11 Best JavaScript Courses in 2026, Tested and Ranked

Most "best JavaScript courses" lists are just a pile of affiliate links that shoot you over to Udemy. I wanted to know what actually happens when you open each course as a stranger, so in October 2026 I opened every course on this list. Wherever a course let me, I wrote code and submitted a wrong answer on purpose. I also noted where each one asked for an email or a credit card first. And of course, I actually sampled the content so that I could write this breakdown.

How I ranked these

1. Does it check your code?
2. Does it teach modern JavaScript?
3. Is the free part useful on its own?

I care about the first one more than most people writing these lists (I think). Students who learn by watching someone else code feel great right up until they open an empty file. Lane's article on vibe coding hell covers it, and it's the reason every lesson on Boot.dev ends with a submit button.

What our data says about learning JavaScript

I pulled two datasets for this article from our Boot.dev student database:

Boot.dev's own learners. 20,541 people submitted their first Learn JavaScript lesson between July 2025 and March 2026. 60.8% of them had already passed a lesson in another Boot.dev course before starting, and 54.2% had passed one in Learn Python. On Boot.dev, JavaScript is mostly people's second language, partly because the platform itself sends total beginners to Python first.

The median learner who finished the whole course between October 2025 and September 2026 took 18 calendar days from their first submission and was active on 9 of them. Those 2,882 finishers are a self-selected group, so I'd recommend reading that as "how long it takes people who stick with it," not really "how long it takes everyone."

Stack Overflow's Developer Survey raw data. I downloaded the 2022 through 2025 response files and filtered each one to professional developers who answered the language question. The 2025 survey had fewer respondents overall (we all know SO has been on the decline):

Among the 10,702 pros in 2025 who use both languages, 14.9% said they want to keep working with TypeScript but not JavaScript, while only 3.9% said the reverse.

My takeaway is you should absolutely learn JavaScript, but treat TypeScript as the second half of the same course, not just an optional extra. There's a separate list of the best TypeScript courses for when you get there.

Boot.dev: Learn JavaScript

Boot.dev is first because it's ours... heh. Sorry not sorry.

Our Learn JavaScript course is 15 chapters and 113 lessons, which takes people around 25 hours. It goes from variables and functions through classes, prototypes, errors, sets and maps, promises, the event loop, runtimes, and modules. Every lesson is a small task in a fake SMS startup called Textio, and you submit code in the browser against tests.

Boot.dev's demo, behind the "write some code" button, runs the first lessons of this course with no account at all. Open a regular lesson logged out and you can read it, but the submit button says "Login to Submit," so you'll want a free account for the rest of the free chapters.

The cons:

• It's not for total beginners. The first lesson points brand-new programmers to Learn Python first. It doesn't teach you the absolute basics of programming, just the JavaScript language.
• No DOM. The course teaches the language, not how to manipulate web pages. If you want front-end work specifically, try freeCodeCamp or The Odin Project, which cover that. That said, starting with our JS course and then learning about the DOM makes total sense.
• Most of it is paid. The first three chapters (37 lessons) are fully interactive with a free account. After that, lessons are read-only unless you pay $59 per month or $399 per year.

freeCodeCamp: the free JavaScript course

freeCodeCamp's JavaScript Certification is free all the way through, certificate included. It's a mix of short text lectures, quizzes, guided workshops, and labs where you build something with less hand-holding.

The test feedback is the best of any free course here. In the first workshop, I typed console.log("Hi there") without the exclamation point. The console printed the failing test and told me exactly what it wanted: the message "Hi there!" with the quotes.

The cons:

• The exam needs a desktop app. To earn the certificate you build five projects and then take an exam in freeCodeCamp's Exam Environment app, which you download and install.
• Tutorials can go stale. The curriculum gets rebuilt every so often, so YouTube walkthroughs and forum posts from a couple of years ago point at steps that don't exist anymore.

The Odin Project: free, and closest to a real job

The Odin Project is a free, open-source curriculum, and it makes you work the way developers work. Before you write any JavaScript, you install tools, learn Git, and build pages with HTML, CSS, and Flexbox.

Its exercises are a GitHub repo you clone. I ran the first one with the wrong string, and Jest printed Expected: "Hello, World!" Received: "Hello World" in my terminal. It's the same feedback loop you'd get at work, which I love.

The cons:

• JavaScript comes late. You'll set up Node with nvm and get through the HTML and CSS sections first.
• No certificate.

javascript.info: the best free text course

javascript.info is the most thorough free explanation of JavaScript on the internet, and it's current. The homepage said it was last updated October 11, 2026, the day before I checked... which is also a bit sus, but I digress.

Some tasks come with a sandbox that has tests. I ran the empty starter for the ucFirst task and got "passes: 0 failures: 2" with the error underneath.

