The Best Online Courses Websites For Learning Almost Anything (2022)
With the best online courses websites, you can excel at your career, expand your skillset, or even gain new hobbies and passions.
With so many online learning sites all across the web, you can learn just about anything these days, from anywhere — all without worrying about attending college or taking classes.
Online courses are aptly equipped with features like video streaming, notes, resources, discussion forums, notes, practice exercises, teaching assistance help, and other features that enhance your learning experience.
Platforms providing online courses have increased immensely in recent years, and you can possibly find hundreds of resources and courses on a single topic, and even more.
With this many options, it gets really hard to decide which online courses websites to choose and which platform will be best suited for you.
The different courses available online, within a single niche or skill, cater to different sets of purposes.
Some online learning sites are designed for professionally skilled people and teach updated skills for those further along in their careers.
Some online course websites cater to beginners looking to add new skills or jump into a new career.
Others still are just for those looking for the best online courses that will let them explore a hobby, like cooking or photography.
To help you make sense of it all, we’ve reviewed and ranked the best online courses websites on a variety of factors, including quality of their classes, value, instructor credentials, ease of use, and more.
Disclosure: Some of the links in this article are affiliate links, meaning at no additional cost for you, we might get a commission if you click the link and purchase.
What are the Best Online Courses Websites?
Here are our picks for the best learning sites for taking online courses:
MasterClass offers courses taught by the world’s most recognizable celebrities in experts covering a wide range of topics from cooking, gardening, and meditation to science & well-being.
MasterClass (review) features instructors include huge names, such as Gordon Ramsay, Bill Clinton, Margaret Atwood, Samuel L Jackson, Natalie Portman, and Serena Williams, to name just a few. It’s this access to such reputable instructors that makes MasterClass one of the best online courses websites out there.
More than 100 courses are featured, covering everything from photography to business to acting.
These classes are taught in bite-sized learning lessons of premium quality, and you can stream Masterclass on your TV, phone, tablet, or computer.
Each class hosts video lectures, class workbook documents, interactive designed assignments, and community activities depending on the type of course.
Periodically, classwork, & assignments are directly submitted to the instructor for one-to-one learning evaluation and feedback.
Key Features
- Stream classes on mobile devices, computers, and TVs
- Celebrity instructors
- One-to-One instructor-student interaction periodically
- Toll-free phone support
- Cross-platform support
Popular classes
- Annie Leibowitz Teaches Photography
- Robin Roberts Teaches Effective and Authentic Communication
- Massimo Bottura Teaches Modern Italian Cooking
- Ron Finley Teaches Gardening
- Alicia Keys Teaches Songwriting and Producing
Pricing
MasterClass pricing includes an all-access pass starting at $180 per year or $15 per month for unlimited access to courses & content.
Click here to get started.
Great Choice
Skillshare
Skillshare is the ultimate website for learning just about anything imaginable. You can explore 30,000+ online classes across countless categories, from business to hobbies and more.
Try It Free For One Month!
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Skillshare, with its wide catalog, offers 35,000 plus learning videos which are spread across Create, Build and Thrive perspectives. This wide range of classes has made Skillshare one of the most popular websites for online learning.
It is a great platform for creative people who are looking for a thriving environment to learn, enhance and beautify their artistic skills whether it is illustration, education, proofreading, photography, digital marketing, voice over training, instructional design, UX design, or web design.
Skillshare offers a one-month free trial, which is a great way to check out some classes and see if it’s a good choice.
Overall, it’s an attractive option for passionate learners of creative skills. See our Skillshare review for more details.
Popular classes
- Digital Illustration for All
- Productivity Masterclass: Create a Custom System that Works
- Character Animation Basics
- Discovering Success: 7 Exercises to Uncover Your Purpose, Passion & Path
- Style Your Space: Creative Tips and Techniques for Interior Design
Key Features
- Bite-sized classes for busy learners
- Thousands of classes
- Free trial
- Large catalog of videos
- iOS/Android smartphone apps
- Top topics to choose Skillshare for: film, writing, tech, lifestyle, photography, & Illustration.
