10 Best Free Python Courses in 2026, Ranked

"Free" does more work than it often deserves in many Python course listings. Free means different things to different people, and a lot of "free" courses are only free right up until the first project. But in most cases, as in life, nothing is truly free. Even the most-free courses on this list tend to get monetized somehow, usually with ads, donations, or a paid certificate.

So I went through each course's own pages and wrote down what you actually get for $0 and what costs money. Enjoy.

How I ranked these

1. Do you write code and get it checked?
2. Is the free part actually useful on its own?
3. How far does it take you?

The third question matters because it's an easy trap for a lot of students. Lane, the founder of Boot.dev, wrote about deciding to build a web app during his CS degree and realizing he'd only ever written little Python scripts. HTTP requests, SQL databases, RESTful servers. He had no idea what any of that was. A free course that ends at if statements will leave you in the same spot.

Certificates have value that's... highly variable. Most hiring managers won't care which free certificate you have, but if your school or your boss wants one, the table says which ones are free, which is why I included it.

What our data says about free Python learners

I looked at the 325,348 people whose first submission in Boot.dev's Learn Python for Beginners came between July 2025 and March 2026, so everyone had at least six months to keep going. The first three chapters, 44 lessons, are free for everyone, so the paywall won't explain anyone stopping before that point, which is useful for understanding the content and motivations for continuing in a vacuum.

About three out of four starters never passed 44 lessons, even though all of them were free. As we know, a lot of beginners spend more time choosing a free course than actually taking one. So honestly just pick one from this list and start today.

Boot.dev: free to start, paid to finish

Boot.dev's Learn Python for Beginners is 168 lessons across 15 chapters, about 30 hours, and you write and submit real Python in the browser from the first lesson. More than 869,000 students have joined it, and it's rated 4.8 from more than 12,000 ratings. It's also the first course in Boot.dev's backend path, and the rest of that path covers things like SQL, Go, and HTTP servers.

Boot.dev's version of free is a bit different. The early chapters are fully interactive. After that, every lesson stays readable in free mode, but you can't submit code, take quizzes, view solutions, use the AI tutor, or earn a certificate without a membership.

The cons:

• Most of the interactivity is paid. $59 per month or $399 per year. If you need $0 all the way through, take CS50P or Helsinki instead.
• It's built around a career path. If you only want to automate a spreadsheet at work, 15 chapters plus a whole backend path is probably overkill.

CS50P: Harvard's free Python course

CS50's Introduction to Programming with Python, or CS50P, is Harvard's beginner Python course, and Harvard gives the whole thing away. It's ten weeks of material: functions, conditionals, loops, exceptions, libraries, unit tests, file I/O, regular expressions, and object-oriented programming, then a final project.

The problem sets are my favorite part. You check your work with check50, submit with submit50, and anything that scores 70% or higher passes. Once you do everything, you can request a free CS50 certificate from your gradebook. The edX verified certificate costs $299, and you don't need it unless you really want it.

The cons:

• You need a GitHub account. CS50's tools and the free certificate both run through it... but let's be honest, you should have one anyways.
• It's a lecture course. You'll spend real time watching before you write.
• There's a deadline. The current run ends June 30, 2027. Harvard says it may extend that, but don't count on it.

Helsinki Python Programming MOOC: free college credit

The University of Helsinki's Python Programming MOOC 2026 is two courses in one: Introduction to Programming (parts 1 through 7) and an Advanced Course (parts 8 through 14, ending in project work). It's free and open to anyone, and you can earn a certificate on mooc.fi when you pass.

If you need academic credit, each course is worth 5 ECTS through the university's exam.

The cons:

• It's a yearly edition. The 2026 course is only open until the end of 2026, so starting it in December is a bad idea.
• The exam has a points bar. You need at least 25% of the exercise points in each of the seven parts to sit the Introduction exam.

freeCodeCamp Python Certification

freeCodeCamp rebuilt its Python track as the Python Certification. It's 578 steps of theory, workshops, labs, reviews, and quizzes, starting at the basics and going all the way to OOP, recursion, graphs, trees, and dynamic programming. The five certification projects are a user configuration manager, a budget app, a polygon area calculator, a hash table, and Tower of Hanoi.

Everything is free, certificate included. You only need an account to save your progress.

The cons:

• The certificate requires an exam. Finish the five projects, then pass the Python Certification exam.
• Old links still point to the old course. "Scientific Computing with Python" is the legacy version and freeCodeCamp says it's not being updated. So just make sure you start the new one.

