53+ Best Platforms to Learn to Code For Free

This article explores all websites currently available to learn to code for free in 2023.

It is regularly updated as we tend to only showcase learning platforms that are worth your time.

The selected platforms made it to this list after screening them through our “5-Point Rating🎖”.

This entails:

1. Quality of learning resources currently available on the platform 
2. Detailed coding roadmap/walk-through process 
3. Complex coding concept breakdown for newbies 
4. Cumulated feedback from 36, 705 developers and software engineers 
5. and platforms that are frequently updated to meet up with the ever-changing technological era.

As a result, this guide is a good start for anyone that’s serious about coding but currently on a budget.

Do note that the order of arrangement has nothing to do with superiority as they are listed in no particular order.

Without further ado, let’s dive right in.

This website is one of the best free websites for learning web development, very effective for beginner front-end developers.

While W3Schools offers courses covering all aspects of web development but it’s widely known for front-end web development technologies.

90% of web developers learned HTML and CSS on this website because it offers the best concise training resources on these technologies, making it possible for anybody to learn HTML in 2-3 days.

It dates back to 1998, and its name was derived from the World Wide Web but is not affiliated with the W3 Consortium(a full-staffed organization whose job is to maintain the standard of the world wide web).

Recommended Courses:

• Learn HTML for free
• Learn CSS for free
• Learn JavaScript for free

FreeCodeCamp.org is a friendly community where you can learn to code for free and consists of:

– an interactive learning web platform,
– an online community forum,
– chat rooms,
– online publications, and
– local organizations that intend to make learning web development accessible to the public.

As a company, freecodecamp is a non-profit organization with an interactive learning web platform, an online community forum, and chat rooms.

This website provides a detailed outline or curriculum and is constantly updated to meet the standard.

Recommended Courses:

• Learn HTML for free
• Learn CSS for free
• Learn JavaScript for free

Codecademy is a popular online interactive platform that offers free coding classes in 12 different programming languages.

It covers Python and Python libraries, Java, Go, Javascript and Javascript frameworks, Ruby, SQL, C++, C#, Swift, Sass, as introductory coding languages like HTML and CSS.

The platform is designed to allow you to code while learning and display your results immediately.

In addition, it provides other learning resources like code documentation, cheat sheets, articles, challenges, and projects.

Udemy, Inc. is a global destination for teaching and learning online courses. 

As of July 2022, the platform has more than 54 million students, 204,000 courses, and 71,000 instructors teaching courses in over 75 languages.

There have been over 741 million course enrollments, the platform’s good name does speak well for itself.

Udemy is majorly known as a paid course platform but it will interest you to know there are also a lot of quality courses available freely on Udemy.

In fact, there are currently over 1,000 free courses in the web development category.

Since courses are created by different instructors, I’ll advise you to don’t just take any course on Udemy but rather check for positive triggers like reviews and positive student feedback.

The Odin Project provides a free open-source coding curriculum that can be taken entirely online.

Since its inception, it has helped many students get hired as developers and has assisted countless others in learning enough programming to work on their own personal projects.

The Odin Project is maintained and continually improved by a team of volunteers, many of whom learned to code through the same platform.

Many find success from Odin Project’s curriculum because of its hands-on approach with learning and emphasis on building projects.

The curriculum is meticulously curated to ensure the content is up-to-date.

SoloLearn is a programming language learning platform available for a variety of platforms.

Over thirty million learners worldwide use the SoloLearn apps to enhance their programming and coding knowledge. SoloLearn has a large variety of courses: C++, Java, Python, SQL, CSS, HTML, Swift, and many other languages.

SoloLearn courses are excellent, hands-on ways of learning programming and coding languages.

The program teaches you the basics of the language’s structure and nuance (similar to any other language learning course) and then allows you to do hands-on exercises and manipulate the programming languages in a real-time.

This website by Mozilla is an open-source platform where HTML, CSS, Javascript, and web APIs are richly documented.

It provides an extensive set of learning resources that can take beginners to top front-end developers.

It’s believed to be the official documentation for Javascript.

