You don’t need to spend money to learn AI properly. Google, Microsoft, IBM, and Anthropic all publish free courses, and several of them come with real certificates you can put on a CV. Here’s our roundup of free AI courses we’ve actually checked out, so you can skip the ones that are free in name only.

Free Courses From the Big AI Companies

• Google’s New AI Professional Certificate: What It Costs and Who Gets It Free
• Microsoft’s Free Generative AI Course: 21 Lessons You Can Start Today
• IBM SkillsBuild: Free AI Courses for Beginners
• Anthropic Academy: Free AI Courses With Certificates

Learning to Code (or Skipping It Entirely)

• Free AI Coding Courses for Beginners: Where to Start
• How to Learn AI Without Coding: Free Courses for Beginners

Broader Roundups

• Free AI Courses From Top Universities You Can Take
• Free AI Certifications You Can Get Online
• 5 Free AI Courses From Google, Microsoft, and Kaggle Worth Trying
• How to Learn AI for Free: A Beginner’s Roadmap

A practical tip: finish one course before starting another. Free courses are easy to collect and easy to abandon halfway through. Pick the one closest to what you actually want to do next, whether that’s a job application or a specific project, and finish that one first.

Once you’ve got the basics down, our AI for Beginners guide and the scholarships and learning opportunities page are good next stops.