Into the Learning-Verse: Beginner’s Guide to Online Learning

The web is full of online courses scattered across a huge range of platforms, and the challenge is finding the best ones for you. Class Central brings courses from many providers into one place, a catalog of over 250,000 online courses.

What is Class Central?

Class Central was founded by Dhawal Shah in late 2011 to track the free Stanford courses that were starting to appear, later popularized as MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). Our goal is to make online education work for everyone: we aggregate courses from universities, companies, and organizations so you can find the best options on almost any subject, wherever they exist.

We don't run the courses ourselves; we connect you to the right one. Use our search engine to explore topics, read descriptions and reviews, and filter by level, duration, language, and price. Create a free account to build course lists, write reviews, and follow subjects, universities, and providers. You don't need to finish your profile before starting a course.

For the bigger picture of online education, see The Report by Class Central.

What's in the catalog?

Courses come from universities including Stanford, MIT, and Harvard; companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google; and organizations such as the IMF, IEEE, and the Linux Foundation. They range from under an hour to many weeks, in a wide variety of languages, with subtitles on some.

See the full list of universities and other institutions.

The catalog also includes offerings from individual experts, plus video tutorials and webinars.

Are courses free?

Most are free; some are paid. Where a platform offers two options, a free audit gives access to videos, readings, and forums, while paid enrollment unlocks everything, including a certificate of completion. Some platforms also offer financial aid or scholarships that can waive or discount the certificate fee.

Free courses and tutorials are labeled in search, where a Free course filter and a With certificate filter help you narrow the results. Certificate details appear on each course page; if none is listed there, one is unlikely to be available. For a head start, see our Massive List of Free Certificates and Badges.

How to find and enroll

Find a course by searching keywords (try Algorithms) or browsing by subject, then narrow the results with filters. You can start a search from the search field or magnifying-glass icon at the top of any page.

Enroll from the course page: click Go to class to sign up on the provider's site. If you see a Start learning button instead, no sign-up is needed, and these courses generally don't offer a certificate.

Good to know

• Scheduling: Most courses are self-paced, with pre-recorded videos you can access anytime you're online. Some are text-based. Session-based courses start on set dates, release material week by week, or set assessment deadlines, but you still study when it suits you.
• Grading: Not all courses are graded. Those that are use auto-graded quizzes and peer-reviewed assignments; instructors don't grade individual work.
• Instructor contact: Interaction is usually minimal. Mentors often monitor forums, and learners help each other by sharing helpful resources, though not quiz answers.
• Credit and degrees: Free academic credit generally isn't available, but some providers offer paid online degrees. If you're enrolled somewhere, ask your institution whether outside courses can count.

Ready to start?

• Top-rated: The Best Online Courses of All Time, compiled from Class Central reviews and activity.
• Most enrolled: The Most Popular Online Courses of All Time.
• Best Courses: Curated guides to the Best Courses in hundreds of subjects.
• Curated picks: Class Central's collections.
• Browse everything: the Class Central homepage, or find answers in the Help Center.