Recommended Courses:

• Learn HTML for free
• Learn CSS for free
• Learn JavaScript for free

Coursera is the global online learning platform that offers anyone, anywhere access to online courses and degrees from world-class universities and companies.

The company collaborates with over 250 leading universities and organizations to provide more than 5,000 online courses, professional certifications, bachelor’s and master’s degree programs, and specializations. 

Users can filter courses based on skills, job title, language, difficulty level, duration, and more.

In the “About this Course” section, users can preview reviews, ratings, instructor info, enrollment info, syllabi, FAQs, and whether financial aid is available for the chosen course or not.

Although many courses are free to “audit,” verified certificates of completion and graded assignments come at a cost.

Many courses are available to take any time of the year, while others have specific enrollment dates and follow a structured syllabus and outline.

This website is a fun and fast way of learning to code.

The interactive tutorials cuts across all the front-end web development technologies and even goes into the major and most popular Javascript frameworks.

Simba is a platform providing many free and paid coding courses and tutorials. 

You can learn through interactive code screencasts and interact with peers via its built-in community chat. 

In addition, Scrimba hosts weekly live events like inviting experts for interviews and coding competitions.

Similar to w3schools and tutorial point. It offers HTML, CSS, and JavaScript tutorials.

This website provides great step-by-step tutorials that allow beginners to learn the essentials of these web development technologies, from basic to advanced topics, along with real-life practice examples and useful references.

In addition to the tutorials, it contains references that outline standard HTML tags, CSS properties, and interactive tools like HTML Editor and SQL Playground.

Khan Academy offers practice exercises, instructional videos, and a personalized learning dashboard that empower learners to study at their own pace in and outside of the classroom. 

Khan academy covers tons of subject fields including programming.

The best part is that Khan Academy is completely free for anyone and everyone, and the organization is committed to keeping it that way forever.

This website was founded in 2008, and it became live in 2011.

It was created to be the largest online web development resource for beginner web developers to get comprehensive learning resources for beginners and experienced web developers to use as learning and reference sources.

Recommended Courses:

• Learn HTML for free
• Learn CSS for free
• Learn JavaScript for free

Created by the web developer Adam Bard, Learn X in Y Minutes is an open-source and community-driven code documentation project.

It’s a site for short programming language tutorials designed for professional programmers to get up to speed quickly on a new language.

In addition, there are pages on various programming tools, algorithms, and data structures.

LearnXinYminutes.com features over 20 community-contributed language tutorials, excluding translations, all accessible and editable via one public Github repository.

MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) OpenCourseWare is an online publication of materials from over 2,500 MIT courses, freely sharing knowledge with learners and educators around the world.

PERKS

– MIT does not offer credit or certification to users of OCW – and asks for nothing in return.

– No enrollment or registration. Freely browse and use OCW materials at your own pace.

There’s no signup, and no start or end dates.

– Made for sharing. 

Download files for later.

Send to friends and colleagues. Modify, remix, and reuse (just remember to cite OCW as the source.)

EdX is an online education provider that offers online courses, popularly known as MOOCs or Massive Open Online Courses, from top universities and other institutions around the world.

Currently, edX has 3,600+ courses, 42 million users and 15,000 skilled instructors across 160 member universities.

EdX courses consist of pre-recorded video lectures that you can watch on a weekly schedule or when it’s convenient for you.

They also have readings, student discussion forums, homework/assignments, and online quizzes or exams. 

Generally speaking, edX courses are free to audit (i.e. watch videos and join discussions) for a limited period, but if you want unlimited access and earn a course certificate, you will need to pay. 

You can search for any programming course of interest on EDX and get started.

Udacity is an online learning platform that offers both free and paid courses.

Udacity students build their knowledge and skills in subjects like programming, product design, data science, product management and software development.

Their free courses focuses strictly on programming, engineering, and data science.

What’s great about Udacity is their close cooperation with tech giants such as Google and Facebook.

Like edX and Coursera, FutureLearn offers a wide range of online courses and programs from top universities and organizations.

Many short courses are completely free to audit, while longer programs can cost anywhere from $39 a month to about $1,000 for a certificate.