Pricing
Skillshare pricing includes a one-month free trial where you can take unlimited classes. After that, you can pay $40/month or at a discounted annual rate of $17.99/mo ($216 for a once-a-year payment).
Click here to learn more.
LinkedIn Learning is the top pick for corporate professional learners. It’s a subscription-based platform that facilitates more than 16,000 courses to its users.
From business development, marketing, finance, coding to time management tutorials, it has courses in all career-focused niches for individuals who are seeking to enhance their skills to be successful in their careers.
Course structure is designed in a bite-sized short videos, quizzes,& assignments, offering you ease of learning. This course structure allows you to learn skills even when you are busy so that you never stop learning and improving.
Courses are certificate-focused which can be featured on your resume and LinkedIn profile.
Popular classes
- Marketing & Communications
- Courses on building Strategic Thinking
- How to Communicate with Confidence
- Improving Interpersonal Communication
- Building Self-Confidence
Key Features
- Professionally designed, constructed, and conducted via expert teachers of that field.
- Learning Flexibility ( smartphone compatibility, audio-only option, offline learning option, bite-sized videos)
- Offers one-month free trial
- Annual savings option
- Detailed preview of the content
- Completion certificates
Pricing
After a one-month free trial, LinkedIn Learning pricing is $29.99 per month or $19.99 per month for the annual plan.
Click here to learn more.
Are you a creative person who’s looking for a way to monetize your skills?
Nas Academy is an online learning site aimed at helping creators build the skills they need to thrive, offering a range of expert-taught online courses for creators and businesses.
You can take classes in content creation (photography, editing, publishing, scriptwriting, etc.), business (entrepreneurship, branding, storytelling, etc.), cryptocurrency, NFTs, and other subjects.
Many of these courses only take a week or less to complete, allowing you to very quickly build the skills you need to go from beginner to pro.
Another cool thing is that Nas Academy also offers free workshops, and yes, we actually mean free — no strings attached. These workshops offer a good way to get a sample of the types of things you can learn on their platform.
Nas Academy also offers live classes that give you the chance to interact with your teacher and get feedback on your work.
Visit Nas Academy today and start learning!
You can access thousands of professionally taught courses by top course instructors of top-notch universities via Coursera on almost any topic you want.
With Coursera, you can learn from some of the best universities of the world, such as Yale, Columbia, John Hopkins, & Duke.
Coursera has launched degrees of bachelors and masters totally virtual provided by top pick universities.
Its course topic spectrum is spread out wide and ranges from public health, science, tech, languages, social sciences, art, fiction, to personal development. All courses facilitate completion certificates so you can mention it on your LinkedIn & resume.
Course structure includes recorded videos, accompanied with transcription of the video, notes, resources, assignments, quizzes, and discussion forum availability for involved learning.
Popular classes
- Data science certificate
- Google IT support certificate
- On science of well-being
- Deep learning certificate & specialization
Key Features
- Free courses
- Top universities partnership
- Wide range catalog
- Fully online certificate & degrees
Pricing
Coursera pricing for courses ranges from $29-$99 each for certification, though there are plenty of courses you can audit without buying certificate-backed access. Your best bet is to try Coursera Plus, which gives you access to thousands of classes all included in a monthly subscription.
Click here to learn more.
With more than 100,000 courses, frequent sales and a wide range of courses available online, Udemy is one of the largest platforms with the cheapest prices, making it an affordable platform for all sorts of learners.
Udemy has more than 30 million, and it facilitates courses in more than 50 languages.
Its topic range is extensive, from boot camp coding learning to in-depth art classes.
Popular classes
- Complete Python Bootcamp
- Complete Character Drawing Course
- MBA in 1 Course
- Learn Ethical Hacking From Scratch
- Beginner to Pro in Excel: Financial Modelling and Valuation
Key Features
- Extensive course catalog
- Well organized content
- Smartphone app compatibility
- Helpful reviews
- Languages compatibility ( more than 50 languages)
- Low prices, Frequent sales ( prices as low as $10.99)
Pricing
Udemy pricing varies by individual courses. Sign up & buy or gift individual courses, or get enrolled in one of the free courses.
