100 Free AI Courses

Every course here is genuinely free and hand-picked: from AI literacy to building your own LLMs and agents, sourced from top universities, the labs themselves, and the best of YouTube.

On this page

This page lists 100+ free AI courses from universities, YouTube and the AI labs, filtered by topic, level and year. Every one is free in full, and the freshest were published between 2024 and 2026. If you want to know where to start, pick one of the four paths below and take the courses in order.

New courses land every month and older ones quietly go paid. One email a week keeps you current.

How I picked these courses

Four rules, and a course had to pass all four.

Free in full. Every lesson, every video, every exercise, every download. A free first module with a paywall behind it did not count.

Current. The freshest courses were published between 2024 and 2026. Older lectures teach habits the tools have since made pointless.

From a source that teaches rather than sells. Universities, the labs that build the models, and YouTube channels that walk through the work on screen.

On topic. LLMs, agents and prompt engineering. Machine learning theory has its place, but this list is about the tools you would use this week.

Four learning paths through the list

Four paths, each four or five courses deep, all from the list below. Take them in order.

Path 1: AI literacy for work

For someone who uses ChatGPT or Claude at work and wants to stop guessing.

  1. Google's introductory AI course for people who do not write code.
  2. Anthropic's introduction to working with Claude.
  3. A Stanford lecture series on how language models work, pitched at a general audience.
  4. A YouTube walkthrough of one real workflow, like drafting a report with an AI tool.

Path 2: Prompt engineering

For someone who wants the same quality on the tenth run as on the first.

  1. A prompt engineering course published by one of the labs.
  2. A university short course on prompting and evaluation.
  3. A YouTube series that builds one prompt over several videos and shows the versions that failed.
  4. My prompt engineering guide, which covers the 25 principles I use.

Path 3: Building with LLM APIs

For someone who can write some Python and wants to call a model from code.

  1. An MIT introductory course on machine learning or deep learning.
  2. A developer course from one of the labs on the model API: messages, system prompts, tool use, structured output.
  3. A YouTube build-along that ships a small app on top of an LLM.
  4. A university course on retrieval, so the app answers from your own documents.
  5. A short course on evaluation, so you know when the app is wrong before your users do.

Path 4: Agents and automation

For someone who wants a model to run a multi-step job without being watched.

  1. Path 3 first, or at least the API course. An agent is a model with tools and a loop, and the loop is code.
  2. A course from one of the labs on tool use and agent design.
  3. A university lecture series on agent architectures and where they break.
  4. A YouTube series that builds one automation in a no-code tool, then rebuilds it in code.
  5. My AI agents guide, which starts from a task you already do by hand.

The full list, with filters, is below.

Generative AI Full Course (30 Hours)

Extensive live-recorded journey through generative models led by three AI experts.

IntermediatefreeCodeCamp · 30 hours · Full Course

Learn Generative AI for Developers

Comprehensive generative AI course from foundational concepts to real-world deployment with hands-on projects.

IntermediatefreeCodeCamp · 21 hours · Full Course

Foundations of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence

Covers ML/AI foundations through advanced topics like recommender systems and predictive analytics, with a data science career roadmap.

BeginnerfreeCodeCamp · 11 hours · Full Course

Local AI Development with Ollama

Hands-on course on running LLMs locally with Ollama, building three projects including a RAG system and an AI recruiter.

IntermediatefreeCodeCamp · 3 hours · Full Course

Learn RAG from Scratch, Python AI Tutorial

Implements retrieval-augmented generation from scratch with LangChain, covering a dozen RAG papers with open-source notebooks.

IntermediatefreeCodeCamp · ~2.5 hours · Full Course

Practical Deep Learning for Coders

Jeremy Howard's free code-first course teaching how to build and deploy deep learning models for vision, NLP, and tabular data with PyTorch and fastai.

Beginnerfast.ai · ~9 lessons · Full Course

Let's reproduce GPT-2 (124M)

Reproduces the GPT-2 124M model from an empty file, building the network then optimizing training speed, hyperparameters, and evaluation.

AdvancedYouTube - Andrej Karpathy · ~4 hours · YouTube

Neural Networks: Zero to Hero

Builds neural networks from scratch in code, from backpropagation and micrograd up to a GPT and a tokenizer (includes the 'Let's build GPT' and 'Let's build the GPT Tokenizer' lectures).

