10 Best YouTube Courses (Free & Paid)

The best YouTube course depends on what you want the channel to do. If you want a free introduction, HubSpot Academy's YouTube Marketing Course is the strongest option. If you want YouTube to bring customers to a business, the YouTube Marketing Full Course is the one that covers ads as well as organic. If you already post regularly and want to go full-time, Ali Abdaal's Part-Time YouTuber Academy is worth the money.

I have taken every course on this list, and I have been running a YouTube channel alongside a marketing business long enough to know which lessons survive contact with the platform and which ones read well and change nothing.

Below are the 10 courses that made the list, grouped by what you are actually trying to do.

The 10 Best YouTube Courses In 2026

1. YouTube Growth Course By Reliablesoft Academy
2. YouTube Marketing Full Course By Reliablesoft Academy
3. YouTube for Busy Business Owners By Shane Hummus
4. Part-Time YouTuber Academy By Ali Abdaal
5. YouTube Masterclass By Udemy
6. YouTube Marketing Course By HubSpot Academy
7. YouTube Beginners Guide By Eduonix
8. Learning YouTube SEO By LinkedIn Learning
9. Stand Out on YouTube By Skillshare
10. YouTube Success: Script, Shoot & Edit with MKBHD By Skillshare

How We Chose These YouTube Courses

There is no shortage of YouTube training, and most of it is a few hours of general advice wrapped around an upsell. This guide only includes courses that cover enough of the job to change how you work, or that fix one specific problem properly.

As part of creating our own training material, we enrol in and complete other YouTube courses to evaluate the quality of their content. That is how we judge which lessons are genuinely useful and which oversell what they deliver.

We ranked each course on four things:

• How much of the job it covers, from choosing a niche through to monetising, rather than what the sales page claims.
• Whether the material reflects how YouTube works now, including AI tools and the current packaging and retention rules.
• Whether the person teaching has a channel that demonstrably worked.
• What it really costs, including subscription renewals and bundles that are easy to miss.

Every price, duration, lesson count and certificate claim below was checked against the provider's own page. Where a provider does not publish a price, as Skillshare does not, we say so rather than guess.

Courses that stop existing get removed. The YouTube Creator Academy course that sat on this list for several years was retired by Google, and the link now lands on a single video, so it is gone rather than left in place.

One point of confusion worth clearing up before the list: these are courses that teach you YouTube. If you are looking for free university-style courses hosted on YouTube, such as lectures, programming tutorials or exam prep, that is a different thing and the channels publishing them are the place to look.

Best YouTube Courses At a Glance

Course	Best For	Cost	Duration	Certificate
YouTube Growth Course By Reliablesoft Academy	Faceless channels built with AI tools	In the $127 bundle, normally $1,260	Self-paced, 9 lessons	Digital Marketing Certification
YouTube Marketing Full Course By Reliablesoft Academy	Marketing a business on YouTube	In the $127 bundle, normally $1,260	Self-paced, 6 lessons	SEO and Digital Marketing
YouTube for Busy Business Owners By Shane Hummus	Side income on under 10 hours a week	Not published	On-demand	No
Part-Time YouTuber Academy By Ali Abdaal	Going full-time while keeping a job	$995 one-time	20+ hours, plus 16+ hours of bonuses	No
YouTube Masterclass By Udemy	A broad, current course with a certificate	Paid, discounted most of the year	8 hours 49 minutes	Yes
YouTube Marketing Course By HubSpot Academy	A free, structured introduction	Free	2 hours 10 minutes	Yes
YouTube Beginners Guide By Eduonix	Setting up a first channel correctly	Free	2.34 hours	No
Learning YouTube SEO By LinkedIn Learning	Videos nobody is finding	LinkedIn Learning subscription	29 minutes	Yes
Stand Out on YouTube By Skillshare	Staying relevant over the long term	Skillshare membership	2 hours 7 minutes	Yes
YouTube Success with MKBHD By Skillshare	Scripting, filming and editing	Skillshare membership	1 hour 13 minutes	No

Which YouTube Course Is Right For You?

