Top 20 Sites for Free Online Education

Did you know that you can get quality education online without paying a cent? With the internet, you can learn how to code, speak different languages or get better in any course right at the comfort of your home?

You can achieve this by taking part in distance learning with these Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) from websites to explore your boundaries and increase your knowledge. Irrespective of your area of interest, you can always explore different online learning platforms.

With that regards, we’ll be providing the top 20 websites where you can learn online at a little or no cost at all. All you need is just to get connected to the internet and start taking your courses.

Top 20 Free Online Education Websites

The following online education websites offer thousands of online courses for students and life-long learners alike. Importantly, some of these websites offer fee-based courses, however, you can also find free courses as well.

1. Khan Academy

Khan Academy is a non-profit whose missions is “to provide free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. The platform is free for both learners and teachers, and offers lessons for students from kindergarten through early college, with topic including math, grammar, science, history, AP® exams, SAT® and more.

Khan Academy’s materials and resources are available to you completely free of charge. Take part in the interactive classroom blackboard teaching style with short quizzes and questions to test your understanding along the way.

2. Coursera

Coursera is one of the largest website databases for University. The platform has more than 35 million learners, 150 university partners, 2,700 courses, 250 specializations and four degrees. In addition to free courses, Coursera offers courses generally ranging from $29 – $99.

Specializations and degrees are priced higher. Course instructors include experts from the world’s top colleges and universities, and courses include recorded video lectures, community discussion forums and both graded and peer-reviewed coursework. You can also receive a course certificate for each course you complete.

3. EdX

EdX is another great option for free online education. The platform was founded by Harvard and MIT and seeks to remove three barriers of traditional education: cost, location and access.

EdX has more than 20 million learners and 2,400 courses from a majority of the top-ranked universities in the world. It offers full online courses with teachers, discussion boards, quizzes, and so on.

4. Udemy

Udemy is an online institution that offers courses taught by leading experts. The global education marketplace, has 30 million students, 100,000 courses in 50 languages, 42,000 instructors and 22 million minutes of video instruction. Unlike other online education platforms driven by content from colleges and universities, Udemy allows content creators to curate their own courses and teach them online.

Whether you want to get promoted, break into a new industry, start a company, further a passion, or just accelerate your life, Udemy helps you learn from the amazing instructors in the world, so that you can get there and get there faster. Discover featured courses and areas that you would like to develop.

5. Codeacademy

Codecademy is a website dedicated specifically to teaching coding in multiple different programming languages. Most free courses can be completed in less than 11 hours. Codecademy teaches you how to write the code necessary to develop interactive websites using the most useful languages – HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, Python, Ruby, and PHP – and does it within the browser using interactive tools.

Codecademy features a centralized dashboard where you can monitor your progress, plus organizes lessons into complete modules. This lets you learn an entire language without needing to pick the next course manually.

6. TED-Ed

TED-Ed is another great destination for more general learning online. The platform is an initiative of TED designed primarily for the purpose of education for youths.

TED-Ed has a global network of more than 250,000 teachers that serves millions of teachers and students around the world every week. TED-Ed includes innovative content such as original animated videos and a platform for teachers to create interactive lessons.

7. Stanford Online Courses

Stanford Online, an education initiative at Stanford University, offers free online courses as well as professional certificates, advanced degrees and executive education.

The platform offers courses from Stanford’s undergraduate and graduate schools, including Stanford Law School, Stanford Business School and Stanford Medical School, among others.

8. Open Culture Online Courses

Open Culture Online Courses offers a wide range of free online education courses. The website highlights 1000 lectures, videos and podcasts from universities around the world. It also features a lot of material found only on universities private sites, all in easy to browse categories. This means you can find hundreds of university courses, without having to visit and search each university’s own site.

9. Academic Earth

Academic Earth is another great site with online courses from many different schools. Just like some of the sites listed above, Academic Earth brings together top-notch courses from many different sources and focuses on offering a wide variety of subjects.

Academic Earth lists courses by subject and school, so it might be easier to find what you’re looking for.

10. MIT OpenCourseWare

MIT OpenCourseWare is a large scale web-based publication of course materials from the Massachusettes Institute of Technology. The platform provides lectures, lecture notes, homework assignments, sample tests and many other materials from the actual courses at MIT. MIT OpenCourseWare stands out from the pack if you’re looking to learn more about science, computer and engineering topics, as MIT is a leading university for those subjects.

11. Harvard Extension

Just like Stanford Online, Harvard Extension features free online education courses from Harvard only. This is another excellent source for top-notch course material, though the course variety is less rich than multi-school sites.

Additionally, Harvard Extension allows you to search for courses by professional certificate. This makes it much easier if your online education goal includes certification.

12. ITunesU Free Online Courses

A very convenient place for free online education is iTunesU because it integrates seamlessly with your iPod or any app-ready Apple mobile device. On iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch, users download the iTunesU app.

The tool offers online courses with full lectures, the ability to take notes on those lectures and assignments to continue learning outside of the lecture environment. However, courses are often a mix of free podcasts or videos and paid content.

13. Code

Just like the name implies, Code is another great website focused mainly on coding and app writing. Code has high-quality courses and also features learning options for kids.

In addition to kid-friendly courses, Code offers free online education classes on a wide variety of technology topics. These classes include app writing, robotics and Javascript.

Most of the courses are also geared in such a way that they can be useful in a classroom setting. This makes Code a great resource for harder to find coding topics, as well as various learning settings.

14. Alison

Unlike every other website offering online education, Alison is a free education site offering certification in some areas. Alison offers courses mainly in business, technology, and health, but also includes language learning courses.

It’s a great option if users need certification for their learning as Alison also offers school curriculum courses.

15. Udacity

Udacity is a digital university that specializes in computer science courses. The web layout is extremely easy to navigate. You are given five-minute video lectures with quizzes and assignments. There are no textbooks required, and everything is free. In addition to the class, Udacity offers an online forum where students can collaborate together, study, and work in groups.

They can arrange for you to take a proctored exam to gain credit at participating universities. They even offer to hand your resume to partnering companies. This institution is about helping the student succeed on all levels.

16. Google Code University

Google Code University offers computer science courses for those interested in coding and languages. You click on the course you’d like to take, and all the materials, videos, and lessons are along the sidebar. There is no option to interact with others, so it is essentially an independent study.

17. Open Yale Courses

Yale Open Courses provides free and open access to a selection of introductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars at Yale University. While the site is similarly limited to topics taught at the school, Open Yale Courses offers a lot of videos of actual campus lectures. The availability of videos makes the site a great option if you’re looking for quality courses, but learn better by watching than by reading.

18. Saylor

Saylor University is an advanced learning site, offering degree programs in a wide variety of disciplines. Once completed, you will receive a certificate (though the school is currently not accredited). Saylor promises that your knowledge and education will be equivalent to a traditional college education.

Each course culminates with a final exam, and students receiving a passing grade can download a certificate of completion. The website is easy to navigate and understand and a great choice if you are interested in the material.

19. Master Class Management

Master Class Management is a website designed solely for those students interested in a business degree. This free online management course and leadership skills training will teach you management skills, leadership styles, and the fundamentals of a mini-MBA business management certification program. You receive a certificate at the end of each class.

20. Memrise

Memrise is another impressive free online education site that is perfect for learning languages. The site encompasses many other topics as well, though some of the course material is user-generated content. Part of what makes Memrise special is their integration of games into the learning materials, mixing learning with entertainment.