How to Get Free Courses in Coursera without Credit Card

Question: How do I audit a course in coursera without using credit card? How do I audit a specialization course in coursera?

Most of the courses in Coursera are free to view with the exception of not getting a certificate and not having access to graded assignments. This is called auditing a course.

Recently I was trying to audit the Python for Everybody specialization course in Coursera, but was not able to find the audit link - the only option that I was provided was free trial, where I need to provide credit card details. I had to dig deeper to find how to audit the course, which is what I am going to share here.

How do I audit a course in Coursera?

1. Go to the course that you are interested in, like Python Data Structures. 
2. Click on Enroll for Free.

3. Choose the Audit the Course option, present below the "Start Free Trial" option, as shown below.

If this option is not visible for your course, read the next section to see if and how you can view the course for free.

Why can't I see the audit option in my course?

There could be a couple of reasons:

1. Specialization Course (you can still watch it for free)
   
2. Paid Course
   

Specialization Course

It is a specialization course like Python for Everybody Specialization. A specialization is a collection of courses. You won't get the audit option in the specialization page but you will usually get the audit option for each of the individual courses under specialization. 

 

If you scroll down the page, you can view the list of individual courses under the specialization like below, which you can individually audit.

Paid Course

Its a paid only course. There are few courses in coursea which are purely paid and doesn't have an audit option like Networking in Google Cloud. In courses like this, you won't find the "Audit the course" option like above. In this case, there is no option to view the course for free.

Can I pay later and get certificate for a course that I have already audited?

Yes! As per coursera's FAQ, you can pay later and get a certificate for a course that you have already audited but might need to complete the graded assignments.

Have you used Coursera? What is your favourite course? Let us know in the comments!