Python is a popular, high-level programming language that’s hailed for its versatility as it can be used in several cases such as data science, web development, software prototype creation, and more.
It’s used by software and machine learning engineers, analysts, and data scientists because it handles the common programming tasks so they can focus on building control and management, plus testing the core functionality of the application.
Python is also concise and easy to read, which makes learning it a lot easier.
In order to use it, you need to first learn what it is, how it works, and how to use it. There are many courses you can take, some free while others charge a fee.
However, not all the platforms offering Python as a course will help you be comfortable using it or even transfer the skills you’ve learned onto your computer.
If you’ve done any research about Python, you’ve probably come across Codecademy and Udemy.
These are just two of the largest online coding schools available, making it hard not to run into them on the online search results.
But are they really all that, and how do they stack up against each other specifically for their Python courses? We’re going to break down each of them and conclude with our recommendation.
Codecademy vs Udemy: A Brief Overview
Codecademy
Codecademy is an online interactive platform committed to offering the best learning experience for its users by offering plenty of advantages over the way you’ll learn coding and other specific topics including Python.
The team comprises hackers who work to build the best experience for anyone who wants to learn or teach coding, fueled by the mission to rethink education from the bottom up.
It offers free coding classes in 12 different programming languages such as Go, Java, Python, JavaScript, or the Watson API (IBM) among many others, all designed to make learning code and web design easy and fun.
However, there’s a paid plan if you want extra learning tools and live support.
The classes are packaged into paths with the feel of an online coding curriculum, and the user interface features in-browser prompts, code editors, and text instructions sans videos.
Udemy
Udemy is another online platform that offers thousands of online courses that you can take and learn at your own pace thanks to its lifetime access provision.
If you’re busy and you still need to take some classes to spruce up your resume and skill set, Udemy offers the flexibility you need to take your courses comfortably, and across various disciplines – not just coding.
For example, if you like coding, but still want to learn stuff around personal development, psychology, grammar, and other disciplines, you can still wander into those realms within Udemy as it offers courses for that and many others.
Udemy also covers various languages from Python to Node.js, Java, C++, and many more.
Its pricing varies based on the course you’re taking, and the curriculum is taught by individual freelance instructors who design their courses without oversight from Udemy.
It’s more like a marketplace of classes from where you can pick the course you want and learn at your own pace.
Unlike Codecademy, which has in-browser text editing, Udemy doesn’t, because you use real-world tools though not standardized across the courses because the instructors are different.
Besides the regular online classes, Udemy also offers courses to help companies stay competitive in the dynamic work environment through the Udemy for Business program.
It offers fresh on-demand learning content through a content marketplace that’s designed to help employees learn and do the next skill, role, or project they need to tackle and master.
This program curates a collection of the platform’s top-rated courses, which are taught by leading global experts, and cover various technical and key business topics from IT to development, leadership, design, marketing, and stress management.
Organizations can also host and distribute their own proprietary content besides the curated content collection on Udemy.
The Udemy Business Content Collection offers over 2,500 online courses with the most engaging courses for staff professional development.
They’re curated from Udemy’s over 8,000 courses powered by more than 35,000 instructors and over 24 million students.
Codecademy vs Udemy: How Do They Work?
Codecademy
Once you pick a course, you’ll see the overview and course outline with the topics you need to familiarize yourself with, including the prerequisites. You’ll be guided through course preparation and any installations you need to complete the course.
After the introductory section, you’ll enter a new environment where you can start building your skills slowly and complete challenges that move you forward through the lesson while saving your progress.
This way, you don’t have to finish the whole course immediately – you can stop anytime you want without losing any of your work.
If you go for specific programming lessons like Python, you can get even more detail on how it works, take the elementary or basic tasks, and then move on to the more advanced and bigger projects.
Along the way, you’ll be rewarded with badges that motivate you to achieve even more, plus see the various skills you’ve already tackled and mastered and your course progress.
If you get stuck, there are clickable hints and more hints in case you submit incorrect code.
