Some of these are better than us. Here is which, and when.
You are going to find the free options whether or not we mention them, so we would rather be the ones who told you. Every row below leads with what that option does better than Teach me AI, in the terms its own makers would use.
Compared on 26 September 2026. Prices and course lengths are quoted as they stood that day.
At a glance
Four columns, chosen because they are the things that differ. Everything else — decent teaching, a certificate, video quality — is broadly comparable across this whole list.
| Option | Typical cost | AI depth | Places you first | Change history | AI regulation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI Skills Boost | Free | Short foundation courses | — | — | — |
| Vendor academies | Free | Deep on one vendor's tools | — | — | — |
| Google AI Essentials | Coursera subscription ($49 a month in the US) | Under 5 hours | — | — | — |
| Elements of AI | Free | Two courses | — | — | — |
| IBM SkillsBuild | Free | Broad tech catalogue | — | — | — |
| DeepLearning.AI | Videos free · Pro membership for labs and certificates | 100+ short courses | — | — | — |
| LinkedIn Learning | Subscription · free through some libraries and employers | Broad catalogue | — | — | — |
| Section AI | $62.50 a month, billed yearly (Premium) | Courses plus coaching | — | — | — |
| Mindstone | $399 per person | 4-week programme | — | — | — |
| Executive programmes | £2,450 to £7,750 · MIT Sloan $3,850 | 1–6 weeks | — | — | — |
| Teach me AI | £19/month or £149/year · founding £99/year for the first 100 | 33 modules (18 live, the rest rolling out), 32 tools | ● | ● | ● |
What each of them does better than us
AI Skills Boost (UK government)
FreeBetter than us at: Free to everyone in the UK, backed by the government, and checked against Skills England's AI foundation skills for work benchmark. Finish a course that meets the benchmark and you get a virtual badge you can put on a CV. If foundation skills and a badge are what you need, start here.
Where it stops: It is a collection of short courses developed by different companies, including Accenture, Google, IBM and Microsoft, rather than one curriculum, and it is designed around foundation skills.
Vendor academies (OpenAI Academy, Anthropic Academy)
FreeBetter than us at: Free, first-party and authoritative. OpenAI Academy offers 14 courses for people at work, developers, leaders and educators; Anthropic's courses are free and end with a certificate of completion. Nobody knows a product better than the company that makes it.
Where it stops: Each one teaches its own maker's products. Comparing tools fairly, or choosing between them, is not what they are for.
Google AI Essentials (on Coursera)
Coursera subscription ($49 a month in the US)Better than us at: A certificate from Google in under five hours, self-paced, with a seven-day free trial. Five modules take you from an introduction to AI through prompting to using AI responsibly: a sound, quick first course.
Where it stops: Under five hours is an introduction rather than a curriculum. Going further means choosing more courses yourself.
Elements of AI
FreeBetter than us at: Free, from MinnaLearn and the University of Helsinki, with more than two million people signed up. Two clear parts, Introduction to AI and then Building AI, make it one of the best conceptual introductions available.
Where it stops: It teaches the concepts rather than today's tools, so it won't tell you which assistant to use at work or what is safe to paste into it.
IBM SkillsBuild
FreeBetter than us at: Completely free, with industry-recognised digital credentials from IBM, and AI learning that covers generative AI and machine learning alongside other technology skills.
Where it stops: A broad technology catalogue in which AI is one area among several, and you plan your own route through it.
DeepLearning.AI
Videos free · Pro membership for labs and certificatesBetter than us at: Technical depth from the organisation founded by Andrew Ng: more than a hundred short courses at beginner and intermediate level, and every course video free to watch. For developers and machine-learning practitioners it is the benchmark.
Where it stops: Its centre of gravity is technical. If you don't write code, much of the catalogue isn't aimed at you, and UK regulation isn't its subject.
LinkedIn Learning
Subscription · free through some libraries and employersBetter than us at: A very large catalogue with plenty of AI courses, certificates that post straight to the profile recruiters read, and for many people it costs nothing through a library service or an employer.
Where it stops: It is a general catalogue. Each course is as current as the day it was recorded, and a certificate records completion rather than assessed skill.