AdvancedYouTube - Andrej Karpathy · ~15 hours (playlist) · YouTube

Visualizing transformers and attention

Conference talk visualizing the transformer architecture and the attention mechanism that powers modern LLMs.

IntermediateYouTube - 3Blue1Brown · ~1 hour · YouTube

But what is a GPT? Visual intro to transformers

Visual explanation of how GPT-style transformers generate text, covering attention blocks and multilayer perceptron blocks.

BeginnerYouTube - 3Blue1Brown · 27 min · YouTube

Neural Networks / Deep Learning series

Visual, intuition-first series on neural networks, gradient descent, and backpropagation, extended in 2024 with chapters on transformers and attention.

BeginnerYouTube - 3Blue1Brown · ~4 hours (playlist) · YouTube

Training and Fine-tuning LLMs

Covers LLM architecture, training techniques, LoRA, and Prefix Tuning with contributions from industry experts.

AdvancedWeights & Biases · 4 hours · Short Course

Effective MLOps: Model Development

Free MLOps course on disciplined, collaborative, reproducible ML pipeline development.

IntermediateWeights & Biases · 4 hours · Short Course

RAG++: From POC to Production

Production-ready retrieval-augmented generation techniques: performance optimization, cost reduction, and accuracy improvement.

IntermediateWeights & Biases · 2 hours · Short Course

Prompt Engineering for ChatGPT

Vanderbilt's hugely popular non-coding course on crafting effective prompts and prompt patterns, free to audit (certificate paid).

BeginnerVanderbilt University (Coursera) · ~18 hours · University Course

Elements of AI

The most popular course in the university's history with millions of learners: a no-math, no-code introduction to what AI is, what it can and cannot do, and its societal impact. Completely free.

BeginnerUniversity of Helsinki · ~30 hours, self-paced · Interactive/Docs

CS188: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

Berkeley's core AI course on search, game playing, CSPs, probabilistic reasoning, MDPs, reinforcement learning, and machine learning. Lectures and Pacman projects free via YouTube and ai.berkeley.edu.

IntermediateUC Berkeley · ~25 lectures · University Course

LLM Bootcamp

Free bootcamp on building and deploying LLM applications: prompt engineering, LLMOps, UX for language interfaces, and augmented language models.

IntermediateThe Full Stack · Self-paced · Full Course

CS234: Reinforcement Learning

Covers MDP planning, Q-learning, policy search, offline RL, exploration, and deep RL, with applications from robotics to healthcare. Full Spring 2024 lectures free on YouTube.

AdvancedStanford Online · 15 lectures · YouTube

CS224n: NLP with Deep Learning

Stanford's flagship neural NLP course covering word vectors, transformers, post-training, and benchmarking. Spring 2024 lectures are free on YouTube.

AdvancedStanford Online · ~18 lectures · University Course

CS229: Machine Learning

Andrew Ng's canonical full-course lecture series covering supervised learning, SVMs, kernels, neural nets, and reinforcement learning. Current notes and problem sets live at cs229.stanford.edu.

IntermediateStanford Online · ~20 lectures (27+ hrs) · YouTube

COS 597R: Deep Dive into Large Language Models

A rigorous survey of current LLM research: architecture, data preparation, pre-training, post-training/alignment, and deployment. Reading list, slides, and materials openly available.

AdvancedPrinceton University · 1 semester · University Course

Pinecone Learning Center

Free guides and handbooks on vector databases, embeddings, semantic search, and building RAG applications.

IntermediatePinecone · Self-paced · Interactive/Docs

OpenAI Cookbook

Official open-source collection of code examples and guides for the OpenAI API: prompting, function calling, embeddings, agents, and production patterns.

IntermediateOpenAI · Self-paced · Interactive/Docs

Data Science for Beginners

A 10-week, 20-lesson project-based curriculum covering data science principles, ethics, data preparation, visualization, and analysis.

BeginnerMicrosoft · 10 weeks, 20 lessons · Full Course

ML for Beginners

A 12-week, 26-lesson curriculum on classic machine learning using Scikit-learn, with quizzes and project-based assignments.

BeginnerMicrosoft · 12 weeks, 26 lessons · Full Course

Generative AI for Beginners

21-lesson curriculum from Microsoft Cloud Advocates covering the fundamentals of building generative AI applications with hands-on code.

BeginnerMicrosoft · 21 lessons · Full Course

Prompt Engineering with Llama 2 & 3

Meta-led course on prompting Llama 2 & 3, Code Llama, and Llama Guard, covering few-shot, chain-of-thought, and safe AI apps.