Rather than comparing feature lists, start from what you are trying to achieve. These five cases cover most readers:

• You have not published anything yet. Start with HubSpot. Two hours is enough to understand how the algorithm works, it costs nothing, and you get a certificate at the end. Publish ten videos before you pay for anything.
• You want a channel that makes money without being on camera. The YouTube Growth Course is the only course here built around faceless channels and AI production, from niche selection through to revenue.
• You have a business and want YouTube to bring customers. Take the YouTube Marketing Full Course. It is the only option on this list that covers YouTube Ads properly alongside organic growth, which matters when you need results before the channel is big.
• You already post regularly and want to go full-time. Go to the Part-Time YouTuber Academy. It is expensive and it assumes you are already uploading, which is exactly why it suits people the beginner courses would waste.
• Your channel has one specific problem. Nobody finding your videos is an SEO problem, so take Learning YouTube SEO. People finding them and leaving is a craft problem, so take the MKBHD class.

Two things are worth checking before you pay for anything. Look at when the course was last updated, because YouTube changes constantly and a course recorded three years ago will teach principles that hold and interface screens that do not. And look at whether the instructor has a channel you can go and inspect, because on this subject the proof is public.

Best YouTube Courses For Growing a Channel Into an Income

These four cover the full path from an idea to revenue. They are the right starting point if the channel is meant to earn, whether that is for a business you already run or as the business itself.

1. YouTube Growth Course By Reliablesoft Academy

• Best For: Faceless channels built with AI tools
• Cost: Included in the $127 Digital Marketing Course Bundle, normally $1,260
• Duration: Self-paced, 9 lessons
• Certificate: Digital Marketing Certification

The YouTube Growth Course teaches you how to launch and grow a faceless YouTube channel using AI tools, without showing your face, buying expensive equipment, or spending months working it out alone.

It explains how YouTube works, how creators actually make money, and how to build a strategy that holds up over time, then walks you through executing it.

The course covers the following topics:

• How the YouTube algorithm decides what to show
• Choosing a profitable niche
• Creating videos with AI tools
• Publishing and optimising for clicks and watch time
• Growing subscribers and revenue

Alongside the lessons you get a 95-page PDF, video tutorials, prompts, checklists, worked examples and the step-by-step workflows for turning a faceless AI channel into a traffic and income source.

Why Enroll In This Course?

Most YouTube courses assume you want to be a personality. This one does not, which makes it the right fit if the goal is an asset that earns rather than an audience that knows your face. It is beginner-friendly and covers the whole process rather than one piece of it, so you are not left assembling a strategy from three different courses.

The one thing to know is that it is not sold separately. It comes as one of the 21 courses in the Digital Marketing Course Bundle, so the real question is whether the SEO, Google Ads, Facebook Ads and content marketing courses alongside it are useful to you. At $127 for all 21 against a normal price of $1,260, they usually are.

The Academy courses are rated 5 stars in our published student reviews, and the bundle comes with a 60-day money-back guarantee.

2. YouTube Marketing Full Course By Reliablesoft Academy

• Best For: Marketing an existing business on YouTube
• Cost: Included in the $127 Digital Marketing Course Bundle, normally $1,260
• Duration: Self-paced, 6 lessons
• Certificate: SEO and Digital Marketing Certification

The YouTube Marketing Full Course teaches you how to use YouTube to grow a business, covering channel setup, keyword research, SEO, advertising and monetisation in the order you would actually do them.

The course covers the following topics:

• Course introduction and downloads, including the offline PDF
• Creating and optimising your YouTube channel
• YouTube keyword research, manual and automated
• Optimising videos for SEO in both YouTube and Google
• Advertising on YouTube for sales, subscribers and views
• Monetising your channel through ad revenue, affiliates and other methods

It is written for beginners, and completing it lets you pursue two certifications, in SEO and Digital Marketing.