A dedicated Q&A forum is available if you meet any roadblocks, which allow you to interact with other students on the same level and help each other as you go along.
There’s also a page of resources with language glossaries, forum rules, and Help Center access to get answers to your queries.
Udemy
Udemy has an almost similar experience to Codecademy but it offers a filter by which you can pick the pricing, course hours, course ratings, and more to get the course recommendations you can go for.
Once you pick a course, you’ll see the overview, why you need to take the course, details about the instructor, outline, and the pricing.
To get started, you’ll have to sign up if you haven’t registered an account, whether it’s a free or premium course, and you can choose from a wide variety of courses teaching different aspects of Python programming language.
Codecademy vs Udemy: Features
Codecademy
Projects
Codecademy gives students projects that they can use to demonstrate the technical skills they can acquire.
Skill paths
These provide you with a roadmap through which you can master a new skill that’s job-ready.
Skill Assessment and Gap Analysis
The platform contains a pre-course assessment for any skill development course you take while the skill gap analysis feature highlights the skills that need work.
Short assessments
These are in-course comprehension checks that assess your comprehension of the topic you’re taking and test your knowledge retention.
Pro Courses
These are premium Codecademy courses that offer quizzes, customized paths, and portfolio building projects so you can learn new skills.
Free trials are available to use within the first 7 days of account ownership, with access to members-only content, mobile app quizzes, community support, and real-life projects.
Learning paths and channels
Codecademy’s learning paths contain courses that are externally curated and created by vendors or experts for you to opt into.
Channels on the other hand serve up team-wide courses for companies to address any skill gaps introduced by changes in the company or the team.
The Career Paths section offers guidance through what you need to learn if you’re looking to build a solid foundation in a tech career.
Course recommendation
Learners are served with course recommendations or suggested learning paths based on the results from the skill gap analysis and skill assessments.
Content
Codecademy offers high-quality video content that’s interactive and relevant in the lessons you take, to supplement course material. You can learn a specific language or technology through these interactive lessons.
Projects
Learners also get projects within the courses that are based on real-life cases, which help them learn and practice their skills better.
In-course assessments and certification practice tests
These are designed to assess your mastery of the course material, and the certification practice tests are included to help you prepare yourself in advance for the professional certification examinations.
Certification
Codecademy also awards learners with certificates upon completion of their learning paths or courses.
Admin Dashboard and team-level monitoring
Codecademy allows admins to assign courses while monitoring the activities of the user subsets and teams through the admin dashboard, from which they can access the analytics that shows them the data on the learners’ proficiency levels and usage.
Advanced Analytics
The admin dashboard contains advanced analytics that help admins track team and company-wide skill proficiency and results.
Compatibility
Codecademy is compatible with mobile devices, and you can access the course materials offline too.
Codecademy GO
This is an app that lets you learn on the web or practice on the go while unlocking more courses and unlimited reviews and practice. This way, you can refresh your skills with new articles and exercises every day.
Codecademy for Business
With this program, employees can get access to the full catalog of courses that includes practice, interactive lessons, and Codecademy’s Skill Paths and Career Paths tool.
It helps develop your team with technical training and offers unlimited flexibility to rotate licenses between employees while giving you weekly reports on their progress. Personalized Codecademy certificates are also awarded for each team member upon completion of the program.
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Udemy
Projects
Udemy offers students projects that help them demonstrate the technical skills they’ll acquire. You can choose your courses based on topic, level, price, video hours, language, ratings, features, and closed captions and it’ll serve you with recommendations based on the selected filters.
Skill Gap Analysis and Assessment
A pre-course assessment is available for all skill development courses including Python, to highlight the exact skills that need work so you know the expected outcomes.
Comprehension checks
Udemy also offers in-course short assessments that test your comprehension and retention of knowledge as you learn.
Channels and learning paths
Udemy offers curated courses form vendors and experts so you can opt into them and pick what you want to learn about. There are team-wide courses available if you have experienced any changes in the company that you want to address through online courses.
