6 Worthy Udemy Alternatives
Let’s understand what the main alternatives to Udemy are and which one is best for your learning or career needs.
Online learning has become a common part of getting new skills in almost any field. And when you want to learn something new from your home, you will probably find a course on Udemy. The company is well-known and widely used all over the world. But you might be looking for something better or closer to your needs. So, here is our article revealing the 6 best Udemy alternatives picked by our team.
Let’s start this article by explaining why Udemy is good and why you might need to find an alternative to Udemy.
Before we dive into the details, here is the list of the 6 best Udemy alternatives:
Udemy Alternative #1: Coursera
Coursera is the first company on the list and it’s often the brand a lot of people think of as the main Udemy competitor. And this is true as Coursera offers a lot of courses (over 4000) on different subjects and the majority of them are affordable. However, the companies have a lot of differences.
Coursera is known for partnering with prestige universities like Harvard or Stanford and big brands like Google or Meta. While Coursera has different subjects covered, its main focus is business, social science, and computer science courses; Udemy is not known to have such a focus.
Both Udemy and Coursera courses are self-paced but there is a difference in the format. Each Coursera course includes quizzes and is broken evenly into chunks of information, whereas the Udemy course structure depends on its creator. Also, courses by Coursera are often of higher quality and developed according to the same high standard.
Moreover, while Udemy offers single courses, Coursera has longer programs where each is a set of 6-15 single courses–this is helpful to grasp a skill from scratch. The company even offers online degrees that are an alternative to traditional education but they are quite pricey. For instance, Science in Machine Learning and Data Science is a 2-year online degree created by Imperial College London costs over 17,000 per year but allows to get all the skills to get into Machine Learning.
A lot of Coursera courses are completely free with getting a certificate upon completion for an additional price but a regular price is $39 per month. Coursera also offers a subscription–Coursera Plus, where you pay $399 per year and have unlimited access to its courses. Read more about Coursera Plus. Alternatively, check out the list of best Coursera alternatives.
Pros:
- High-quality content created by well-known and recognized institutions and companies
- A lot of free courses
- Recognized certificates
Cons:
- A lot of course types and prices might be confusing
Coursera Review: Should You Spend Your Time & Money?
Udemy Alternative #4: MasterClass
Masterclass is one more Udemy alternative that provides a completely different level of course quality. Udemy’s courses vary from being deeply researched and professionally filmed to being amateur with poor audio and video. Masterclass, on the other hand, provides courses by celebrities and top experts and some of them look like Hollywood movies.
Masterclass courses range from filmmaking, music, and writing to business and science topics. Among the instructors are well-known people, celebrities, coaches, and influencers. You can find courses led by Paul Krugman, Howard Schultz, Anna Wintour, Sara Blakely, etc.
All courses are rather short–3-4 hours on average. They usually look like engaging lectures but with lack of practical assignments.
When you watch the course sample and read the description, you might think that the price of the Masterclass course is very high. However, it’s quite affordable, ranging from $15 to 23$ per month but billed annually.
Pros:
- Well-known instructors that are best in their industry
- Great video quality
- Engaging course content
Cons:
- The course choice is not so extensive
- Some lessons aren’t very practical and mostly inspiring
Masterclass
Udemy Alternative #2: eDX
edX is the second e-learning company among our Udemy alternatives. The company is very similar to Coursera, offering short and long courses by top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Berkeley. The course list is diverse, ranging from humanities to business to medicine.
Same as Udemy, edX has courses on different subjects, including business, healthcare, and computer science–but you won’t find courses like cooking or painting there. Both companies are self-paced but edX has more standardized lessons in terms of format with more quizzes and projects.
Same as Coursera and unlike Udemy, edX has single courses, longer programs, and a few online degrees.
Most of edX courses are completely free courses with getting a certificate upon completion for an additional fee. There are also paid programs priced at $50-300 USD depending on the course.
Udemy Alternative #3: Futurelearn
Futurelearn is a British e-learning company that might be less talked about but it’s a good alternative to Udemy. The company offers over 2000 on various subjects like computer science, healthcare, psychology and teaching, etc.
Unlike Udemy, Futurerelearn has courses grouped by duration and depth–there are single short courses, longer programs like Experttracks and even online degrees.
You can find a lot of courses for free, and if they are premium, you’ll pay on a monthly basis. The price for a premium subscription is $39.99 with $19.99 for the first month.
Udemy Alternative #5: Codecademy
Codecademy is not a direct Udemy alternative as instead of offering a variety of subjects from different domains, the company offers only programming-related courses. You can find courses on over 15 programming languages on Codecademy–including Python, JavaScript, HTML & CSS, Java, C++ and C#, Bash, and more.
Unlike Udemy courses, Codecademy’s content has standardized formats and a specific approach to course creation and course structure. The courses are of good quality, with text lessons, quizzes, and programming assignments. While you can find a lot of free short courses there, the company also features longer programs that are built to get a skillset from scratch and help with career transition (these are Career paths).
So, you can take a Codecademy course for free or opt for a premium subscription for $17-60 a month, depending on the package and billing type (monthly or annually). Also, the companies have different pricing models: with Udemy you pay for each course separately, while with Codecademy, you pay for a subscription with unlimited course access.
Check out this review of Codecademy or find out what is the best Codecademy alternative.
Codecademy Pro Review: When it’s worth it and when it’s not
Udemy Alternative #6: DataCamp
DataCamp is also not a universal Udemy alternative–the company offers data-related courses only. This includes subjects like data analysis, data science, machine learning, basic programming courses (mainly Python or R), statistics, Excel courses, etc. So, this is not an option with no humanitarian or art courses but it has over 400 courses dedicated to data. The company also is more helpful for learning data-related skills from scratch and getting into a tech field.
DataCamp courses are quite affordable with the price ranging from $25 to 39/month. If you sign up for DataCamp, you pay for a period of time and get unlimited access, compared to course-based pricing on Udemy.
So, keeping these things in mind, it’s time for you to figure out your best alternatives to Udemy. But before you leave, here is the final point.
If you need even more alternatives to Udemy, check these Skillshare alternatives.
Why look for Udemy alternatives
While the company offers a huge number of courses on almost any topic and the prices are very low–you are usually able to find a course for $12-20, there are reasons why Udemy is not the best option.
So, what is not good about Udemy?
The main disadvantage of Udemy is that literally anyone can upload their course. This means that while there are a lot of amazing courses, many of them would be of low quality, poorly structured, with poor audio, etc. So, it’s completely your responsibility to find a good one among many dubious–but you often won’t understand how good is the course until you pay for it. And while the price of a single course is low, you might end up buying a few courses that you won’t watch as they are poorly done.
Another thing is that Udemy has a lot of beginner and general courses on a lot of topics–but you might struggle to find some advanced courses or courses on a specific topic.
