Directory
Courses and drills that stay free enough to start
Some of these charge for a certificate and leave the lectures open. The card says which is which when the split matters. None of them replace reading the book.
Nothing on this page matches that.
Coursera
University courses, some free to audit, certificates behind a paywall. Audit is the part that matches “I want the lectures.”
edX
The other large MOOC shelf, started by MIT and Harvard. Same split: the material and the paid credential are not the same product.
MIT OpenCourseWare
MIT course materials, free, no certificate theater. Problem sets included when the professor published them.
CS50
Harvard’s introductory computer science course, with lectures you can watch without enrolling in a degree.
Khan Academy
School math and science, practiced, not just watched. The tone is a teacher at a whiteboard.
freeCodeCamp
A long, free web-development curriculum with projects. The certificate is a checklist you can ignore if you only want the exercises.
The Odin Project
A path that sends you to other docs and then asks you to build the thing. Less video, more “now you type.”
OpenStax
Free textbooks from Rice University. The license is on each book. They are textbooks, so they read like textbooks.
LibriVox
Public-domain audiobooks, read by volunteers. The text is free. The reading quality varies with the volunteer.
Wikipedia
A starting map, with sources at the bottom. Follow those. The article is the hallway, not the room.
Duolingo
Short language drills. Good for showing up. Thin for the day you need to read a novel.
Anki
Flashcards with spaced repetition. The desktop app is free. You write the cards, which is the actual studying.
Language Transfer
Audio courses that explain how a language is built, free, by one teacher. A few languages, done slowly.
BBC Learning English
English lessons from the BBC, with transcripts. Closer to the news than to a game.
DW Learn German
Deutsche Welle’s German courses, free, from absolute beginner through the news.
FutureLearn
Short courses from universities and cultural institutions. Some runs are free to join for a limited time.
Stanford Online
Stanford’s public course list. Free and paid sit on the same site. The button tells you which.
Open Culture
A long-running index of free courses, films, and books. It points out. It does not host the course.