For more than a year, Udemy has been piloting a catalog subscription for consumers called “Personal Plan” in select English-speaking countries, as reported by Class Central.

Recently, Udemy announced that before the end of the year, their Personal Plan would be expanding to new markets, including Brazil, Spanish-speaking countries, and Germany, with more regions to follow.

Udemy’s Personal Plan costs $30 per month and gives access to a selection of about 6,000 courses. 

A Long Pilot

Udemy’s Personal Plan has been a long time in the making.

It is largely based on the Udemy Business subscription plan, which launched many years ago and currently gives access to 7,800 courses for $360 per user, with a minimum of 5 users. But Udemy’s consumer plan differs in important ways. Here’s a timelines of its development:

• Nov 2019 / 2020 — Udemy Pro: On Black Friday 2019 and 2020, Class Central noticed Udemy promoting a subscription plan called “Udemy Pro.” The plan cost $20 per month and was limited to 24 online courses in IT. It has since been dropped, but it foreshadowed Udemy’s next subscription experiments.
• Mar 2021 — Pilot Announcement: As they updated their revenue share model, Udemy announced they’d be piloting a consumer version of their Business plan. The month prior, Udemy’s main competitor Coursera had filed to go public, and the year prior, they’d launched a successful consumer subscription, Coursera Plus. This may have prompted Udemy to move quicker.
  
• Jun 2021 — Pilot Launch: Udemy’s consumer subscription, christened “Personal Plan,” goes live in four English-speaking countries. At the time, the plan included about 5,000 courses. A few months later, as anticipated by Class Central, Udemy IPO’d.
• Sep 2022 — Plan Set to Expand: Udemy announces the beginning of a new expansion phase for its consumer plan.

Let’s discuss in more detail what Udemy’s newly announced expansion entails.

More Courses, More Countries

Since Udemy’s Personal Plan was a consumer spin off of their business subscription, both include a similar course collection, curated by Udemy. Udemy’s Personal Plan currently includes about 6,000 courses — since it launched a year ago, it has gained about 1,000 courses.

Note that while that’s a lot of courses, it’s only a fraction of Udemy’s full catalog, which includes over 200K courses. By contrast, Coursera Plus, includes about 7,000 of the platform’s 11,000 courses.

Udemy’s pilot has been limited to the English market so far. According to their latest announcement, it is set to expand to Brazil in the coming weeks, and Spanish-speaking countries and Germany before the end of the year. And the courses collection is expected to expand accordingly to fit each new market by including courses taught in the local language. So the exact offering should vary from country to country.

Trying Out the Plan

If you’re interested in the Personal Plan, Udemy has shared instructions on how to subscribe. Note that the plan remains limited to select countries, and that while it is set to launch in more global markets, Udemy hasn’t shared precise dates for this expansion.

Anecdotally, even with a VPN, I wasn’t able to access their subscription page. If the plan is available in your region, you should be able to access it from here when logged in: Udemy Subscription page.

The subscription should cost about $30 per month or your local equivalent. Depending on your region, you may have access to a 7-day free trial, rather than having to commit to a full month upfront.