5 Best R Courses in 2024 [Learn R Programming for Beginners]

Today we’re looking at the best R courses for this year.

🧠 Did you know? According to GeeksforGeeks, after SQL, R is the most-used data science language.

What is R?

R is a programming language that is used for statistical computing. It’s used to clean, analyze and graph your data.

Statisticians and data miners use R programming for both data analysis and developing statistical software.

R is ranked 13th on the TIOBE index for February 2022.

What are some companies that use R programming?

Some companies that use R programming include:

✅ Airbnb

✅ Amazon

✅ Facebook

✅ Firefox

✅ Uber

And beyond.

This post contains affiliate links. I may receive compensation if you buy something. Read my disclosure for more details.

TLDR: 5 Best R Courses This Year

💥 DataCamp: Introduction to the Tidyverse
💥 DataCamp: Introduction to R
💥 Educative.io: Learn R from Scratch
💥 Codecademy Pro: Learn R
💥 Coursera: Data Science – Foundations using R (Specialization)

🔥 Bonus Project: Getting Started with R

Best R Courses

All of our picks for Best R Courses are for beginners. That’s because you need a solid foundation if you want to master R programming.

So we picked courses that best explain the fundamentals of R programming.

1. DataCamp: Introduction to the Tidyverse

⚠️ Level: Beginner
⏲️ Estimated Completion Time: 4 Hours
🎖️Certificate of Completion: Yes
📖 Lessons: 50

Tidyverse is a powerful set of tools frequently used in R programming.

➡️ In our opinion, Introduction to the Tidyverse is one of the best R courses overall.

With DataCamp’s gamified environment, you’ll learn about data manipulation and data visualization using dplyr and ggplot2.

In addition, you’ll learn how to manipulate data by:

• filtering
• sorting
• summarizing

And more.

Introduction to the Tidyverse does not require any previous R knowledge. This course is a wonderful introduction to data analysis.

Course Layout

You’ll learn using a combination of interactive and video lessons.

There are 4 chapters:

✅ Data Wrangling

✅ Data Visualization

✅ Grouping and Summarizing

✅ Types of Visualizations

In addition, you’ll work on numerous quizzes and interactive exercises.

💰 Cost

There is a free tier on DataCamp, but the features are limited.

Or you can get a subscription for $25 per month or $300 per year:

	Free	Monthly Subscription	Yearly Subscription
Courses	First chapter only	340+	340+
Projects	7	85+	85+
Challenges	✅	✅	✅
Skill Tracks	❌	✅	✅
Career Tracks	❌	✅	✅
Support & More	❌	✅	✅

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2. DataCamp: Introduction to R

⚠️ Level: Beginner
⏲️ Estimated Completion Time: 4 Hours
🎖️Certificate of Completion: Yes
📖 Lessons: 62

Similar to the previous course, Introduction to R uses a gamified environment to teach R programming.

➡️ We think Introduction to R is one of the best R courses for beginners.

Here you’ll master the basics of R such as:

• factors
• lists
• data frames

And more.

Again, you don’t need any previous R experience.

Course Layout

Introduction to R has 6 chapters. With interactive learning, it covers:

✅ Intro to the Basics

✅ Vectors

✅ Matrices

✅ Factors

✅ Data Frames

✅ Lists

And more.

💰 Cost

There’s a free tier on DataCamp, but features are very limited.

Or you can subscribe for $25 per month or $300 per year:

	Free	Monthly Subscription	Yearly Subscription
Courses	First chapter only	340+	340+
Projects	7	7	85+
Challenges	✅	✅	✅
Skill Tracks	❌	✅	✅
Career Tracks	❌	✅	✅
Support & More	❌	✅	✅

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3. Educative: Learn R from Scratch

⚠️ Level: Beginner
⏲️ Estimated Completion Time: 10 hours
🎖️Certificate of Completion: Yes
📖 Lessons: 83

Quizzes	Challenges	Playgrounds	Code Snippets
8	20	163	93

Learn R from Scratch is an interactive course on Educative.io. There are no videos, but plenty of code snippets and playgrounds.