Click here to learn more.
edX, founded by Harvard & MIT offers classes from leading top universities, non profit educational institutes and now it is the only Massive Open Online Courses( MOOC) platform whose courses are non-profit and open-source.
Its institutional partners, of more than 100, include Berkeley, MIT, and Harvard.
edX have thousands and thousands of courses available all open-sourced on topics ranging from arts, economics, finance, law, coding, computer science, and architecture.
Degree programs such as MicroMasters, masters are also hosted by edX, aside from professional certificate courses.
See our edX review to learn more.
Key Features
- Leading university content
- Free, open sources courses
- Micro degree offerings
- Masters Program
- Certificate Courses
- Smartphone apps compatibility
Popular classes
- Programming for Everybody (Getting Started with Python)
- CS50’s Introduction to Computer Science
- The Foundations of Happiness at Work
- Leading High-Performing Teams
- Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies
Pricing
Sign up, and enroll for its free to enroll and audit courses, except for professional education programs. Add a verified certificate (which you can mention to LinkedIn and your resume), there is a charge (edX pricing is typically between $50-$300, depending on the course).
Click here to learn more.
FutureLearn is just like edX and Coursera, offering thousands of free-to-access courses, paid certified programs offered by top universities, and institutions.
FutureLearn is hosted from England, hence its course offering is more widespread from within UK universities as compared to other platforms like edX and Coursera.
From short courses. Micro-credentials programs, Expert Tracks, & Online Degrees.
Popular courses
- Teaching English Online
- Computer Programming for Everyone
- COVID-19 Critical Care: Understanding and Application
- A History of Royal Fashion
- Mindfulness for Well-being and Peak Performance
Key Features
- Leading partnerships with the university.
- In-depth learning
- It emphasis on teaching skills
- Free track available
Pricing
Sign up and audit courses for free ( for up to 5 weeks). Its paid programs are for individual courses. For unlimited access sign up for it for $189.99 per year. Check out our FutureLearn pricing guide for more info.
Click here to learn more.
Udacity offers courses focused on software development, programming, web development and data science.
Education-focused for business and tech, programs like nanodegrees are unique to Udacity.
Nanodegrees teaches a job/skills focused certificate program in a way different from college degrees. You can achieve full level mastery in tech and pave the way for your full time tech career with Udacity.
Udacity facilitates mastery and interactive learning via interactive Feedbacks. It is a one-to-one interaction method which lets you get your project and assignments directly evaluated and critically evaluated by the instructor. However, the cost of these services can be a barrier for most people.
If you are someone who wants to develop their web development, programming, Data science, and computing skills. Udacity is the best shot you have got and has some of the best online classes in these categories.
See our Udacity review to learn more.
Popular Courses
- Become a Marketing Analyst – Nanodegree.
- Become a UX Designer – Nanodegree.
- Become a Data Scientist – Nan degree.
- Become a Robotics Software Engineer – Nanodegree.
- Applying Data Science to Product Management – Udacity Courses.
- AI For Business Leaders – Udacity Courses.
Key Features
- Frequent Discounts
- Interactive feedback
- Nano-degrees
- Educational partnerships
- Tech Expert focused
Pricing
Udacity pricing varies from degree to degree. Nano degrees on average cost $399 per month. However, prepay for 3 months at once, would give a net 15% discount.
Click here to learn more.
OneDayU is a mix of traditional academia platforms with TED Talks. OneDayU hosts experts from top-notch universities like Harvard, Yale, and Columbia who speak and educate learners on a range of topics from how music shapes the brain to watching movies like film professors.
It’s one of the best options out there for nerdy learners who want to learn something new all the time, but don’t like to do assignments or projects. Each lecture usually is 60 mins long.
