvaffak Gozaydin

      no no what so ever ?It is for hobbiests .

      Reply
      • Pritish

        I found Udemy courses to be better than Coursera. Coursera is only for people who want to get a degree. Udemy offers applied and practical courses which cover theory, coding and practical exercises. Udemy is way better than purely academic courses offered by Coursera.

        Reply
        • Lucio

          Disagree.

          Coursera course are far more complete.

          To advance in your path, you shoud have both, theory and practice, not one, not the other standing alone. BOTH.

          Coursera have guided projects as well. So, don’t see your point

          Reply
  6. Kirill

    Hi!

    Thank you for a fantastic list.

    Maybe the following two platforms will become a good asset Russian stepik.org and Austrian imoox.at. Both are mainly contributed by academics and offer free courses.

    Reply
  7. Fabio Nascimbeni

    See also the National MOOC patform from Morocco: https://www.mun.ma/, based on the FUN model and technology.

    Reply
  8. Beverley Oliver

    Fantastic report, as usual, Dhawal Shah – thank you. I have just published a related paper which you may find interesting …

    “Making micro-credentials work for learners, employers and providers” attempts to make observations as to what, in the near term, with make micro-credentials work, or work better (definitions, standards, and quality signals, for example) but in the longer term bigger picture thinking is required: they need to become related to and more interoperable with formal education systems through strategies related to credit for prior learning, lifelong learning accounts, and similar.

    Report can be accessed at tiny.cc/agc

    Best wishes,
    Beverley Oliver

    Reply
  9. Anja Lorenz

    That’s a great compilation. A big thank you! It’s especially cool if the courses are published under a free license, so we might translate and adapt them to our own languages.

    You wrote that you would like to list as many MOOCs as possible, so I also want to add some platforms from the German-speaking community:
    https://oncampus.de or https://mooin.oncampus.de (same platform, but filtered for MOOCs) is the platform of the University of Applied Sciences in Lübeck, Germany. There is also a “sister” from Austria: iMooX: https://imoox.at. And the German federal state of Bavaria has recently launched the https://open.vhb.org/ platform.

    Best regards
    Anja

    Reply
  10. Vincent Laberge

    Hello,

    We happily welcome your ​listing of our ​exclusive MOOCs!

    View our courses list here : ​​https://cours.edulib.org/courses

    ​Subscribe to our newsletter: https://us14.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=01f739555efc0dddd72a729a0&id=c6334c6081&fbclid=IwAR1w32fCBtGFEPpvVsjYhSx-a0UrQtktGuZZZ8brDMVlrViyrbhK_ICFsMQ

    Follow us on Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/EDUlib.org/
    Follow us on LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/company/11114653/
    Follow us on Twitter​ : https://twitter.com/edulib_org

    ​Thank you,

    The EDUlib team

    Reply
  11. Adekunle Oshilokun

    Please can anyone tell me any courses in Environmental management or environmental related that I can apply for?

    Reply
  12. Prasad YRVS

    Sir / Madam,
    It is really a good attempt to give a bird’s view about MOOC Platforms spread around the world. I consider this as a ready reckoner for an MOOC learner to provide massive information and highly appreciable.

    Reply
  13. Anirudh Rao

    hellow there,
    can you try to lis some of the MOOC platforms which are completely free?
    like alison and saylor.org for example.
    I am a lifelong learner and learniing without paying for it would really help.

    Reply
  14. Claudia Segura Fonseca

    Thanks for the info. It is an honor to find my country’s platform “Mexico” through MéxicoX. Public Universities are the ones that are feeding these MOOCs. I am proudly graduated from the public University.

    Reply
  15. Pedro Cabral

    In Portugal you also have one:
    http://www.nau.edu.pt (uses open edx software)
    It has more than 150.000 users, 300.000 enrollments, 230 courses (currently 28 active courses) created by 38 entities. About the data of these courses you can find it in https://datastudio.google.com/u/0/reporting/1gd-YXUtHFzHm3qddPTO8r272kyRD-uDG/page/4f5xB

    Regards,
    Pedro

    Reply
  16. Lucio

    Saylor, from USA, it’s a great one.

    Also Zenva, but only for programmers (Australia)

    Reply
  17. Lucio

    Must sdd:

    Alison

    Great Learning

    Iversity

    Reply
  18. Napoleon Papageorgiou

    In Greece, there are 3 MOOC platforms that i know 1) https://mathesis.cup.gr/courses 2) https://opencourses.gr/ and 3) https://coursity.gr/

    I think they fit the list. Pls check them out

    Thank you

    Reply
  19. Dan

    Should PluralSight be in this list? What about Udemy?

    Reply
  20. Beverley Watson

    Did not see UTAS (University of Tasmania, Australia) Free MOOC’s,
    Traumatic Brain Injury, Understanding Dementia, Preventing Dementia.
    Understanding MS, plus short courses, including Equip aged Care Learning Packages. Current course.

    Reply
  21. Ram

    Didn’t see iversity in the list

    Reply

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