FutureLearn also offers a number of online degrees and is the fifth most popular MOOC provider in the world based on the number of students (over 15 million learners) and has an active catalog of around 1100 online courses. 

Skillcrush is an independent, online coding & design school founded in 2012.

Although its courses are paid, it has a free coding camp people can sign up for by creating a Skillcrush account. Those wanting to learn specific skills can enroll in specialization courses.

Skillcrush is on a mission to empower career changers — with a special focus on women and BIPOC — with the technical skills they need to transition into higher-earning, more fulfilling and flexible careers in tech.

Skillcrush has trained over 20,000 students, and has an over 90% success rate of placing students in qualified jobs with an average time to get hired of 8-10 weeks.

Envato Tuts+ offers video courses and written tutorials to help you learn creative skills in code, design and illustration, photography, video, music, web design, game development, business, and more.

All Envato Tuts+ tutorials are available to you completely free—all 29,870 of them!

Our focus here is on coding, you can explore available coding courses by navigating to their code and web design course section.

At Envato Tuts+, you learn at your own pace, whenever or wherever you like.

Upskill is a high-quality tech training platform that teaches you fundamental and state-of-the-art programming skills using modern technologies.

With over 70,000 students in 150 countries, Upskill offers over 200 free lessons and adds new lessons regularly.

Users of the platform often start with the popular, free course “The Essential Web Developer Course” – a massive course that covers full-stack web development.

You get to fortify your coding knowledge on Upskill by: building a fictional startup called DevMatch, complete with a login/logout system, e-commerce, email notifications, and more – all deployed on your own free, pro-grade server!

With major focus on schools, code.org courses are now currently used by tens of millions of students and by one million teachers all around the world.

Dedicated to expanding access to computer science and increasing participation by young women and students from other underrepresented groups.

Code.org courses are available in over 63 languages and used in 180+ countries, so there won’t be any barriers to worry about.

Students can learn in whichever language is most comfortable for them, something that isn’t possible in many other subject areas.

Major Perks of Code.org

• Hour of Code

For students who don’t have the time or ability to commit to a full-length course, there is Hour of Code, a one-hour tutorial for all ages.

• CS Fundamentals

If your child is in the elementary age range, then the CS Fundamentals program is most relevant to their level!

• CS Discoveries

Both middle and high school-age students will benefit from the CS Discoveries program as it is designed for grades 6-10.

• CS Principles

Lastly, CS Principles is a course intended solely for high school students (grades 9-12).

Web.dev is created by Google and seeks to help  developers take advantage of the latest modern technologies to build amazing user experiences.

• Learn Accessibility!
• Learn HTML!
• Learn Responsive Web Design!
• Learn Forms!
• Learn PWA!
• Learn CSS!

Web.dev also contain performance learning insights on important website triggers like core web vitals, metrics and fast load time; all needed to build, run and maintain website in this modern era.

Zenva has been providing online courses in programming and computer science since 2015, and has built a community of over 1 million learners and developers from countries across the globe. 

They offer world-class coding courses on the most popular areas of development. With courses on HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, Unity, Excel, and Java, you’ll learn the foundational skills underlying: 

• Web development
• Game development 
• Virtual and augmented reality (VR & AR)
• Machine learning & AI 
• Data science & productivity 
• Mobile app development

You can choose when and where you want to study – access an online platform designed for all devices, or take your learning offline with the Zenva app.

The project-based courses come complete with video lessons, PDF guides, and full project files so you can code along with the instructor and cement your knowledge. 

Edabit is a coding platform with over 10,000 interactive coding challenges ranging from very easy to expert.

While most platforms focus on either beginner or expert, Edabit covers all of that and everything in between.

It has a gamified environment where you can gain XP, level up and unlock achievements. It’s online collection of bite-sized coding challenges allows you to solve problems in 8 languages.

Django Girls Tutorial is a learning guide created by Django Girls, a non-profit organization striving to bring more women into the tech world.

The tutorial walks students through the process of building a simple blog.

Some aspects of the guide include introductions to the command-line interface, Python, HTML, CSS, and the Django software.

They also organize free Python and Django workshops, create open-sourced online tutorials and curate amazing first experiences with technology.

