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Add to SafariWhen comparing Udacity vs Coursera, the Slant community recommends Udacity for most people. In the question“What are the best websites to learn to code?” Udacity is ranked 5th while Coursera is ranked 9th.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Courses taught by industry professionals
Pro All courses are self-paced
Courses are always made available which means there is no waiting for the specific course you want to run. You can work through the courses as fast or as slow as you want.
Pro Offers Nanodegrees
Udacity offers a few different Nanodegrees which provide access to various different courses, project reviews and coaching support for $200/month.
Current options include Front End Web Developer, Data Analyst and Android Developer. See the full list here.
Pro Courses are easy to understand
Pro Actual feedback on coding projects
You get actual feedback from developers on your code, which is useful. Yes having your sites/apps do what it is supposed to do is important, but you need feedback to learn industry standards/best practices and other gotchas that are much harder to learn on your own.
Pro Language that is easy to understand
Courses are super easy to follow, even for super dummies.
Pro Worth the investment
Pro Some courses offer a verified certificate for a fee
There is an option to earn a verified certificate as proof you completed the course (for use on LinkedIn, resumes etc.). The cost varies between courses, but is generally around $49-$60.
Pro High quality courses from well known universities
Many courses offered at Coursera are from well known universities (such as Stanford and Princeton) and instructed by their professors. Often the material taught in the Coursera courses is material from the actual university course.
Pro Wide selection of courses
Coursera offers over 1000 courses on a variety of different topics. Courses are offered on learning to code and specific languages, but there is also a large selection of courses that would be beneficial to someone wanting to learn more about computer science as well (algorithms, data science, computer security) and plenty others.
Pro You can audit courses for free
Pro Courses offered in a variety of languages (with transcriptions available)
Coursera offers courses from all around the world, resulting in courses taught in English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Turkish and a long list of others. Transcriptions for a large number of languages are offered for each course.
Cons
Con Nanodegrees are expensive
Udacity is quite expensive at $200/month if you want to do a nanodegree.
Con Courses are not always available
Courses are run on set dates, though some courses provide access to the material whether or not the course is running (however, there will be far less student activity in the forums when the course is not running).
Some courses only make their material available when the course is running, so you may have to wait a long period (sometimes months) for your course to be offered.
Con You cannot take the full courses for free
While you used to be able to take courses for free and earn a statement of accomplishment, this is no longer the case. You can only audit the courses if you are not paying. Coursera makes it seem like you should also do the quizzes, but the submit button says "Upgrade to submit".
