Until recently, coding was considered more of a hobby than a career. And when it was a career, it was mainly pursued by the most gifted IT students.
Well, those days are long gone. Today, anyone can learn to code from the comfort of their home or office.
Whether you’re interested in pursuing a programming career, building a website, or simply creating projects for fun, there are numerous websites that can teach you to code. The best part is that many of these sites are either free or charge significantly low fee.
Read on as we unpack the top fourteen websites to learn coding.
1. Code.org
Pricing: Free
Code.org is a non-profit organization launched in 2013, with a mission to enhance participation in computer science by offering a range of programming services, such as coding. It’s reassuring to note that the website has largely achieved its mission, as it currently boasts over 55 million students who have successfully learned coding from the platform.
Code.org has a wide range of tutorials in the form of ‘how-to’ guides and instructional videos, making it possible for anyone to learn coding from scratch. It also conducts various teacher-led lessons aimed at those intending to learn to code quickly.
What’s more, the coding courses on Code.org are also open for learners of any age group, including children under 13 years who only need authorization from their parent, teacher, or legal guardian.
2. Code Conquest
Pricing: Free
Code Conquest is another top website where you can learn to code for free. The website is also recommended for beginners, thanks to its quality books, specialized learning materials, and tons of free coding tutorials.
Code Conquest is ingeniously designed to determine the coding language that’s suitable for you, depending on your learner level.
Some of the programming languages that you’ll be able to learn on the platform include PHP, HTML, Ruby, Python, JavaScript, C++, and CSS.
3. Udemy
Pricing: Free for most courses
Founded in 2010 and with over 2,000 coding classes, Udemy is arguably the largest online coding platform. The website has hundreds of tutorials designed to make coding easy and attractive for beginners.
There are also plenty of certified instructors who are dedicated to address your coding-related queries anytime. Django, HTML, CSS, and APIs are some of the common programming languages taught at Udemy.
However, note that being such a massive platform, it’s understandable why Udemy charges a fee for some of its coding courses.
4. BitDegree
Pricing: Free
BitDegree is the go-to website if you’re looking for both free online coding and gamified courses. The platform is fairly easy to use, as all you need to do is select your preferred language and begin coding.
Some of the popular programming languages on the website include HTML, CSS, JQuery, PHP, Javascript, and SQL.
Another standout feature of BitDegree is its blockchain-integration. The website adopts a reward-based approach to learning, where learners receive rewards in the form of cryptocurrencies, based on certain milestones achieved.
5. Treehouse
Pricing: Plans start from $25/month after a 7-day free trial period
Treehouse may not feature among free coding websites. But for $25/month, you can access over 1,000 instructional videos that let you learn to code fast. It’s also important to note that Treehouse refreshes its database regularly in a bid to stay on the cutting edge of coding and computer programming.
You can assess yourself by participating in relevant quizzes or interactive code challenges.
And for every course or skill test you complete, Treehouse awards you a badge indicating your skillsets. That way, the platform helps to broadcast your coding skills to the hundreds of companies that routinely scour the website for qualified coders.
6. Freecodecamp.org
Pricing: Free
Freecodecamp.org pretty much does what the name implies, allowing you to learn coding free of charge.
The website has a vast collection of interactive guides that you can use to learn various coding languages and aspects, including JavaScript, Algorithms, Data Structure, Frontend Development, to mention but a few.
Freecodecamp.org is also one of the top recommendations in terms of support responsiveness. The platform has a massive Facebook group where you can ask all kinds of coding-related questions and have them addressed by the support or more experienced coders.
7. Coursera
Pricing: Free for learning but earning certificates cost a fee
In October 2015, Coursera announced changes to charge learners seeking to enroll for graded assignments or those who wish to earn a course certificate. However, the company has continued to avail its coding courses for free.
There are hundreds of coding courses to choose from, most of which are facilitated by qualified professors from accredited universities.