BeginnerMeta · 1 hour · Short Course

6.5940: TinyML and Efficient Deep Learning Computing

Efficient ML techniques: pruning, quantization, NAS, distillation, distributed training, and on-device LLM/diffusion deployment. Fall 2024 lectures free via efficientml.ai and YouTube.

AdvancedMIT · ~20 lectures · University Course

Building Agentic RAG with LlamaIndex

LlamaIndex CEO-led course on building research agents with tool use, reasoning, and multi-document RAG.

BeginnerLlamaIndex · Short · Short Course

Introduction to LangGraph

LangChain Academy's flagship free course on LangGraph as an orchestration framework for complex agentic systems.

IntermediateLangChain Academy · Self-paced · Short Course

Kaggle: Intro to AI Ethics

Practical tools for the responsible design of AI systems, covering bias, fairness, and model cards.

BeginnerKaggle · ~4 hours · Interactive/Docs

Kaggle: Intro to Deep Learning

Interactive course building neural networks with TensorFlow and Keras, covering layers, activations, dropout, and batch normalization.

BeginnerKaggle · ~4 hours · Interactive/Docs

Kaggle: Intro to Machine Learning

Hands-on micro-course covering how models work, validation, overfitting, and random forests, run entirely in Kaggle notebooks.

BeginnerKaggle · ~3 hours · Interactive/Docs

Hugging Face Community Computer Vision Course

Community-built course covering computer vision fundamentals, CNNs, vision transformers, and multimodal models.

IntermediateHugging Face · Self-paced · Full Course

Hugging Face Diffusion Course

Study the theory and practice of diffusion models for image generation using the Hugging Face Diffusers library.

IntermediateHugging Face · Self-paced · Full Course

Hugging Face Audio Course

Learn to apply transformers to audio: speech recognition, audio classification, and text-to-speech generation.

IntermediateHugging Face · Self-paced · Full Course

Hugging Face Deep RL Course

Hands-on Deep Reinforcement Learning course covering Q-learning, policy gradients, PPO, and training agents in simulated environments.

IntermediateHugging Face · Self-paced · Full Course

CS50: Introduction to Computer Science

Harvard's landmark intro to computer science and programming, covering algorithms, data structures, Python, SQL, and web development. Free to audit on edX.

BeginnerHarvardX · ~11 weeks · University Course

CS50's Introduction to AI with Python

Explores algorithms behind modern AI: search, knowledge representation, uncertainty, optimization, machine learning, and neural networks in Python. Free to audit on edX.

IntermediateHarvardX · 7 weeks · University Course

Google AI Essentials

Google's practical AI-literacy course for using AI to boost productivity across any role, including prompting and responsible AI. Free to audit; financial aid available.

BeginnerGoogle (Coursera) · ~10 hours · Full Course

Introduction to Large Language Models

No-cost course covering what large language models are, their use cases, and methods like prompt tuning to improve their performance.

BeginnerGoogle · ~45 minutes · Interactive/Docs

Introduction to Generative AI

No-cost introductory course explaining what generative AI is, how it is used, and how it differs from traditional machine learning.

BeginnerGoogle · ~45 minutes · Interactive/Docs

Machine Learning Crash Course

Google's refreshed practical introduction to ML with interactive lessons on regression, neural networks, embeddings, LLMs, and production ML.

BeginnerGoogle · ~15 hours · Interactive/Docs

AI For Everyone

Non-technical primer on what AI can and cannot do, how to spot opportunities, and how to build AI strategy in an organization. Free to audit.

BeginnerDeepLearning.AI (Coursera) · ~6 hours · Full Course

Generative AI for Everyone

Andrew Ng's non-technical overview of how generative AI works, how to use it day-to-day, and how to build an AI strategy for business. Free to audit.

BeginnerDeepLearning.AI (Coursera) · ~5 hours · Full Course

ChatGPT Prompt Engineering for Developers

Practical developer course on summarizing, inferring, transforming and expanding with LLM APIs, with runnable Jupyter examples. Free to access.

BeginnerDeepLearning.AI · ~1.5 hours · Short Course

Serverless Agentic Workflows with Amazon Bedrock

Build and deploy a serverless customer-support agent on Amazon Bedrock, examining its execution trace and reasoning steps.