Course recommendation
You’ll get content or suggested learning paths recommended to you based on the results from the pre-course and skill gap analysis assessments.
Content and Projects
Udemy offers high-quality content with interactive lessons in video format and projects based on real-world scenarios that’ll help test your technical skill acquisitions. In-course assessments are also included to assess your mastery of the course material.
Certification
At the end of the course, you’ll get help to prepare for certification exams, and once completed, you’ll receive a certificate for your course or learning path.
Admin dashboard and monitoring
Administrators can assign courses, monitor team or user activities, and get access to the analytics dashboards with data on the learners’ proficiency levels and usage.
Mobile app/Compatibility
Udemy is also compatible with mobile devices and offers offline access to its course materials. You can use the mobile wrapper app for its online learning platform to browse, purchase, and view content among other things.
Community
Udemy has an active community of instructors who you can interact with to help you as you go along the course creation process and learning too.
Udemy for Business
For companies or organizations, Udemy offers a business program for employee learning, with benefits such as unlimited access to the top 4,000+ courses handpicked from their platform, fresh content taught by over 1,500 real-world practitioners and experts, admin functionality, and actionable insights. You can learn anytime and on any device too.
Become an instructor
Unlike Codecademy, which has its own instructors, Udemy allows anyone to become a teacher and make a global impact by creating online video courses and then earn from it every time students buy your course.
If you know your passion and have knowledge around it, pick the topic, and plan your lectures in Excel, Google Docs, or a notebook. Once you plan your course, you can use the free Udemy courses on how to build your own course.
This comes with worksheets and real-life examples, plus an instructor dashboard and curriculum pages to help you stay on track. You also get to teach in multiple languages and inspire even more students globally.
Codecademy vs Udemy: Support
Codecademy
Support is available via a Help Center, forum, help articles, and blog, plus you can reach out to them via their social media platforms on Facebook or Twitter.
Udemy
You can get helpful resources via the Udemy Help and Support online platform that has lots of articles on troubleshooting and frequently asked questions. You can also submit a request to contact the support team or check their blog for useful articles.
Codecademy vs Udemy: Pricing
Codecademy
Codecademy offers free and premium pricing plans for their courses. The Basic plan is free and offers interactive lessons and daily practice for 180 hours of content, but doesn’t offer team support, peer support, real-world guidance, or step-by-step guidance. Mobile practice is also limited.
The Pro plan costs $15 per month, and offers 1800 hours of content, with unlimited practice including on mobile, unlimited peer support, real-world guidance, and step-by-step guidance, but no team support.
The Teams plan, which comes with custom pricing, offers unlimited team support, peer support, real-world guidance, step-by-step guidance, and 1800 hours of content.
Codecademy Pro has everything in the Basic plan including advanced tools and content, additional exercises, quizzes, and practice packs to help you sharpen your skills.
Udemy
Udemy’s pricing varies based on the course you want to take, some are free while others are premium. However, the Udemy for Business course has two pricing plans: Enterprise and Team.
The Enterprise plan offers unlimited on-demand access to top-rated courses, custom URL, branded dashboard, a mobile app, creation of host custom content and customized learning paths, custom categories, and international collection in various languages.
The Team plan only offers unlimited on-demand access to top-rated courses, a mobile app, a custom URL, and a branded dashboard for $360 per user per year.
Codecademy vs Udemy: Similarities & Differences
Codecademy vs Udemy: Which One Is Better?
Codecademy is a specific platform that offers IT courses in different categories unlike Udemy, which is broad-based and has general topics ranging from business to psychology and IT among others.
Both offer free or paid courses, special programs for companies with packages for teams, and mobile apps to learn on the go.
For this round though, Codecademy takes the crown. Not only is it affordable and offers Python-specific courses, not just general topics like Udemy, but it also has a network of instructors, coaches, and graduates that are well-versed and specific to IT, which is a plus compared to Udemy, whose instructors may not necessarily be experts in the topic.
You also get to learn real-world scenarios and applications for Python programming language, practical yet fun lessons, and exercises, rewards, and certifications for each course you take.
