Are Coursera courses free?
Written by Dhawal Shah | Last updated on October 12th, 2025
Looking for a listing of Coursera courses?
Most courses on Coursera are paid, with a free trial or free preview. Free trial allows you to access as much of the course as you can during the 7-day free trial period, but you cannot download a certificate without paying. You need to supply a payment method for the free trial, but can cancel the subscription within the free trial period to avoid being charged.
If you want to join a course without supplying your credit card or other payment details, look for the Preview option. See A Guide on How to Sign up for Coursera Courses for Free. You can access the first module of a course, including graded items, for free.
Most courses offer a free Preview, but some do not. An example of a course without a free preview is Build, Train and Deploy ML Models with Keras on Google Cloud with Google Cloud Platform.
Coursera still has some courses for which the graded assignments are free, but these course do not offer a certificate. An investigation by Class Central discovered 300+ Coursera courses that are still completely free.
Another way to access a complete course for free is to look for “Partner-supported free access” for some courses. You can access the whole course including graded items for free by scrolling down and selecting the learn more link. After completing the course, you have the option to purchase a certificate. Currently, less than 10 courses offer this option.
This article, about Coursera’s Monetization Journey, describes how Coursera went from offering free courses to their position as a public company.
See more about Preview mode in The Day MOOCs Truly Died: Coursera’s Preview Mode Kills Free Learning.
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