IntermediateDeepLearning.AI · ~1.5 hours · Short Course

AI Agentic Design Patterns with AutoGen

Use Microsoft's AutoGen framework to build multi-agent conversational systems and agentic design patterns like reflection, tool use, and planning.

BeginnerDeepLearning.AI · ~1.5 hours · Short Course

Multi AI Agent Systems with crewAI

Automate complex business workflows by orchestrating a crew of role-playing AI agents that collaborate on tasks using the crewAI framework.

BeginnerDeepLearning.AI · ~2.5 hours · Short Course

AI Agents in LangGraph

Build controllable agents from scratch and rebuild them in LangGraph, adding persistence, state management, and multi-thread conversation handling.

IntermediateDeepLearning.AI · ~1.5 hours · Short Course

LLM University (LLMU)

Cohere's free structured learning hub on embeddings, semantic search, RAG, prompt engineering, fine-tuning, and deployment.

BeginnerCohere · Self-paced · Full Course

11-711: Advanced NLP

CMU's graduate NLP course covering language modeling, word representations, RLHF, mixture-of-experts, interpretability, and complex reasoning. Full Fall 2024 lectures free on YouTube.

AdvancedCarnegie Mellon University · ~26 lectures · University Course

Anthropic Educational Courses (courses repo)

Anthropic's open-source course collection covering API fundamentals, prompt engineering, real-world prompting, tool use, and prompt evaluations.

BeginnerAnthropic · Self-paced · Full Course

Interactive Prompt Engineering Tutorial

A free, hands-on 9-chapter tutorial (Jupyter notebooks or Google Sheets) that teaches prompt engineering for Claude from basic structure to advanced complex prompts.

BeginnerAnthropic · 9 chapters · Interactive/Docs

Training & Fine-Tuning LLMs for Production

Part of the Gen AI 360 certification series, covering how to train, fine-tune, and deploy LLMs in production.

AdvancedActiveloop · Self-paced · Full Course

LangChain & Vector Databases in Production

Free certification course on building production LLM apps with LangChain and vector databases.

IntermediateActiveloop · Self-paced · Full Course

Machine Learning Concepts plus Generative AI

Introduction to machine learning fundamentals through to generative AI concepts.

BeginnerfreeCodeCamp · 2 hours · Full Course

AI Engineering Roadmap

Roadmap course covering foundational math, key ML algorithms, LLMs, best practices, and AI career paths.

BeginnerfreeCodeCamp · ~1 hour · Full Course

Train Your Own LLM

Beginner-friendly walkthrough of training a language model from start to finish.

BeginnerfreeCodeCamp · 4 hours · Full Course

Learn n8n: Build Production-Grade AI Agents

freeCodeCamp course on integrating APIs, automating processes and building AI agents in n8n, including an email agent and research workflows.

IntermediatefreeCodeCamp · Full course · YouTube

Generative AI by Krish Naik (playlist)

Ongoing playlist covering LLM fine-tuning (LoRA/QLoRA), LangChain, Hugging Face, and end-to-end GenAI apps on AWS.

IntermediateYouTube - Krish Naik · Multi-video playlist · YouTube

How Transformer LLMs Work

Walks through how transformer LLMs process text, from bag-of-words and Word2Vec to attention, with Hugging Face code examples.

IntermediateYouTube - DeepLearning.AI · ~1 hour · Short Course

How I Use LLMs

Practical tour of the LLM ecosystem and real workflows across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, including tool use, search, code interpreter, and multimodal interaction.

BeginnerYouTube - Andrej Karpathy · 2h11m · YouTube

Deep Dive into LLMs like ChatGPT

General-audience deep dive into the full LLM training stack: pretraining, tokenization, fine-tuning, hallucinations, and reinforcement learning.

All LevelsYouTube - Andrej Karpathy · 3h31m · YouTube

Build AI Agents with n8n: Complete Beginner's Automation Course

Free no-code walkthrough of n8n covering core concepts, integrations and building AI agents, including an inbox-manager project with email categorization.

BeginnerYouTube · ~3 hours · YouTube

AI Engineering: Agents

Course built with OpenAI on building production-grade AI agents combining reasoning models, tools, memory, and planning.

IntermediateWeights & Biases · 2 hours · Short Course

Advanced Large Language Model Agents MOOC

Berkeley RDI's open MOOC on LLM agents: reasoning and planning, math and coding, inference-time techniques, and agent safety and security, taught by leading researchers. Free livestreams, slides, and labs.