Coursera also prides itself on the wide variety of programming languages taught on the platform, such as Java, HTML, CSS, Python, IoT Programming, to mention but a few.
8. Code Academy
Pricing: Free version available, Paid plans start from $19.99/month
Code Academy is another popular website that offers tons of coding courses free of charge. Although most of the courses on the platform are free, the company recently introduced premium plans that come with extra learning materials and live support.
The website has over 300 million hours of free coding content that any beginner or professional programmer can take advantage of.
You also get to learn coding in numerous programming languages, such as HTML, CSS, JQuery, JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, and Python.
9. Khan Academy
Pricing: Free
Khan Academy is a 501(c) (3) non-profit organization, which means that its coding courses are all available to learners and teachers for free. The platform allows instructors to impart coding skills on their students, while also making it possible for advanced learners to share their programming knowledge with beginners.
With such a comprehensive approach to learning, Khan Academy makes it exceedingly easy for learners to acquire coding skills. Plus, the provision for sharing coding knowledge among learners is instrumental in enhancing user engagement.
Besides coding, Khan Academy also has courses for budding animators, as well as courses that enable you to prepare your own databases.
10. PluralSight
Pricing: Free version available, Paid plans start from $29/month after a 10-day free trial period
PluralSight has several features that set it apart from common coding websites out there. Most notably, the site uses numerous ‘learning paths,’ where every path allows you to learn a specific skill from the beginning to the end.
You can focus on one path at a time or choose several paths for certain courses, such as HTML and CSS, Python, JavaScript and JQuery, Android Development, etc.
Also, PluralSight upgrades its paths regularly to ensure that coders have access to fresh content each time.
11. Codewars
Pricing: Free
Coding might come across as dull and boring, particularly to beginners. Codewars understands that all too well, which is why the company endeavors to make learning to code fun and easy.
The platform allows you to solve one challenge (known as kata) at a time, in a bid to hone your existing coding skills. Each kata that you successfully solve earns you an honor and introduces you to more complex katas.
You can decide to learn coding from your favorite programming language or experiment with a new coding language. Common programming languages at Codewars include JavaScript, CoffeeScript, Python, Ruby, C#, and Clojure.
12. Udacity
Pricing: Free for most beginner courses
Like most coding websites on this list, Udacity offers numerous coding courses for free, although certifications are not necessarily free. Each course on Udacity comes with instructional videos, as well as exercises and quizzes to assess your progress.
There’s a student discussion board where you can always head to, to engage with fellow coders and have various coding questions answered by the more experienced learners.
Udacity also provides mini-tech degrees known as nanodegrees. These degrees let you learn various coding skills and programming languages which might come in handy in various fields like Data Science, Android and iOS Development, Machine Learning, etc.
13. Educative.io
Pricing: Free version available, Paid plans start from $18/month
Educative.io has a scholarship program through which the company offers all of its 15 coding courses free of charge. It’s another great platform to consider if you want to learn coding from scratch or simply perfect your programming skill.
The site teaches coding in various programming languages, including Python, JavaScript, Java, Kubernetes, etc. The courses require no initial setup, as they’re all designed in in-browser coding environments.
And just like Udacity, Eucative.io lets you assess your progress through a series of quizzes and tests.
14. EdX
Pricing: Free
Last but not least, EdX is a non-profit website that was co-founded by Harvard and MIT, which enjoys the approval of over 20 million learners and tons of instructors from globally-renowned universities.
The platform offers all its coding courses free of charge. If you’d like to receive certification, you may need to pay a small fee, typically around $50 per certificate.
Common programming languages on EdX include HTML and CSS, jQuery, C++, Java, C#, Python, and SQL.
Wrap Up
With the development of numerous coding websites, learning to code has never been easier. The best thing to love about the above-reviewed coding platforms is that you get unhindered access to tons of coding materials, as well as guidance from some of the world’s best coding instructors. Besides, many of the websites are either free to use or charge reasonable fees.
