Best Free AWS Courses in 2026 (Ranked and Reviewed)

AWS holds the largest share of the public cloud market, bigger than Azure and Google Cloud. That market position shows up in hiring. The AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner cert lands in job postings for developer, DevOps, data, and support roles, usually as a nice-to-have that signals you understand how the cloud actually works: core services, pricing, security basics, and the shared responsibility model. Be realistic about what it does and doesn't do. Cloud Practitioner proves foundational knowledge. It won't get you hired on its own, and it isn't a coding credential. What it does is round out a resume that already shows development or ops skills, and it gives you the vocabulary to talk about infrastructure in an interview. If you're targeting AWS-heavy teams, it's a sensible first cert.

Skill Builder is AWS's own training platform, and the free tier is where most people should begin. The Cloud Practitioner Essentials course is free and maps straight to the CCP exam objectives. Beyond that one course, the free tier opens up 500+ on-demand digital courses covering individual services, plus some exam prep modules. Be honest about the trade-offs. The free learning paths can feel scattered, and the UX is not beginner-friendly: you'll bounce between course pages and hunt for the right next module more than you'd like. Some things sit behind the paid subscription, mainly the hands-on live labs and the official practice exams. Even with those gaps, it's the right place to start because the content is official and current. Course details are at /courses/aws-cloud-practitioner-essentials, the platform profile is at /platforms/aws-skill-builder, and you can browse the free tier directly at https://skillbuilder.aws.

This is a single 13-hour course on freeCodeCamp's YouTube channel and site that covers the same CCP curriculum at a slower, more explained pace. If the official Skill Builder modules feel dense or move too fast, this is the fix. One instructor walks through every exam domain end to end, so it works well for people who learn better from a narrator than from clicking through slides. It isn't interactive and there's no certificate, but that's not the point. It prepares you for the paid exam, and the extra depth helps if cloud concepts are new to you. Plenty of people watch this alongside the Skill Builder course to fill gaps before booking the test. Course details are at /courses/freecodecamp-aws-ccp.

A few extras worth knowing about, though none should be your primary resource. ExamPro publishes free CCP content on the freeCodeCamp YouTube channel and is good for a second pass on tricky domains. AWS keeps a set of hands-on workshops on GitHub if you want to click through real console tasks rather than watch videos. A Cloud Guru has a free tier that's limited but occasionally useful for a specific topic. Treat all three as supplements to the two main courses above, not replacements.

Here's a sequence that works. Watch the freeCodeCamp 13-hour video first to build context and get the big picture in plain language. Then work through the Skill Builder Cloud Practitioner Essentials course for the official framing and the exact exam vocabulary. Finish with the exam prep modules and a practice test before you book the real thing. One money note: the Cloud Practitioner exam costs $100. The prep is free, the exam is not. So decide up front whether you actually want the credential or just the knowledge. If it's the knowledge you're after, you can stop after the two courses and skip the exam fee entirely.

Free resources get you to Cloud Practitioner comfortably. Past that, the free options thin out fast. The next tier of certs, Solutions Architect Associate and Developer Associate, has far fewer free courses that cover the full exam, so you'll likely end up paying for a paid course or lab environment at that stage. These free courses also skip deep hands-on practice: you learn the concepts, but building real architectures takes an AWS account and time in the console. So set expectations accordingly. This path is an excellent free on-ramp to your first cloud cert. It is not the whole road to a senior cloud role. For Azure alongside AWS, see our free cloud computing course guide. If your goal is DevOps, where cloud and CI/CD overlap heavily, see our free DevOps course guide, and how to become a DevOps engineer for the full career path. To pair AWS with server-side coding skills, the backend learning path lines things up. And /languages/cloud lists every free cloud course in our catalog.