Why Enroll In This Course?

The advertising lesson is what separates this from the shorter courses further down. Almost no YouTube course covers YouTube Ads properly, and if you are marketing a business it is the fastest route to views that convert, rather than waiting a year for organic growth to arrive.

The lessons include checklists, step-by-step guides and real examples, and they are updated as the YouTube algorithm changes. Enrolling also gives you instant access to 20 more courses covering SEO, Facebook Ads, content marketing, affiliate marketing and AI, and there is a 60-day money-back guarantee.

The limitation is that it is a marketing course, not a creator course. There is nothing here on filming, scripting or editing, so if you want to become a YouTuber rather than use YouTube, pair it with the MKBHD class.

For the wider picture, read our guide on how to make money on YouTube.

3. YouTube for Busy Business Owners By Shane Hummus

• Best For: A second income on under 10 hours a week
• Cost: Not published, you request it through his site
• Duration: On-demand
• Certificate: No

YouTube for Busy Business Owners is an on-demand course on turning a channel into income without treating it as a full-time job.

Shane Hummus has over 1.2 million subscribers and more than 100 million video views, built largely on career and certification content, so the advice comes from someone who did it at scale rather than someone who studied people who did.

The course covers the following topics:

• Promoting a YouTube brand from zero
• A three-step script formula for videos that hold attention
• Channel growth strategies for the current platform
• Monetisation techniques for earning more per view

He also sells separate training programs and one-on-one coaching for people who want direct guidance.

Why Enroll In This Course?

The premise is that you do not need to spend hours a day on YouTube to get something out of it, which is the honest version of a promise most courses make badly. It is aimed at people with a job or a business and a few hours a week, and the material is built around that constraint rather than assuming you can drop everything.

Two of his most-watched videos, 5 Basic Online Certifications BUT They're Better Than Most Degrees and 9 Boring But High-Paying Remote Jobs, are a fair sample of the style before you commit anything.

The drawback is the pricing. It is the only course on this list with no published price, so you cannot compare it against the options here without contacting him first, and there is no certificate either.

4. Part-Time YouTuber Academy By Ali Abdaal

• Best For: Going full-time without quitting your job first
• Cost: $995 one-time, or three monthly payments
• Duration: 20+ hours of core curriculum, plus 16+ hours of bonuses
• Certificate: No

The Part-Time YouTuber Academy teaches you to build a channel alongside a full-time job, through repeatable systems rather than tactics.

Ali Abdaal started uploading in 2017 during his final year of medical school and passed a million subscribers within roughly two years while still working as a doctor. The channel is now past six million, and the course is his attempt to turn what he did into something repeatable.

The argument is that you cannot out-work a day job, so you build processes for the parts that eat your evenings. The course covers the following frameworks:

• Niche Discovery Framework, for working out what to make videos about
• Perfect Packaging Process, with templates for titles and thumbnails
• HIVES, a repeatable structure for scripting
• Infinite Content Engine, for planning three to six months of content ahead
• Idea Generation Machine, for generating and filtering ideas on demand
• Outsourcing Almanack, for hiring an editor who works in your style

The bonus modules add gear, studio setups, monetisation, repurposing and newsletters, including a 4.5-hour masterclass on camera confidence, plus interviews with more than 20 creators. Enrolment includes lifetime access, all future updates and the alumni community.

Why Enroll In This Course?

It is the only course here written for people who are not leaving their career, and the systems framing is the right one once you are past the stage where more effort is the answer.

The published case studies are also more useful than the usual zero-to-hero story. One creator had made 35 videos and was stuck at 1,000 subscribers; another had been uploading for three years and was stuck at 36,000. Over 6,000 people have taken it.

