When comparing Udacity vs edX, the Slant community recommends edX for most people. In the question“What are the best websites to learn to code?” edX is ranked 4th while Udacity is ranked 5th. The most important reason people chose edX is:
Both edX and the classes are free.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion 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 Free
Both edX and the classes are free.
Pro Offers courses from well known schools
edX offers courses from a wide range of well known colleges and universities including Harvard, MIT, UC Berkeley, Cornell and more.
Pro Large selection of science courses
edX offers a wide variety of science-related courses. This makes it a great resource for learning not only specific programming languages, but also other topics relating to computer science.
Pro A lot of topics (subjects)
Topics include biology, business, chemistry, computer science, economics, finance, electronics, engineering, food and nutrition, history, humanities, law, literature, math, medicine, music, philosophy, physics, science, statistics and more.
Pro Offer certificates for some courses
Cons
Con Nanodegrees are expensive
Udacity is quite expensive at $200/month if you want to do a nanodegree.
Con Lack of engagement in the forums
edX does not have the same forum participation from both students and instructors that other websites do, and the form of engagement often does not encourage discussion.
Con Courses aren't always available
While edX does offer some self-paced courses, you may end up waiting for the course of your choice to be run.
Con The forums are difficult to navigate
The forums are difficult to sort by date and topic, and are unintuitive to navigate.