Key Features
- Creative and New set of Knowledge
- Great for people with High openness
- Offers learning in a non-traditional way (does not involve assignments and quizzes).
Popular classes
- The Science of Happiness
- The Art of Ageing
- The Mind of Abraham Lincoln
- The 5 Most Powerful People in the World
- A 400-Year History of Religion in America
Pricing
Sign up with your email address and get a free two-week trial. After that, you’ll be charged $9 per month. Sign up for a yearly plan for an additional discount on your monthly charges.
Click here to learn more.
Codecademy is a programming focused extensive platform for people who want to excel at programming languages, Data Science, & Web Development. Simply put, if you’re looking to advance your coding skills, this is where you’ll find the best online classes.
Codecademy classes hosts teaching for 12 programming languages including Python, Java, Go, JavaScript, Ruby, SQL, C++, Swift, and Sass, & markup languages such as HTML and CSS.
Career Paths are also offered by Codecademy in different sets of skills such as Data science, web development, and a whole lot more. Skill paths are focused on specialization in specific skills for short term goals. Skill Paths have varying difficulty levels within it, and you can take a quiz to determine your current skills set to move further up from there.
Popular classes
- Learn JavaScript
- Learn Python 3
- Learn HTML
- Front-End Engineer Career Path
- Data Scientist Career Path
Key Features
- Offers Career paths in Tech
- Skills path for specialization in specific skill
- Provides scholarship to Eligible student
- Teaches more than 12 programming language
Pricing
Sign up for free.
Codecademy pricing for their Pro subscription is $20/month (billed once per year for $240) and gives access to things like step-by-step guidance and projects.
There is Student Pro membership for Eligible students ($150/year) with similar features to that of the Pro subscription.
Click here to learn more.
How We Chose The Best Online Course Websites
We have sorted out the best online learning sites from tons of options out there. With so many options, a learner finds himself lost at how to evaluate different learning platforms and which platform to choose for which set of purpose/learning of skills.
We have evaluated a number of platforms, and it cannot be said that a single platform is best for everyone.
We have evaluated those options based on a number of factors described below:
Pricing
Platforms have varying options in terms of pricing. Option include Free courses, Free audit, Monthly subscription, and yearly subscription.
Content
Content on different platforms vary as some focus on specific areas such as artistic and creative learning, or coding languages, or business-focused skills learning.
Quality
The quality of online courses is vital. Some platforms are intensely enrolled, making course content generalized or kept at the preference of depth and difficulty preferred by most of the enroller. On the other hand, there are platforms that partner with specific universities to teach the content of the course.
Other features such as smartphone compatibility, certificate, and degree certification also need to be evaluated for formal education purposes.
What Are The Advantages Of Online Learning?
The advantages of online learning are:
- Virtual learning comfort
- Adds impact and enhances your skillset for your job outlook.
- No time limit for course completion and signup
- Cheaper and sometimes even free to learn. It is cheaper than traditional learning.
What Are The Common Resources Offered By Online Educational Platforms?
Common resource material for learning includes e-books. Lectures in audio & video, e-journals, encyclopeaedias, transcription, notes and more.
Why Should You Opt For Online Certification Courses?
Online courses are valued by two kinds of individuals. One who wants to learn for the sake of learning and passion, and other people who wants to learn for enhancement of their job, work, and business skills. Those skills can be mentioned on your resume for crafting out better jobs and career opportunities for you.
Do I Get A Printable Certificate?
Yes, most online course providers give a printable certificate to learners. In fact, some may even ship hard copy to your address.
A Final Word on the Best Online Courses Websites
With the advancement of online course learning, we can learn anything we want from the comfort of our home and most of the time that too for free and at very cheap prices as compared to fees of traditional college and universities.
Online courses make learning interactive and fun to learn, and facilitate casual and open learning for passionate seekers of knowledge.
Our advice when searching for the best online classes is to take advantage of free trials offered by many of these sites. This gives you a chance to try things out to see which platform is right for you.
Have a question about the best online courses websites? Comment below and we’ll help you out.