Two caveats. At $995 it costs several times more than anything else on this list, and it assumes you are already uploading, so a complete beginner will get more from the free courses first. And there is no certificate, so if you are taking a course for your CV this is not the one. There is a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Best YouTube Courses For Beginners Starting From Zero

If you have not published a video yet, start here. Two of these three are free, and between them they cover everything you need to get a channel set up and your first uploads out.

5. YouTube Masterclass By Udemy

• Best For: A broad, current course with a certificate
• Cost: Paid, and discounted most of the year
• Duration: 8 hours 49 minutes
• Certificate: Yes

YouTube Masterclass: Your Complete Guide to YouTube Success by Phil Ebiner covers the full path from creating a channel to monetising it, across 16 sections and 82 lectures.

The course covers the following topics:

• Creating your YouTube channel from scratch
• Building a brand around the channel
• Getting more views and subscribers
• Making high-quality videos on a budget
• Optimising titles, descriptions and tags for search
• Creating thumbnails that get clicked
• Monetising a YouTube channel

It carries 4.7 stars from more than 13,700 ratings with over 200,000 students enrolled, and was last updated in January 2026.

Why Enroll In This Course?

That update date matters more than it sounds. Most of the YouTube courses on Udemy have not been touched in years, and on a platform that changes as often as this one, a 2022 recording is teaching you an interface that no longer exists. This is the most complete third-party course here that does not cost four figures.

It is also the easiest certificate on this list to explain to an employer, because Udemy is a name people recognise.

The limitation is that it is broad rather than deep. If you already know how YouTube works and need to fix one specific thing, the shorter classes below will get you there faster. Udemy list prices also vary by country and the course is on offer for most of the year, so check the price on the day rather than budgeting for the list figure.

6. YouTube Marketing Course By HubSpot Academy

• Best For: A free, structured introduction
• Cost: Free
• Duration: 2 hours 10 minutes
• Certificate: Yes

YouTube Marketing Course: Grow Your YouTube Channel is HubSpot Academy's free course on building an audience, taught by HubSpot professors alongside working creators.

It runs 2 hours 10 minutes across 5 lessons, with 14 videos and 4 quizzes. The course covers the following topics:

• Making the most of the YouTube platform and algorithm
• Creating an optimised YouTube channel
• Developing high-performing content and scaling your channel
• YouTube monetisation and advertising strategies
• Next steps once the channel is running

Registration is free and you receive a certificate on completion.

Why Enroll In This Course?

This is the best free option on the list. For something that costs nothing it is unusually well produced, and the quizzes mean you find out whether anything actually stuck rather than assuming it did.

It is also a good companion to how to create a YouTube channel if you are starting from nothing, since the first two lessons cover the same ground in video form.

Bear in mind that it is HubSpot marketing as much as it is training, so expect the funnel. Two hours also means it covers the map rather than the terrain, and you will want something longer once your first few videos are out.

7. YouTube Beginners Guide By Eduonix

• Best For: Setting up a first channel correctly
• Cost: Free
• Duration: 2.34 hours
• Certificate: No

The YouTube Beginners Guide to a Successful Channel is a free Eduonix course that walks through setting up and running a channel from scratch, across 23 lectures.

The course covers the following topics:

• Creating a Google account and your own brand channel
• Working with the YouTube Studio control panel
• Cover art and channel presentation
• Video keyword tags and optimisation
• Linking an ads account and monetising through AdSense
• Using comments and community features to build engagement

It is rated 4.7 by its students and costs nothing.

Why Enroll In This Course?

The level of detail on the interface is what earns it a place. Most courses assume you can find your way around YouTube Studio and move on; this one does not, which is exactly what a first-time creator needs when the mechanics are the thing putting them off.

Being free also makes it the lowest-risk way to find out whether you want to do this at all before paying for anything.

The limitation is that it is mechanics rather than strategy. It will get your channel built correctly and tell you very little about what to make videos about or why anyone would watch, so treat it as the setup step and take something else for the rest.

