Free Google Analytics Certification and Courses: the 6 Best in 2026

This is the answer to the search itself. Google's Analytics Academy, hosted on Skillshop, is a collection of free e-learning courses written by Google's own Analytics experts. Google currently lists 4 training courses and a certification. The courses walk you through setting up a property for a website or an app, collecting the data your business needs, reading the reports, and connecting Google Analytics to other Google products.

The certification is a separate assessment on Skillshop. In its current version, the exam has 50 multiple-choice questions in 75 minutes, you need a score of 80% (40 correct answers) to pass, and you can retake it after one day if you fail. The updated 2026 version is in English, and Skillshop also offers the certification in other languages, Spanish and French among them. The exam covers property setup (the event-based data model and privacy controls), reports and explorations, key events and audiences, attribution and data sampling, and connecting Google Analytics with Google Ads. Taking the exam is free, and the digital badge is part of your certification benefits, at no cost.

The catch is the calendar. Skillshop certifications are valid for one year, so you renew every year, and you can only retake the exam during the recertification window that opens 30 days before expiry. Plan it like a yearly check-up, not a one-off diploma.

Analytics Mania is a GA4 and Google Tag Manager training business, and its free mini-course is the cleanest short introduction we compared. Its promise is simple: get started with Google Analytics 4 in less than 90 minutes. The course covers data streams and their settings, installing GA4 on your site, standard reports, explorations, and basic event tracking.

It includes 90 minutes of video material, a 30-question quiz and a course-completion certificate. You get the certificate after completing all lessons and passing the final quiz. That's a completion certificate from Analytics Mania, not a Google credential, so treat it as proof of practice next to the official badge.

If you outgrow it, the paid Google Analytics 4 Course goes from beginner to advanced in 14 hours, at $499 for one user.

Loves Data is a training company co-founded by Benjamin Mangold, who has worked with Google Analytics for over 15 years. Analytics Essentials is its free GA4 course, built to get you up to speed on the core features and key reports: where traffic comes from, what the engagement reports tell you, how a referral differs from a campaign, and how conversions are tracked.

You get 12+ video lessons and quizzes to test what you learned, on any device. The free course is also the doorway to the paid Google Analytics Complete Course: 96 video lessons and 9+ hours, for $225 as a one-time payment with lifetime access, which adds a reviewed final assignment and a certificate of completion.

The free part doesn't promise a certificate, so its value is understanding, not proof.

SkillUp is Simplilearn's library of free courses. Its GA4 course is 2 hours of self-paced video lessons: what Google Analytics is, GA4 compared with Universal Analytics, a 26-minute demo, and a case study. The skills listed are event tracking, user engagement analysis, funnel analysis, e-commerce tracking and custom reporting.

A completion certificate is included, and Simplilearn presents the course as preparation for your GA4 certification, free of charge. Access lasts 90 days, which works as a gentle deadline. A part of the course still compares GA4 with the old Universal Analytics, which matters less every year.

MeasureSchool, a tracking and analytics school, offers a free 5-video course. It explores how to set up Google Analytics 4 for the first time and create events using Google Tag Manager, then the standard reports and free-form explorations.

That GTM angle is the reason it's in this ranking: most free GA4 courses stop at reading reports, while real tracking in a company runs through a tag manager. It's short and practical, free after sign-up, and it leads to MeasureSchool's paid membership.

Great Learning's free GA4 course is a beginner course of 1.5 learning hours, taught by Madhur Singh, with quizzes. It covers tracking user behavior, real-time reports and building audiences for remarketing.

Read the FAQ before you start: you can access the course content for free, but the completion certificate requires a non-refundable fee. If the certificate is what you're after, Google's own exam above costs nothing and carries more weight.