The best free courses for learning AI in 2026

The best free courses for learning AI right now are LLMs from Scratch, Generative AI for Beginners and LLM Course, out of 5 we have reviewed. Each is ranked by our rating, with its price, our verdict and who it suits.

By Sheela · Updated Oct 31, 2026 · How we review

How we ranked: by our rating out of 5, from reviews built on each product's own pricing, documentation and policies plus independent benchmarks where they exist, each checked on the date shown in the review. We take no affiliate commission.

1. 1
   L

   LLMs from Scratch

   A rare learning resource that makes every line of a working LLM legible, kept current in 2026 by its bonus notebooks.

   Best for: Developers and students who want to understand LLM internals by building one.

   Price: Code is free under the Apache 2.0 licence; the companion book lists at $54.99 (ebook) or $59.99 (print).

   Read our LLMs from Scratch review
   4.7/5
2. 2
   G

   Generative AI for Beginners

   A sound first syllabus for developers building with LLM APIs, provided they read the agent lessons as history and swap Azure for whatever provider they already pay for.

   Best for: Developers new to generative AI who want to build their first applications.

   Price: Free and open source under the MIT licence. Running the Build lessons needs an OpenAI or Azure account, or Foundry Local on your own machine.

   Read our Generative AI for Beginners review
   4.2/5
3. 3
   L

   LLM Course

   A well-ordered syllabus for the whole LLM stack whose hands-on notebooks have not kept pace with its reading list.

   Best for: Developers who want a structured path into LLM training and engineering.

   Price: Free and open source under the Apache 2.0 license.

   Read our LLM Course review
   4.2/5
4. 4
   L

   Learn Harness Engineering

   A real curriculum for the unglamorous part of agent coding, the scaffolding around the model, and better on structure than on originality.

   Best for: Engineers already using Claude Code or Codex who want a structured way to make unattended agent sessions more reliable.

   Price: Free (MIT); you need your own coding agent such as Claude Code or Codex to do the projects.

   Read our Learn Harness Engineering review
   4.1/5
5. 5
   P

   Prompt Engineering Guide

   A good free map of where prompting techniques came from, and an unreliable guide to which ones still matter on current models.

   Best for: Anyone who wants a free reference on prompting and agent techniques.

   Price: Free and open source under the MIT license. DAIR.AI also sells paid courses separately.

   Read our Prompt Engineering Guide review
   4.0/5