Best YouTube Classes For Specific Skills

These three are short, cheap and narrow. Take one when you know exactly what is going wrong, rather than as a starting point.

8. Learning YouTube SEO By LinkedIn Learning

• Best For: Videos that nobody is finding
• Cost: Included with a LinkedIn Learning subscription, free trial available
• Duration: 29 minutes
• Certificate: Yes

Learning YouTube SEO by Ash Blodgett is a short class on ranking videos in YouTube search, rated 4.7 out of 5 from more than 700 learners.

The course covers the following topics:

• Video SEO, including title length and keyword placement
• Channel SEO and user engagement
• Using TubeBuddy to find and compare competitors' keywords
• Free SEO tools you can start with

At 29 minutes it is the shortest course on this list.

Why Enroll In This Course?

The value is in the specificity. Rather than telling you that titles matter, it tells you how long to make them, where keywords belong in the description, and which channel-level fields are worth filling in. That level of detail is what separates channels that rank from channels that do not.

It is the fastest fix here for a visibility problem, and you can finish it in a lunch break.

Two limitations. It was released in February 2021 and has not been re-recorded, so the principles hold up better than the interface screenshots. And it is narrow by design, so it will not help if people find your videos and choose not to click.

9. Stand Out on YouTube By Skillshare

• Best For: Keeping a channel relevant over the long term
• Cost: Included with a Skillshare membership, free trial available
• Duration: 2 hours 7 minutes
• Certificate: Yes

Stand Out on YouTube: Build a Successful Channel with Jazza is taught by Josiah "Jazza" Brooks, an artist and YouTuber who built his channel around his own creative work. It runs 2 hours 7 minutes across 15 lessons.

The course covers the following topics:

• Grounding expectations and setting up the channel
• Understanding clickbait and where the line sits
• Thumbnails and titles
• Finding your audience and staying topical
• Collaborating with other creators
• AdSense strategies, products and working with sponsors
• Reading your analytics without obsessing over them

Of the students who rated it, 99% said it met or exceeded their expectations, the highest proportion of any class here.

Why Enroll In This Course?

Most courses stop once your channel is set up. This one is mostly about what happens afterwards, which is where more channels stall than at the start.

The clickbait lesson is more useful than it sounds, because getting that wrong is how channels end up demonetised, and the money lessons treat AdSense, products and sponsorships as three separate decisions rather than lumping them together.

The limitation is age. The reviews are four and five years old and the class has not been updated since, so some platform detail has moved on. It is also aimed at creators building a personal brand, which makes it a poor fit for a business channel.

10. YouTube Success: Script, Shoot & Edit with MKBHD By Skillshare

• Best For: Scripting, filming and editing
• Cost: Included with a Skillshare membership, free trial available
• Duration: 1 hour 13 minutes
• Certificate: No

YouTube Success: Script, Shoot & Edit with MKBHD is taught by Marques Brownlee, who has over 15 million subscribers, and covers how he takes a video from idea to upload.

The course covers the following topics:

• Researching your topic
• Writing your script
• Planning your visuals
• Hooking your audience
• Shooting your video
• Editing your footage
• Posting your video
• Growing your channel

It runs 1 hour 13 minutes across 11 lessons, each five to ten minutes, and 92% of students said it met or exceeded their expectations.

Why Enroll In This Course?

This is the class to take when people find your videos and do not watch them to the end. The lessons follow a single video from start to finish, so it is easy to take one at a time against your own next upload rather than watching the whole thing and forgetting it.

Brownlee also films a phone review end to end on camera, which is the part worth watching twice. Seeing the decisions made in real time is more instructive than any amount of theory about them.

The limitation is scope. There is nothing here on SEO, ads or monetisation, and at just over an hour it assumes you already have a channel and a reason for it to exist.

Do YouTube Courses Come With a Certificate?

Some do, but the certificate never comes from YouTube. YouTube does not issue any certification for learning YouTube marketing, and a course advertising itself as making you "YouTube certified" is describing something that does not exist.