Bento teaches people to code by curating the best online resources into a beautiful, comprehensive full stack web development curriculum.

Developer blog posts, interactive coding tutorials, and instructional videos are carefully vetted on over 100 different technical topics.

These resources are then organized and supplanted with original content by professional programmers to create the world’s best online full-stack web development curriculum.

Coderbyte is a web application built to help you practice programming and improve your coding skills.

They offer a collection of code challenges and web development courses that can help you prepare for upcoming job interviews.

Coderbyte also doubles as a self-serve code assessment pre-employment testing solution used by employers for interviews and screening.

Hackr.io don’t actually have coding courses on their own. Rather, they aggregate courses from many providers to make it easy to find the best courses on almost any subject, wherever they exist on the web.

All the tutorials on Hakr.io are submitted and voted on by the developers community.

You can use the filter column on the left side of the website and select the “free” option to see an aggregated list of free courses.

Microsoft Learn Training allows you to explore a topic in-depth through guided paths or learn how to accomplish a specific task through individual modules. Browse learning paths and modules.

The learning paths are collections of training modules that are organized around specific roles (like developer, architect, or system admin) or technologies (like Azure Web Apps, Power BI, or Xamarin.Forms).

When you finish a learning path, you’ve gained a new understanding of different aspects of the technology or role you’re studying. You also get an achievement trophy!

Geeks for Geeks is often referred to as a computer science portal for geeks.

The platform provides a variety of services for you to learn, thrive and also have fun!

GeeksforGeeks boasts of multiple free tutorials, millions of articles, live, online and classroom courses, frequent coding competitions, webinars by Industry experts, internship opportunities and job opportunities. 

To get started, navigate to the “courses” and “tutorial” tabs at the top left section of the website.

Launch School is an online software development education platform. 

Their Open Book Shelf includes free access to the books written to support their software engineering curriculum and will help you learn the basic foundational building blocks of popular languages.

While some may be tough to use without enrolling in classes or having some prior knowledge, others are helpful tutorials for beginners.

Currently, there are 12 Launch School books available for your consumption.

They include:

• Introduction to the Command Line
• Introduction to Git and GitHub
• Introduction to Programming with Ruby
• Object Oriented Programming with Ruby
• Core Ruby Tools
• Introduction to HTTP
• Introduction to SQL
• Introduction to Regular Expressions
• Working with Web APIs
• Agile Planning
• Demystifying Rails
• Introduction to Programming with javascript.

After Hours Programming is a free resource with modules on everything from HTML & CSS to mySQL, Graphic Design, Usability, SEO, Information Architecture and more.

This platform is all about giving you a broader view of how web development work fits into the larger business of programming for sites like Amazon, Google, and Walmart.

Classpert is a large hub of tech-related educational products and helps you find online courses in programming, computer science, data science, business, cyber-security and marketing.

It’s able to search through 235,000 free and paid courses and allows you to compare online courses side-by-side from platforms like Udemy, Coursera, Pluralsight, edX, LinkedIn Learning and more.

Alison is one of the world’s largest free learning platforms for education and skills training.

It is a for-profit social enterprise dedicated to making it possible for anyone, to study anything, anywhere, at any time, for free online, at any subject level.

With Alison, you have FREE access to 4,000+ courses including:

• Course Assessments
• Learner Record
• Individual Certificate Courses
• Individual Diploma Courses
• Structured Series Of Courses
• Career Guidance
• Learning Hubs
• Study Reporting

All for free.

All you need to do is to create an account on the platform and voila.. you’re good to go.

Mammoth Interactive is a leading online course provider in everything from learning to code to becoming a YouTube star!

The coding course is a completely free self-paced online class from Mammoth Interactive that covers HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in short, easy-to-digest lecture bits.

The team at Rithm School has created free coding resources to guide you through a handful of computer programming topics.

Their free library of courses cuts across:

• Developer tools
• HTML and CSS
• Javascript Fundamentals
• Advanced Javascript
• Back-end Javascript
• Javascript Libraries
• Python Fundamentals
• Flask and SQL

Whether you’re learning this material for the first time or brushing up on your skills, you’ll certainly find these tutorials, screencasts and exercises useful.

