Free SQL Courses: the 7 Best in 2026, and Which Certificates Cost Nothing

Kaggle's Intro to SQL is the shortest route from zero to useful queries. Kaggle estimates 3 hours to earn the certificate, and the cost line reads “no cost, like all Kaggle Learn Courses”. Six lessons, each a short tutorial followed by a coding exercise: getting started with SQL and BigQuery, SELECT, FROM and WHERE, GROUP BY, HAVING and COUNT, ORDER BY, AS and WITH, then joining data. Rachael Tatman and Alexis Cook teach it.

The detail that matters for a professional: you work in Google BigQuery, on large public datasets, inside Kaggle notebooks. That is closer to the data warehouse your company may use than a toy database of ten rows. The flip side: the exercises run from Python notebooks, so the first lesson can feel odd if you have never seen Python. When you finish, the Advanced SQL course (about 4 hours, also free with a certificate) covers JOINs and UNIONs, analytic functions, nested data and writing efficient queries, which is where window functions come in.

freeCodeCamp's Relational Databases Certification is the most demanding free option here. To earn it, you complete five required projects, then pass the certification exam. The projects are real builds: a celestial bodies database, a World Cup database, a salon appointment scheduler, a periodic table database and a number guessing game.

It is wider than SQL. Alongside SQL and PostgreSQL, the course teaches Bash, Bash scripting and Git, and starts with code editors. That makes it excellent for anyone who will work near engineering (data engineers, ops, technical marketers) and heavy for an analyst who only needs SELECT queries for reporting. freeCodeCamp is a donor-supported charity whose mission is to help people learn to code for free, so there is no upsell at the end.

IBM's course on Cognitive Class (course code DB0101EN) is built for people with no prerequisites. IBM estimates 5 hours. Five modules: the relational model and data models, constraints, DDL and DML (CREATE TABLE, INSERT, SELECT, UPDATE, DELETE), advanced SQL (string patterns, ranges, sorting and grouping) and joins across multiple tables.

Each module ends with assignments, hands-on exercises and review questions, and there is a final exam; completing the course earns you a certificate. It is more theoretical than Kaggle: you will understand why tables are split and linked, which is the part self-taught analysts often skip. It also sits in IBM's Data Analyst career preparation learning path if you want to keep going.

If your company's data sits in SQL Server or Azure SQL, learn the dialect you will use. Microsoft's free learning path takes 5 hr 45 across six modules: introduction to Transact-SQL, sorting and filtering, JOINs, subqueries, built-in functions and GROUP BY, then inserting, updating and deleting data. The only prerequisite is familiarity with tables of data, for example in a spreadsheet.

Each module mixes short units, an exercise and a module assessment. Completing it gives you XP and an achievement on your Microsoft Learn profile, not a certification. It is also the natural first step if your team later aims at a paid Microsoft exam, and it pairs well with Power BI training, where SQL Server is a frequent source.

Codecademy's Learn SQL is the most guided experience on this page. The syllabus holds 4 lessons, 5 projects and 4 quizzes: manipulation, queries, aggregate functions and multiple tables. Codecademy puts the average time at 5 hours, with no prerequisites, and adds AI assistance for coding help.

The catch is what the free Basic plan leaves out: auto-graded quizzes, portfolio projects and the certificate of completion are not available under Basic. They come with Plus, at $14.99 a month billed annually or $29.99 billed monthly, or with Pro. If you only want the lessons, Basic is enough. If you want the certificate on LinkedIn, Kaggle, freeCodeCamp or IBM give you one for free.

Socratica's SQL for Beginners is a well-produced video start. It is short: 14 lessons and 2 hours of video, from relational databases and PostgreSQL to SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE queries, joins, views and indexes. Enrollment is free, with lifetime access and free updates.

Views and indexes are a nice surprise in a beginner course: they explain why one query is fast and another slow. What you won't get is graded practice: you watch, then you type along on your own PostgreSQL. No certificate is mentioned on the course page.

SQLBolt is a series of interactive lessons and exercises to learn SQL right in your browser. The lessons run from SELECT queries and constraints to JOINs, OUTER JOINs, NULLs, expressions, aggregates and the order of execution of a query, then inserting, updating and deleting rows and creating, altering and dropping tables. Two intermediate topics follow: subqueries, and unions, intersections and exceptions.

Each lesson is a short explanation and a small table you query until the answer is right. It is the fastest way to build reflexes, and many analysts keep it for review. It gives no certificate, and it stops before window functions.