AdvancedUC Berkeley · ~12 weeks · University Course

CS336: Language Modeling from Scratch

Builds a language model end-to-end: tokenization, transformer construction, GPUs/kernels, parallelism, scaling laws, inference, and evaluation. Spring 2025 lectures are free on YouTube.

AdvancedStanford Online · ~19 lectures · University Course

CS25: Transformers United V5

A seminar series where leading researchers present the latest in transformer architectures and applications across LLMs, art, biology, and robotics. Lectures posted free on YouTube.

AdvancedStanford Online · ~10 seminar talks · YouTube

OpenAI Academy

OpenAI's free, self-paced learning hub spanning AI fundamentals, applied AI, agents, and workflows, with certificates of completion.

BeginnerOpenAI · Self-paced · Full Course

AI Agents for Beginners

Lesson-based course teaching the fundamentals of building AI agents, including agentic design patterns, tool use, and multi-agent systems.

BeginnerMicrosoft · 11+ lessons · Full Course

Building with Llama 4

Meta short course on building applications with the Llama 4 models and their multimodal and mixture-of-experts capabilities.

IntermediateMeta · Short · Short Course

6.S191: Introduction to Deep Learning

MIT's fast-paced bootcamp on deep learning fundamentals, CNNs, RL, and language models, with hands-on software labs. All 2025 lectures, slides, and labs are free online.

BeginnerMIT · ~6 lectures + labs · University Course

Learn Prompting: Introduction to Prompt Engineering

The original open, free prompt-engineering curriculum covering zero-shot, few-shot, chain-of-thought and more, used by millions of learners.

BeginnerLearn Prompting · Self-paced · Interactive/Docs

LangGraph Essentials

Quickstart teaching LangGraph's core components (State, Nodes, Edges, Memory) by building an email workflow.

BeginnerLangChain Academy · Self-paced · Short Course

5 Days of AI Agents Intensive Course with Google

Follow-up intensive from Google and Kaggle focused specifically on building, evaluating, and deploying AI agents.

IntermediateKaggle · 5 days · Interactive/Docs

5-Day Gen AI Intensive Course with Google

Self-paced Learn Guide adapted from the record-breaking live course, covering foundation models, embeddings, agents, domain LLMs, and MLOps.

IntermediateKaggle · 5 days · Interactive/Docs

AI Agents Course

Beginner-to-expert course on building AI agents with smolagents, LlamaIndex, and LangGraph, with a completion certificate.

BeginnerHugging Face · Self-paced · Full Course

Hugging Face LLM Course

Free, ad-free course teaching LLMs and NLP using Transformers, Datasets, Tokenizers, and the Hugging Face Hub.

IntermediateHugging Face · ~10 hours · Full Course

Hugging Face MCP Course

Built in partnership with Anthropic, teaches Model Context Protocol architecture and how to build and deploy MCP applications with a certification.

IntermediateHugging Face · Self-paced · Full Course

Google Cloud: Prompt Engineering Guide

Beginner course on combining Google Cloud fundamentals with prompt engineering to dramatically improve Gemini responses.

BeginnerGoogle Cloud · Short · Short Course

Gemini API by Google

Free Google-partnered course on building AI apps with the Gemini API and AI Studio across text, images, and code.

BeginnerGoogle · Under 2 hours · Short Course

Design, Develop, and Deploy Multi-Agent Systems with CrewAI

End-to-end course on designing, building, and deploying production multi-agent systems with the crewAI framework.

IntermediateDeepLearning.AI · ~3 hours · Short Course

Agentic AI

Andrew Ng's course on building agentic AI systems using the core design patterns of reflection, tool use, planning, and multi-agent collaboration.

IntermediateDeepLearning.AI · ~10 hours · Short Course

Document AI: From OCR to Agentic Doc Extraction

Move beyond traditional OCR to agentic document extraction that understands layout, tables, and figures for structured data extraction.

BeginnerDeepLearning.AI · ~1 hour · Short Course

Event-Driven Agentic Document Workflows

Build an event-driven agentic workflow with LlamaIndex that parses documents, fills PDF forms, and retrieves data via RAG asynchronously.

IntermediateDeepLearning.AI · ~1.5 hours · Short Course

MCP: Build Rich-Context AI Apps with Anthropic

Built with Anthropic, teaches the Model Context Protocol: how to build and deploy MCP servers that expose tools, resources, and prompts to AI apps like Claude Desktop.