This website provides a fun and free online learning resource that teaches you the fundamentals of web development (HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript) through projects you can do in your browser.

Examples of projects in the course include building a personal website, a responsive blog theme, and a small business website.

It was created by a global educational organization called General Assembly.

This website aims to take an absolute beginner from being a wannabe web designer to an HTML pro in a few hours.

Unlike other HTML tutorials, you will follow a step-by-step guide that doesn’t push long and boring references down your throat.

The step-by-step guide teaches you the basics of HTML and how to build your first website. 

That includes learning to layout an HTML page, add text and images to the page, add headings and text formatting, and use tables.

It provides in-depth articles, references, and tutorials guiding people on how to learn HTML5 from the basics to the advanced level.

This website offers a free visual HTML guide and doubles as a free HTML reference resource.

It features all HTML elements and attributes.
It’s also a fun and interactive website.

The best way to learn CSS is through trial-and-error, which means you have to write CSS code and see what your CSS code displays on the browser.

It feels better when you have a helping hand guiding you through CSS, which is often confusing and contradictory.

The helping hands here refer to websites like CSSReference.

This website is a comprehensive visual and reference guide to CSS properties. It features the most popular properties and explains them with illustrated and animated examples.

Each property has an illustration that shows how it works.

MarkSheet is a completely free tutorial to learn HTML and CSS.

It consists of 50 lessons divided into four main sections: Web, HTML5, CSS3, and Sass.

The tutorial features easy-to-understand articles presented in a colorful and visually appealing format.

Marksheet.io was created in 2015 by Jeremy Thomas, the brain behind CSSRefrence.io and HTMLReference.io.
He’s also the creator of Bulma; a modern CSS framework.

This website offers over 7,000 articles, videos, guides, and other content focused on front-end web development.

Hence, it is about everything related to web design and development, especially HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

CSS-tricks was recently accquired by Digitalocean: the cloud-based hosting platform, acquired it, and they plan to make it even better.

The learning approach this website offers comes in four parts which are:

– Tutorials: These are step-by-step guides to get you up and running.

– Techniques: Includes ways to use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript together to achieve common web design features.

– Examples: Interactive bare-bone examples demonstrating code in action

– References: Detail the individual code ingredients available to you; HTML tags character and attributes, CSS properties, selectors, values, and media queries.

HTML Dog presents these three parts in an easy-to-understand way.

This website aims to teach you how to build beautiful and intuitive websites using clear and organized lessons.

The guide goes from the basics of HTML and CSS and glides gracefully into the advanced level.

By so doing, it covers a variety of web design and development topics.

The website was by front-end developer Shay Howe, and it’s a great beginner’s friendly platform for web development.

Learn-HTML.org offers an interactive tutorial for people interested in building a website using HTML and CSS.

The platform guides you through the process of building a page using the Bootstrap CSS framework.

In addition, there are advanced HTML and CSS tutorials alongside expert CSS tutorials.

 Unlike many boring-nerd centric tutorial platforms, the creator of CSSTutorial.net; Stefan Mischook employed the use of a more conversational style as the website was created with beginners in mind.

The guide consists of three main sections: the introduction to CSS, a complete CSS tutorial, and additional CSS resources.

This is a free course by Brad Hussey for programmers and developers who are just starting out.
It’s also suitable for someone with CSS intermediate-level experience who wishes to have a strong grasp of CSS3 without relying on Frameworks, Code Snippets, Templates or Plugins.

Each day for the next 30 days, you and the tutor will build a new project in plain, vanilla CSS3 without the use of templates, frameworks or plugins.

By the end of the 30 days, you’ll have a strong grasp on CSS3, and more importantly, the knowledge, ability and confidence to start using CSS3 in your own projects.

Similar to Learn-HTML, Learn-JS is a free interactive JavaScript tutorial for beginners and anyone interested in learning more about JS.

It is divided into two main parts: basic and advanced.

Each chapter starts with some easy-to-understand explanations and ends with an exercise.

As you learn, you can type in your code directly at the bottom of the window and get instant resutl.

