Free courses
Free AI courses
28 courses in our catalogue are genuinely free to learn from. None of them pays us anything, which is precisely why they are worth listing properly.
"Free" covers three different things in this market, and the distinction matters. Some courses here are free outright. Some are free to learn from with a paid certificate as an optional extra, which is the standard Coursera and edX model. A few are free tiers of a commercial platform. The price column below states which applies.
| Course | Provider | Level | Duration | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CS50's Intro to Artificial Intelligence · Our review | Harvard via edX | Intermediate | 7 weeks | Free / $199 | Developers and analysts who want a rigorous, project-heavy AI foundation with a Harvard credential. |
| Introduction to Deep Learning | MIT OpenCourseWare | Advanced | Self-paced | Free | Self-motivated technical learners who want MIT-level depth completely free. |
| Machine Learning Course (11-785) | Carnegie Mellon University | Advanced | Self-paced | Free | Advanced researchers and PhD-track engineers who want CMU-grade deep learning depth. |
| AI for Everyone | DeepLearning.AI via Coursera | Beginner | ~6 hrs | Free / $49 | Non-technical professionals who need to understand AI and lead AI projects without writing code. |
| Practical Deep Learning for Coders | fast.ai | Intermediate | Self-paced | Free | Developers who want to build real models immediately, fastest route from Python to production-grade deep learning, completely free. |
| Hugging Face NLP & Transformers Course · Our review | Hugging Face | Intermediate | Self-paced | Free | Developers who want hands-on transformers, diffusion models, and LLM deployment using the industry-standard open-source stack. |
| Machine Learning Crash Course | Google Developers | Beginner | ~15 hrs | Free | Developers who want a fast, free, practical intro to ML from Google, updated with LLM content in 2024. |
| AI Fluency, Working with Claude | Anthropic Academy | Beginner | ~8 hrs | Free | Non-technical professionals who want structured, authoritative training on using Claude effectively, from the company that built it. |
| Building with Claude API and Agents | Anthropic Academy | Intermediate | ~12 hrs | Free | Developers who want authoritative, production-grade training on the Claude API, tool use, and agent engineering, from the people who built Claude. |
| OpenAI Academy | OpenAI | Beginner | Self-paced | Free | Anyone who wants structured, official training on ChatGPT and OpenAI tools from the company that built them, across work, education, and developer use cases. |
| CS224N: Natural Language Processing with Deep Learning | Stanford University | Advanced | ~40 hrs | Free | Researchers and ML engineers who want the definitive academic NLP curriculum, transformers, attention, LLMs, from Stanford. |
| 6.S191: Introduction to Deep Learning | MIT | Advanced | ~30 hrs | Free | Technical learners who want the most current MIT deep learning course, updated every January with LLM and agentic AI content. |
| Building with Llama 4 | Meta + DeepLearning.AI | Intermediate | ~3 hrs | Free | Developers who want to build with the leading open-source LLM family, multimodal apps, long context, and Llama tools. |
| Neural Networks: Zero to Hero | Andrej Karpathy | Advanced | ~16 hrs video | Free | Technical learners who want to truly understand deep learning by building everything from scratch in code. |
| Neural Networks (visual series) | 3Blue1Brown | Beginner | ~4 hrs video | Free | Anyone who wants visual intuition for how neural networks and transformers work before formal study. |
| CS231n: Deep Learning for Computer Vision | Stanford | Advanced | ~10 weeks | Free / $6,300 credit | Technical learners specialising in computer vision who want the canonical university course. |
| CS229: Machine Learning | Stanford | Advanced | ~11 weeks | Free / $6,300 credit | Technical learners who want the rigorous, mathematical version of Stanford machine learning. |
| Reinforcement Learning (David Silver) | DeepMind × UCL | Advanced | 10 lectures | Free | Technical learners starting reinforcement learning with the canonical introductory lectures. |
| AI Safety Fundamentals | BlueDot Impact | Intermediate | ~12 weeks | Free | Anyone serious about working on AI safety, from policy and governance to technical alignment. |
| AI Agents Course | Hugging Face | Intermediate | ~6 units | Free | Developers who want hands-on agent-building skills across the major frameworks, free and certified. |
| MCP: Build Rich-Context AI Apps | DeepLearning.AI × Anthropic | Intermediate | ~2 hrs | Free (beta) | Developers connecting LLMs to tools and data with the Model Context Protocol. |
| AI Governance in Practice | ITU (United Nations) | Intermediate | ~5 weeks | Free | Policymakers, regulators and public officials who want to compare national and international AI governance frameworks. |
| Generative AI in Design | Simplilearn SkillUp | Beginner | ~3 hrs | Free | Graphic and UX/product designers wanting a free, structured first course on generative AI in the design process, with a shareable certificate. |
| Free Adobe Firefly AI Course | Simplilearn SkillUp | Beginner | ~2 hrs | Free | Designers who want a free, tool-focused introduction to Adobe Firefly, the commercially-safe generative image tool. |
| AI Skills for Healthcare Professionals | Health AI CPD | Beginner | ~2 hrs | Free | Busy clinicians who want a free, practical grounding in using AI tools like ChatGPT to save time and work smarter in a clinical setting. |
| Evaluations of AI Applications in Healthcare · Our review | Stanford Medicine via Coursera | Beginner | ~10 hrs | Free / $49 | Clinicians who want a free, high-prestige introduction to judging whether AI healthcare tools actually work, with CME credit available. |
| AI and Digital Transformation in Government | UNESCO and Oxford (Said Business School) | Beginner | ~12 hrs | Free | Civil servants and public leaders at all levels who want a free, top-tier grounding in responsible AI and digital transformation in government. |
| Frontier AI Governance | BlueDot Impact | Intermediate | ~30 hrs | Free | People with technical or professional backgrounds who are moving into AI governance roles at bodies like AISI, NIST or GovAI. |
Where to start
If you want rigour, our CS50 AI review covers the strongest free option in the catalogue. For designers, we have ranked the free tier separately in the best free AI courses for designers. For the wider free-versus-paid question, see should you pay for an AI course or go free.
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