What does exist is a certificate of completion from the platform running the course. On this list, HubSpot Academy, Udemy, LinkedIn Learning and Skillshare all issue one, and the two Reliablesoft Academy courses lead to a Digital Marketing certification, with an SEO certification alongside it on the YouTube Marketing Full Course.

Those are worth having as evidence you completed the training, and they are reasonable to list on a CV or a LinkedIn profile. What they are not is an industry credential. No employer treats a Skillshare certificate as a qualification, and nobody at YouTube recognises any of them. If the certificate is the main reason you are taking a course, Udemy and HubSpot are the two most widely recognised names here.

Worth separating out: watching videos on YouTube earns you nothing. The platform's own Courses feature lets creators mark a playlist as a course, but completing one does not produce a certificate.

Are YouTube Courses Worth It?

A YouTube course is worth it if you are already publishing and stuck on something specific. It is not worth it if you are using it to delay starting.

Nothing on this list will make videos for you, and no course substitutes for uploading consistently for a couple of years. The people who say courses are a waste of money are usually the ones who bought a course instead of publishing.

What a good course buys you is time. It compresses the trial and error: the six months in a niche that was never going to work, the fifty thumbnails you would have made before working out what gets clicked, the editor you would have hired badly. If you are already committed, that is worth real money.

Four things to check before you spend anything. Have you published yet, because if not, the free courses here plus ten uploads will teach you more than any purchase. Is the course still maintained, because YouTube changes constantly. Does the instructor have a channel that worked, which on this subject you can verify in thirty seconds. And what are you actually stuck on, because "grow my channel" is not a problem a course can solve, while "my click-through rate is 2%" is.

FAQ For YouTube Courses

How Much Do YouTube Courses Cost?

Between nothing and $995, and most of the useful ones sit under $130. Two courses here are free, three come with a LinkedIn Learning or Skillshare subscription, two are the Reliablesoft Academy courses, both included in the same $127 21-course bundle, and one is a $995 premium program. Udemy prices vary by country and are discounted most of the year.

Which YouTube Course Is Best For Beginners?

HubSpot Academy's YouTube Marketing Course is the best free option for beginners, at 2 hours 10 minutes with a certificate at the end. If the mechanics are what is holding you back, the free Eduonix course spends 23 lectures on YouTube Studio and channel setup in much more detail.

Can You Learn YouTube From Free Courses Only?

Up to a point. The free courses here will get a channel set up correctly and teach you how the algorithm works. What they do not cover in depth is packaging, scripting and paid promotion, which is where most channels stall. Free is the right place to start, not the right place to stop.

How Long Does a YouTube Course Take?

Most are short. The classes here run from 29 minutes to 8 hours 49 minutes, and either free course can be finished in an afternoon. The exception is the Part-Time YouTuber Academy, with 20+ hours of core material and another 16+ hours of bonuses, designed to be worked through over months.

Are There YouTube Classes Near Me?

Almost certainly not, and you do not need one. YouTube training is effectively all online, every course on this list is self-paced, and in-person classes on this subject are rare enough that travelling to one is not worth it over a course you can take at home.

What Are YouTube Courses?

The term covers two things. Most people mean structured training on how to grow a channel, which is what this page lists. YouTube also has its own Courses feature, which lets creators turn a playlist into a structured learning path on the platform, and that is what the search results show for the bare phrase.

What To Do Next?

If you have not published a video, take the HubSpot course this week and upload ten videos before you spend anything. You will learn more from the first ten than from any course, and you will know which part of the process is costing you views.

If you are running a business and want YouTube to bring in customers, the YouTube Marketing Full Course is the one to take, because the advertising lesson gets you results before the channel is large enough to deliver them organically.

If you already post regularly, work out what is actually failing before you buy anything. Read our guide on YouTube SEO if nobody is finding your videos, and how to make money on YouTube if the audience is there and the revenue is not.