JavaScript For Cats is a free JS tutorial for new programmers that you can finish in about 2 hours.

If you simply want to find out whether JavaScript is a programming language you enjoy working with, this is the perfect website to try it out.

It’s not an entire deep dive into the language but cuts across few concepts and let you know what to expect in Javascript as you proceed in your quest for knowledge.

This is a book about JavaScript, programming, and the wonders of the digital. 

The most recent version is the 3rd edition which was made possible by 325 backers and you can access the book freely on the internet here: Eloquent Javascript.

You will be introduced to some important concepts like:

Linked lists, recursion, graphs, OOP and functional programming, some of the famous math games and algorithms, along with web technologies, HTTP requests and AJAX, asynchronous programming and many more.

Here are my helpful tips for anyone that wishes to get the best out of this book.

1. Make a personal note from the book,
2. Don’t copy and paste the codes; type in all the project codes yourself along with your comment
3. Most importantly, solve all the problems.

Might seem streneous but it’s for the best.

NodeSchool.io is a community-driven, open-source educational software that teaches various web development skills in an interactive, self-guided format.

It teaches how to use NodeJS, NPM, and other related tools by writing code to solve realistic problems.

NodeSchool is entirely community driven and is 100% open source, which means you can take the exercises home and continue to learn!  

This website allows you to learn JavaScript from scratch and goes into advanced concepts like OOP(object-oriented programming).

Here, you concentrate on the language with a minimum of environment-specific notes.

It was created in 2007 and is still regularly updated to date.

The contents are open source meaning everybody is welcome to contribute.

JavaScript.com is a resource built by the Pluralsight team for the JavaScript community.

The team gathered some of the best learning resources around and built the website to help new developers get up and running.

From my personal review, JS in an actual workflow is way tougher than what we have here as this seems to be extremely made for non-tech beginners.

With the help of community members contributing content to the site, JavaScript.com aims to also keep more advanced developers up to date on news, frameworks, and libraries.

The MDN JavaScript Guide shows you how to use JavaScript and teaches you the fundamentals of how the language works.

This guide covers:

• Javascript introduction
• Grammar and types
• Control flow and error handling
• Loops and iterations
• Functions
• Expressions and Operators
• Numbers and dates
• Text formatting
• Index and keyed collections
• Working with objects
• Using classes
• Promises
• Iterators and Generators
• Meta programming and Javascript modules

Note: This guide is more of a reference than an interactive coding tutorial.

You should be practicing with a project as you go through the guide.

Learn Javascript is suitable for beginner developers who have basic experience in any programming language.

It takes you through modern JavaScript (ES2015+) from scratch, and practice in an intuitive environment.

The challenges are inspired by real-world projects to make sure that you’re learning the best practices, one step at a time. 

The first 77 lessons, challenges, projects (first 7 chapters) & flashcards are all available for free.

This is not a beginner Javascript course but for people who already have basic knowledge of Javascript and wishes to up their game.

JavaScript 30 is a 30 Day Vanilla JS Coding Challenge where you get to:

1.  Build 30 things in 30 days with 30 tutorials
2. No Frameworks
3. No Compilers
4. No Libraries
5. No Boilerplate

What You’ll Get from JavaScript30:

• Instant Access to all 30 videos
• 30 days of Starter Files
• Completed HTML, CSS and JS Solutions for each day.

And the good part? It’s all for free.

CodeGym is an online course for learning Java programming from scratch.

This course is a perfect way to master Java for beginners.

It contains 1200+ tasks with instant verification and an essential scope of Java fundamentals theory.

To help you succeed in education, CodeGym has implemented a set of motivational features: quizzes, coding projects, content about efficient learning and Java developer’s career.

Codewars is an online platform that provides coding challenges called kata, a Japanese term for a set of martial arts movements that can be practiced alone or in groups.

Here, you practice coding through repetition and with other peers. Beyond challenges that help you practice, you can also share your code with your peers and vice versa.

This way, everyone gets the chance to review one another’s work and learn different approaches to a problem.

The platform is free, but premium versions let you compare code with other users.

Currently supports over 50 core languages and beta languages.