Python for Everybody: the gentle option

Dr. Chuck's Python for Everybody is 17 lessons, starting at installing Python and ending with databases and data visualization. On py4e.com it's free, and logging in will get you a grade book, autograded assignments, and forums.

It moves slower than CS50P, so try it if Harvard's pace is too much for you.

The cons:

• The free certificate isn't for you. py4e.com only gives free certificates to University of Michigan students and staff.
• The Coursera version costs money. The Coursera specialization comes with a shareable certificate, but it's included with Coursera Plus, which is $59 per month or $399 per year.
• It leans toward data, not software engineering. You won't get much on testing or project structure.

futurecoder: no account required

futurecoder is a free, open-source Python course for complete beginners, and it's one of the fastest ways on this list to just start typing code. You don't need an account or any setup, and the first lesson loads right away.

You can't move forward without running code that meets each step's requirements, and when you get stuck, hints reveal the answer a piece at a time. It also ships with three debuggers and friendlier error messages than raw Python tracebacks.

The cons:

• It's short. It ends at dictionaries, after a Tic Tac Toe project. No OOP, no filesystem, no algos.
• No certificate.

Automate the Boring Stuff with Python

Al Sweigart's Automate the Boring Stuff with Python is free to read online under a Creative Commons license, and the third edition is the current one. The first part teaches the basics. The rest is about pointing Python at real chores: organizing files, scraping websites, editing Excel and Google Sheets, and sending emails. It's one of the most beloved Python books, and the third edition is updated for Python 3.11.

There's a companion Udemy course too, and the first 15 videos are free on YouTube.

The cons:

• A book doesn't run tests on your code. It has practice questions with answers, but you'll need a local setup or a free Python playground to run anything.
• The video course is out of date. It follows the first edition of the book, not the third, so just know that going in.

Kaggle Learn Python

Kaggle's Python course is seven lessons, each one a tutorial plus an exercise, estimated at 5 hours. It's free, and you get a certificate when you finish. From there it points you at Kaggle's Pandas, SQL, and machine learning courses.

The cons:

• It isn't for total beginners. Kaggle says it builds on its Intro to Programming course.
• It's short. Five hours covers the basics Kaggle's data courses need, and that's about it.

Scrimba Learn Python: three small projects

Scrimba's Learn Python is free, 4.1 hours long, and assumes no coding experience. You build three small projects: an expense-splitting app, a word-scramble game, and a karaoke queue manager.

The cons:

• The free plan caps challenges at 10. Pro is $49 per month at list price.
• The certificate is murky. The course page lists a certificate, but Scrimba's pricing page puts course certificates under Pro.
• It stops at functions and error handling.

Sololearn Introduction to Python: bite-sized lessons

Sololearn's Introduction to Python is 34 free lessons on strings, input, variables, if/else, lists, and functions. You need a free account, and you can earn a course certificate on any plan, free included.

The cons:

• Free means ads and hearts. Pro removes both and adds practice exercises. It's $12.99 per month or $5.83 per month billed annually.
• It's only an introduction. It stops at functions.

Which free Python courses give you a certificate?

These are the certificates you can get without paying, plus a few you can't.

Lots of people search for a "free Google Python certificate". As far as I can tell, it doesn't exist. Google's Crash Course on Python is a beginner course on Coursera, and its certificate comes through a paid Coursera subscription. It's part of the Google IT Automation with Python certificate, which Google lists at $49 per month in the US and Canada, and it's also included with Coursera Plus.

Also worth knowing

• Google's Python Class: free written lessons, seven lecture videos, and four exercises. Google says it's for people with a little programming experience, and the page was last updated in July 2024.
• MIT 6.100L on OpenCourseWare: 26 free lectures plus problem sets from MIT's fall 2022 intro course. There's no grading, so you're on your own for feedback.
• Codecademy: Learn Python 3 is a paid course. Its free Learn Python 2 course teaches Python 2, which reached end of life in 2020. I wouldn't worry about it. Pretend it doesn't exist.
• The official Python tutorial: free and always current. It's a great reference once you know the basics, but it's written for people who already know how to program.

Which free Python course should you pick?

• Aiming for a developer job: Boot.dev. Start free and see if you like the quality of the content before you pay.
• Can't spend anything: CS50P.
• Need college credit: the Helsinki MOOC.
• Want a free certificate and some projects to show: freeCodeCamp.
• Using Python at your current job: Automate the Boring Stuff.

Once you finish any of these, you'll need a lot of reps. I put together a list of the best sites to practice Python for that. And if you're open to paid courses too, there's a broader list of the best places to learn Python online.