Section AI
$62.50 a month, billed yearly (Premium)Better than us at: Built for professionals: unlimited AI coaching, live and on-demand courses, certificate programmes and saved use cases, with a free Basic tier to try it and team plans for whole organisations.
Where it stops: Priced in US dollars and billed annually, and it isn't built around UK rules such as UK GDPR.
Mindstone AI Competency
$399 per personBetter than us at: A four-week, no-code, hands-on programme with a sandbox for practising on real AI tools and a certificate in AI competency at the end. For a focused, practical push, it is a strong choice.
Where it stops: A fixed four-week programme about using AI productively: prompting, workflows and generative AI tools. Leading, governing and regulating AI sit outside its scope.
University executive programmes (Oxford Saïd, MIT Sloan, LSE)
£2,450 to £7,750 · MIT Sloan $3,850Better than us at: The institutional name and the faculty. Oxford's six-week online AI programme costs £2,450 and ends with a University of Oxford certificate of completion from Saïd Business School. MIT Sloan's six-week online course is $3,850 at six to eight hours a week. LSE's AI in Management is one week, full time on campus, for £7,750. On a senior CV that weight is real.
Where it stops: Expensive, on fixed dates, and a picture of the field as it stood when you took it. Oxford covers the legal side within an ethics module rather than as a dated UK layer.
Teach me AI
£19/month or £149/year · founding £99/year for the first 100What we do that they don’t: A free placement check that builds your personal path and marks what you can skip. Five levels, from your first question to the boardroom. Every price, plan limit and regulatory date checked and dated, with the Hallmark showing when. The Tool Atlas of 32 tools, and lessons that put the tools you use first. The Lab, for practice with feedback from an AI coach. Ask, which answers from the site's own checked content. And UK and EU AI regulation, cited to the primary sources.
The catch: It's a subscription, and you still have to do the learning. It teaches you to use and lead AI; it won't set tools up for you, and it isn't legal advice.
Asked properly, answered properly
There are free AI courses. Why would I pay?
For a first look, you may not need to. AI Skills Boost is free to everyone in the UK and comes with a badge, and the big AI companies teach their own tools for nothing. We would rather say so than pretend otherwise. What free courses rarely give you is one route from your first question to leading AI at work, placed by a check of what you already know, with every price, limit and date checked and dated so you know it still holds. Try it free for 7 days, and if you pay and it isn't what you wanted, our 30-day guarantee refunds you in full.
Is it vendor-neutral?
Yes, by design. Every tool in the Tool Atlas is described against the same five points: who makes it, what the free plan gives you, what it's best at, what to watch out for and who it suits. Each gets a fair strength and a fair limitation, including the best-known names. The Lab's coach runs on Claude, which is exactly why Claude gets no special treatment in the lessons. Where a lesson shows how to do something, it gives parallel steps for each of the main tools and puts the ones you use first.
AI changes every month. How do I know this is up to date?
Everything that can go out of date (prices, plan limits, data-training settings, product names, regulatory deadlines) is held as a separate fact, with its source and the date it was last checked. The Hallmark shows that date, and when a fact changes, every lesson that cites it changes with it. It matters: the EU's Digital Omnibus moved the AI Act's high-risk deadline for Annex III systems from 2 August 2026 to 2 December 2027, and any course recorded before then still teaches the old date.
I'm not technical. Is this for me?
Yes. Foundations assumes nothing: no maths, no code, and every term explained the first time it appears. The free placement check starts you where you are rather than at the beginning of everything. The technical material sits in the Builder level, and even that is written to be read by people who don't code for a living.
Is this legal advice?
No, it's education. The regulation lessons say what each rule is, give the date it applies from and link to the primary source, so you can read the law or the regulator's own words for yourself. For a decision with real consequences, such as whether a system is high-risk under the EU AI Act or needs a data protection impact assessment, take advice from your data protection officer or a qualified lawyer.
Will it help me choose which AI tools to use?
That's what the Tool Atlas is for: 32 tools, from general assistants to coding agents, each described the same way, with free plans and prices checked and dated. Tell us which tools you use and the lessons put those first. Module 11 also gives you five questions for judging any new tool yourself, because there will always be a new one.
The placement check is free, and so is a whole module
Five minutes tells you where you actually stand across five skill areas. If the answer is that a free course covers it, you will have found that out for nothing — which is a better outcome than either of us guessing.
