In today’s digital world, having an understanding of how apps and websites work makes you stand out as a modern professional. Whether you want to be a pro developer or you just want to familiarize yourself with the basics, there are numerous online coding courses that you can easily complete at your own pace and are flexible around your schedule.

However, finding decent courses can be tricky - there are a lot of options and sometimes the hardest part of the learning process is knowing where to start, and knowing what you don’t know so you can improve and grow as a developer.

Additionally, everyone is at a different point in their coding journey - so we’ve put together a list of the best online coding courses for people at each level to get involved with, both free and paid.

13 online coding courses

1. HTML, CSS and JavaScript by W3Schools

2. Responsive Web Design by FreeCodeCamp

3. TypeScript Course for Beginners by Academind

4. APIs for Beginners by FreeCodeCamp

5. Web Accessibility by Google for Udacity

6. Web Frameworks by Maximilian Schwarzmüller for Udemy

7. CSS Grid and Flexbox by Wes Bos

8. Build a Web App with Firebase by Google

9. The Complete Node.js Course by Mosh

10. Introduction to Web Security by Stanford Online

11. Professional Web Accessibility Auditing by The Chang School

12. Designing RESTful APIs by Udacity

13. Web Developer Nanodegrees by Udacity

Beginner online coding courses

If you’ve never touched a line of code before and are looking forward to discovering computer programming, check out these courses.

1. HTML, CSS and JavaScript

W3Schools | Free

W3Schools is a fantastic resource for learning a variety of programming languages, but especially HTML, CSS and JavaScript. What’s more, they’re all free and have interactive code examples along with challenges at the end of each tutorial so you can analyze how well you grasped a concept. Despite this being in the beginner section, I must admit I still regularly use W3Schools to brush up on specific concepts and properties.

2. Responsive Web Design

FreeCodeCamp | Free

FreeCodeCamp is famous for their great coding courses, and this one is perfect for aspiring web developers who want to make sites and apps which can be used on any device, from desktops to mobile phones. The course walks you through the basics step-by-step ensuring you don’t move too fast and get lost.

3. TypeScript Course for Beginners

Academind | Free

After you’ve learned the basics of JavaScript, I’d highly recommend jumping into TypeScript. This superset of JavaScript is used in many frameworks, and it uses strict data typing rather than JavaScript’s dynamic data typing - which I personally prefer.

This YouTube course is over three hours long and is taught by Maximilian Schwarzmüller who has the ability to make complex topics clear and understandable.

4. APIs for Beginners

FreeCodeCamp | Free

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs for short) allow your website or web app to communicate with some sort of back-end to request data or complex functionality - which can supercharge your site or app. This is a fundamental piece of knowledge for web developers, and the instructor Beau Carnes takes you through the basics and encourages you to write code that leverages APIs from real tech companies like Spotify.

Junior developer online coding courses

If you’ve got the basics down and you’ve had some experience of creating interactive websites or web apps, then these courses should take you to the next level.

5. Web Accessibility

Google for Udacity, Free

Accessibility is a tricky topic to get right when developing for the web - and this is reflected in the fact that so many sites are inaccessible and unusable to people with different abilities.

Fortunately, Google has published this excellent course on Udacity which takes you through the key foundational knowledge required to build accessible digital products. On top of its great quality of teaching, this course is also rich with interactive quizzes for testing your knowledge as you learn to code.

6. Web Frameworks

Maximilian Schwarzmüller for Udemy, Paid

We already covered Maximilian’s excellent course on TypeScript in the beginner’s section, but not mentioning his web framework courses would be a disservice.

Web frameworks are vital for a front-end or full-stack web developer to know right now, so if you haven’t looked into them yet, now is the time. Angular, React and Vue are some of the most popular frameworks, and so you can find the right coding course for whichever you favor.

7. CSS Grid and Flexbox

Wes Bos | Free

If you’re serious about web design, then you should understand how to use CSS Grid and Flexbox to style your pages and components. These two paradigms are arguably the most powerful improvements to CSS in years and they make some tricky layouts much easier to build.

There are various places to learn these two concepts. I would first recommend Wes Bos’ free tutorials for CSS Grid and Flexbox - you get access to 45 videos that take you from zero to layout-expert in no time.

Once you’ve understood the concepts, you could try your hand at Grid Garden and Flexbox Froggy by Codepip as a fun way to test your new CSS skills. Both games ask you to write either CSS Grid or Flexbox code to align elements of the game correctly in order to continue to the next stage.