IntermediateDeepLearning.AI · ~1.5 hours · Short Course

AI Dev Tools Zoomcamp

Free project-based course on AI coding assistants, agents, MCP, n8n automation and CI/CD, with a certificate on completion.

IntermediateDataTalks.Club · Multi-week cohort · Full Course

Prompt Engineering Guide

Continuously updated open reference on prompting, context engineering, RAG and agents with copyable examples and model-specific guidance across many languages.

All LevelsDAIR.AI · Self-paced · Interactive/Docs

No-Code AI Foundations for Business Professionals

Applies AI tools without coding to automate workflows and analyze data for business, part of the No-Code AI for Business specialization. Free to audit.

BeginnerCoursera · ~3 hours · Short Course

Introduction to Model Context Protocol (MCP)

Getting-started course on the Model Context Protocol, plus an advanced-topics follow-up, for connecting Claude to tools and data.

IntermediateAnthropic Academy · Self-paced · Short Course

Introduction to Agent Skills

Learn to build, configure, and share Skills in Claude Code: reusable instructions Claude applies to the right tasks automatically.

IntermediateAnthropic Academy · Self-paced · Short Course

Claude Code in Action

Hands-on course on getting up to speed with Claude Code, Anthropic's agentic command-line coding tool.

IntermediateAnthropic Academy · Self-paced · Short Course

Claude with the Anthropic API

In-depth Anthropic Academy course on building applications with the Claude SDK and Anthropic API.

BeginnerAnthropic Academy · Self-paced · Full Course

Agentic AI using LangGraph, Build AI Agents and Automate Workflows

Comprehensive project-driven course on building and deploying agentic AI with LangGraph, including human-in-the-loop, RAG, and streaming.

AdvancedfreeCodeCamp · 24 hours · Full Course

Learn RAG and MCP Fundamentals

Fundamentals of retrieval-augmented generation and the Model Context Protocol, including building your own MCP server and client in Python.

IntermediatefreeCodeCamp · 2 hours · Full Course

Production RAG with LangChain and Vector Databases

End-to-end production RAG pipeline covering vector DB optimization, observability, and agentic and multimodal architectures.

AdvancedfreeCodeCamp · 8 hours · Full Course

AI for Marketing

Free course on using AI for marketing strategy, content creation, personalization and analytics, with strategic prompting and responsible-use guidance.

BeginnerHubSpot Academy · ~3 hours · Full Course

Google Prompting Essentials

Google's five-step prompting course for everyday work (email, data analysis, presentations), free via Google Skills.

BeginnerGoogle Skills · Under 10 hours · Full Course

What "free" means on each platform

Free has more than one meaning. I keep this general because the terms change.

  • Audit tracks. University platforms often let you watch every lecture at no cost and charge for graded work and the certificate. The learning is free. The paper is paid.
  • Certificates that cost money. Some courses are free to complete and then charge for the certificate. If you want the line on your resume, budget for it.
  • Time-limited access. A few platforms open a course for a fixed window and close it after.
  • Free with an account. The labs and YouTube usually ask for a login or nothing at all.

How long a free AI course takes

Platform estimates run optimistic, so these are my planning ranges.

  • A YouTube course or a lab's short course: an evening to a weekend.
  • A university short course: a few weeks at a few hours a week.
  • A full university course with problem sets: a term if you do the sets, much less if you only watch.
  • A whole path from this page: about a month for AI literacy, a season for the API and agents paths.

One course at a time, finished, before the next. Two half-watched courses teach less than one finished one.

What to do after a course

A course gives you vocabulary and a first project. The gap after it is practice.

Frequently asked questions

Are these courses really free?

⌄

Yes, every course on the list is free in full. Some platforms charge for a certificate or graded assignments, and the course page will say so.

Do they give certificates?

⌄

Some do, and the certificate is usually the one thing the platform charges for. The lab courses tend to issue a completion badge at no cost. Read the course page before you start, because the terms move.

Which course should a beginner start with?

⌄

The first course in the AI literacy path, Google's introductory course for people who do not write code. It gives you the vocabulary in one sitting. After that, pick the path that matches what you want to build.

Do I need to code?

⌄

Only for the third and fourth paths. AI literacy and prompt engineering are for people who never open a terminal. The API and agents paths assume you can read and edit some Python.

How often is the list updated?

⌄

I re-check the list on a schedule and add courses between checks as I find them. Courses that go paid or go stale come off. The weekly email is where new additions show up first.

One email a week with the new free courses and the ones that went paid.