The cons:

• Most examples are read-and-run. The examples in the lessons print with alert() popups, and there's no grading on most of what you read.
• The sandbox runs on a third-party site with ads.

Jonas Schmedtmann's Complete JavaScript Course: the best video course

The Complete JavaScript Course on Udemy is 71 hours and 332 lectures, with a 4.7 rating from more than 234,000 reviews. Jonas explains things well, and if you like learning from video, it's a good one to buy.

The cons:

• Only 8 coding exercises in 71 hours. You'll need to code along and build the projects yourself, or you'll finish with a lot of hours watched and not much code actually written.
• The "2025" course in 2026. When I checked in October 2026, the title still said 2025, the last update was October 2025, and the description still promised "modern tools for 2022 and beyond." To be fair, JavaScript basics haven't changed, but it's a sign of how often it gets touched.
• Never pay list price. It listed at $199.99 and was $29.99 with an automatic discount... so treat it as a ~$30 course.

Scrimba: interactive video

Scrimba's Learn JavaScript is 9.4 hours of "scrims," screencasts where you can pause the video and edit the instructor's code in place. The course builds a game, a Chrome extension, and a small mobile app.

The cons:

• Video first. While you can pause and edit the code, the lessons are still video lectures. If videos move too slow for you, look elsewhere.

Full Stack Open: free, once you know the basics

Full Stack Open is the University of Helsinki's free course on modern web development with React, Node.js, MongoDB, and more. You get a free certificate, and Helsinki offers university credits through an exam.

The cons:

• It isn't a beginner JavaScript course. Helsinki asks for "good programming skills" before you start, and it moves fast.
• You grade yourself. You push exercises to GitHub and mark them done. Nothing runs your code.

JavaScript: The Hard Parts: the best deep dive

Frontend Masters is now master.dev, and Will Sentance's JavaScript: The Hard Parts v3 is still the course I'd point you to for closures, the event loop, and how JavaScript actually runs your code. Version 3 came out in January 2026, 54 lessons and 9.7 hours.

The cons:

• Video only. There are transcripts, but no graded exercises.
• It's a subscription for a 9.7-hour course. $39 per month gets you the whole catalog, but not every course in it is fresh. Kyle Simpson's Deep JavaScript Foundations v3 was published in April 2019, so check dates before you pick.

Codecademy: free course, paid everything else

Codecademy's Learn JavaScript is about 15 hours with 11 lessons, 12 projects, and 9 quizzes, and the course itself is free.

The cons:

• Certificates and the good projects are paid. Plus is $14.99 per month billed yearly or $29.99 monthly.

Codédex: neat, very Pokémon-esque

Codédex's JavaScript course is a pixel-art game with an in-browser editor, and you can do the first exercises without an account.

I typed console.lg on purpose to see what would happen. The terminal showed the TypeError and the runtime version underneath it: Node.js v17.1.0, which reached end-of-life in 2022. Then a popup said, "Correctness is determined with AI and results may be inaccurate," with a link labeled "My answer is actually correct." So I lost a bit of confidence in the grading system after that...

The cons:

• AI grading is a bad fit for beginners. If you don't know whether your answer is right, a grader that admits it might be wrong doesn't help.
• Most of it is paid. Chapters 1 and 2 are free. Codédex Club is $19.99 per month, or $9.99 per month billed yearly.

Eloquent JavaScript: the best free book

Eloquent JavaScript by Marijn Haverbeke is free online in its fourth edition, from 2024. Every code block on the page is editable and runnable, which is nice for a book.

The con: nothing checks your work. I wrote an off-by-one loop for the first exercise, printed 6 rows of a triangle that's supposed to have 7, and didn't get explicit feedback that I was wrong.

Also worth knowing

• MDN's JavaScript module: Mozilla's own lessons and "Test your skills" pages. Nothing checks your answers, but it's the reference you'll use for the rest of your career anyway.
• Wes Bos's JavaScript30: 30 small browser projects, free with an email. Still fun, though Day 1 uses the deprecated e.keyCode.
• JavaScript projects for beginners: once the basics click, build something.

Which JavaScript course should you pick?

• Already know some Python and want to work your way toward a career: Boot.dev's Learn JavaScript, then Learn TypeScript.
• Brand new and can't spend money: freeCodeCamp.
• Brand new and want to end up on the backend: Learn Python on Boot.dev first, then come back to JavaScript.
• Want to be a web developer in Rails: The Odin Project.
• Learn best from video: Jonas Schmedtmann on Udemy, on sale.
• Want to know how JavaScript works under the hood: JavaScript: The Hard Parts.

Lane wrote in 2023 that you don't fail to break into tech because you learned JavaScript instead of Python. You fail because you stop. Pick the course you'll actually keep coming back to. Not much else matters.