Review — Coursera or Udemy? Which is better for Programmers and IT Professionals in 2024?
My review of Udemy and Coursera for learning in-demand tech skills from Programmers and Software Engineer’s perspective.
When it comes to online learning, there are no better times than today, as you have access to a lot of platforms like Coursera, Udemy, Pluralsight, Educative, LinkedIn Learning, CodeCademy, and many more.
Out of these, Coursera and Udemy are probably the most popular ones, as more and more people have started using them. One question which keeps comings to me all the time is Coursera vs. Udemy?
Which one is better for online learning and which has a better course in general? Earlier I have answered questions like Pluralsight vs. CodeCademy and Udemy vs. CodeCademy but never explained about Udemy vs Coursera, which many of my readers have been asking for some time. So, I decided to write this blog post to explain my point of view.
To be honest, this is an open-ended question, and there is no specific answer as both platforms are great and have some of the most beautiful resources for online learners.
Though, I will try to answer this question based upon their unique characteristics and the best courses they have for programmers and developers.
Coursera vs Udemy in 2024 — Review? Which is better for Programmers?
Between Udemy and Coursera, if you know, Udemy is a marketplace for online courses where individuals, generally experts, create their class and upload it to Udemy. Great courses often rise to the top and get more exposure while some of the better courses also die because of a lack of exposure.
There is no particular structure imposed by Udemy other than a minimum of 30 minutes of content.
Udemy also has both free and paid courses, where free courses are there for marketing purposes, and when an instructor reaches his marketing target, it covert the free course to a paid one.
This is actually a good strategy, and it benefits both students and instructors. Students get the course for free while the instructor gets their reviews and social proof.
Some but not all of the Udemy courses also offer a certificate of completion, which you can show in your CV or add to your LinkedIn profile.
The best part of Udemy is its flash sales, which run every month. If you are lucky, you can get some of the bootcamp style courses which are worth $200 like The Web Developer Bootcamp by Colt Steel and The iOS Developer Bootcamp for just $10, this is fantastic.
These courses are much more worth than $10, and getting them at such a low price makes it very, very affordable.
On the other hand, Coursera offers courses from top-class universities like Machine learning by Andrew Ng from Stamford University, HongKong University, and big Tech organizations like IBM, Google, Microsoft Azure, AWS, and many more.
Courses also have Professional certifications and specializations, which are nothing but a bundle of related classes to develop a particular strategy. While courses are free-to-audit, you need to pay to earn a certificate from Coursera.
The certificate can be earned by enrolling in Specializations, which costs something around 39$ per month, which is also very affordable for most people looking to learn online.
It has some of the best Machine Learning Specializations in the world like this Deep Learning Specialization offered by deeplearning.ai, which is guided by Andrew Ng, one of the Coursera founders and Machine learning pioneer.
If you are looking to get into the world of Machine Learning and Data Science, there is no better place than Coursera. More than half a million people have taken this specialization.
Another good thing about Coursera is that they have Professional certificates which are good for starting a career in IT, Cloud, and other high technology areas.
Some of the notable Professional Certification you can join in 2024 are offered by Google and Facebook as shown below:
2. Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate
3. Facebook Social Media Marketing from Facebook
4. Google IT Support by Google
6. Cloud Engineering with Google Cloud from Google Cloud
Coursera also offers things like Coursera Plus, which provides you access to more than 3000+ best Coursera courses and specialization in a single subscription. This costs around 300$ for one year but it's completely worth your time and money.
Coursera also has Online Degrees and they recently launched Guided projects which can be used to learn a new skill quickly. For example, you can take this Python Data Structure project and you can learn essential data structures like dictionaries in 2 hours.
The best thing about the Guided projects is that you don’t need to download or set up anything. Your workspace is a cloud desktop right in your browser and your instructor will explain to you what to do in a split-screen video. It’s probably the next best after classroom and personal training.
On the other hand, Coursera doesn’t run flash sales like Udemy and also doesn’t have a collection like Udemy, which has more than 80,000 courses to learn almost anything, but quality-wise most of the Coursera courses are very good.
You can’t say something about Udemy as anyone can create courses there, and most of them don’t have a proper structure, but if you compare top quality Udemy courses with top Coursera Specialization, they are perfect.
They are not only structured well but also teach in a style that is not academically driven but has an informal and personal touch. It’s like YouTube of online courses where you can just search and learn anything you want.
You also have a lot of choices. If you don’t connect to an instructor, you can also ways choose one; Coursera doesn’t have that many options.
Conclusion
So, you see, both Coursera and Udemy has strong and weak point. While Udemy has more courses, Coursera’s courses are often well structured, especially machine learning ones.
Coursera also allows you to learn from top universities of the world, and their certificates generally hold more value because they are offered by top universities along with Coursera.
When it comes to learning, if you prefer a personal, informal style, then I suggest you go to Udemy, but if you are looking for a well-structured and academic, like course, then Coursera is a better choice.
Once again, these are just observations, and it varies a lot between courses and instructors, so it's always good to preview the course you want to join. If you can get through preview without too much forwarding and interruption, then it’s a good indicator of a quality course.
And, If you are looking for Udemy and Coursera’s alternatives then you can also check out sites like Pluralsight, Educative, LinkedIn Learning, CodeCademy, which has a lot of high-quality, tech-related courses for programmers and developers.
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P.S. — If you are getting started in the IT world without an engineer or computer science degree, I suggest you check out some of the Coursera Professional Certificates to launch your career in IT like the Google IT Support Professional Certificate which is offered by none other than Google.