➡️ Because it’s free, we believe Learn R from Scratch is one of the best R courses for developers unsure if they want to learn R programming.

You don’t need any prior experience with R.

So you’ll start with the basics and work up to advanced concepts.

Course Layout

With 11 modules, you’ll learn about:

✅ Variables

✅ Exploring R Objects

✅ R Operators and Notation

✅ Conditional Statements

✅ Loops & Functions

✅ Exception Handling

And much more.

From there you’ll work on 3 challenges covering concepts such as mean and median, vectors and input/output.

💰 Cost

This course is free for a limited time.

But if you purchase a subscription to Educative.io, you’ll have full access to over 320+ courses. And counting.

You can get a monthly subscription for $59 per month.

Or you can get a yearly subscription for $199.

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4. Codecademy Pro: Learn R

⚠️ Level: Beginner
⏲️ Estimated Completion Time: 20 Hours
🎖️Certificate of Completion: Yes
📖 Lessons: 16

In Learn R, you’ll learn about fundamental programming concepts in R.

➡️ Learn R could very well be one of the best R courses for programmers who like to work on projects.

With hands-on exercises, you’ll learn how to:

• organize, modify and clean data frames
• create data visualizations
• use statistics and hypothesis testing

And more.

You don’t need previous experience with R programming.

Course Layout

Learn R has 10 chapters which cover:

✅ Data Frames

✅ Data Cleaning

✅ Variance and Standard Deviation

✅ Joining Tables

✅ Hypothesis Testing

And more.

Plus you’ll work on mini projects and take multiple choice quizzes.

💰 Cost

You can get Codecademy’s Learn R for free.

And if you like it, consider signing up for a monthly or yearly subscription to Codcademy Pro.

There are more R programming courses ranging from beginner to advanced.

	Free	Monthly $39.99/mo	Yearly $19.99/mo
Courses	Basic	All	All
Projects	Limited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Support	❌	✅	✅
Members-only Content	❌	✅	✅

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5. Coursera: Data Science Foundations Using R (Specialization)

⚠️ Level: Beginner
⏲️ Estimated Completion Time: 5 months
🎖️Certificate of Completion: Yes
📖 Lessons: 5 courses

Data Science: Foundations Using R is a little different than our other offerings.

It’s a Specialization which means that it contains multiple courses. And it typically takes about 5 months to complete.

➡️ Data Science: Foundations Using R Specialization is possibly one of the best R courses for developers who want a deep understanding of R.

You don’t need any previous experience with R programming.

Specialization Layout

With 5 courses, this specialization covers:

✅ The Data Scientist’s Toolbox – general overview of data tools that data analysts and data scientists work with

✅ R Programming – learn how to program in R and use R for data analysis

✅ Getting and Cleaning Data – ways data can be obtained and cleaned

✅ Exploratory Data Analysis – exploratory techniques to summarize data

✅ Reproducible Research – tools to report modern data analyses in a reproducible manner

And much, much more.

💰 Cost

You can sign up for Coursera’s Data Science: Foundations Using R Specialization for $49 per month.

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Bonus Project: Getting Started with R

⚠️ Level: Beginner
⏲️ Estimated Completion Time: 2 Hours
🎖️Certificate of Completion: N/A
📖 Lessons: 9

Not ready for a full commitment but want to explore the R programming language?

For $9.99, you can take Coursera’s beginner project Getting Started with R.

➡️ Getting Started with R is arguably one of the best R courses for developers on a budget.

Using a split-screen video walkthrough of each step, you’ll learn:

✅ the basics of R

✅ how to use RStudio

✅ about data types and data structures

✅ how to install packages and import data

And beyond.

When you’re finished building your project, you can download it for personal use.

💰 Cost

You can snag this guided project Getting Started with R on Coursera for $9.99.

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Conclusion: 5 Best R Courses

Today we showed you our top 5 best R courses:

✅ DataCamp: Introduction to the Tidyverse
✅ DataCamp: Introduction to R
✅ Educative.io: Learn R from Scratch
✅ Codecademy Pro: Learn R
✅ Coursera: Data Science – Foundations using R (Specialization)

Plus we showed you a beginner bonus project in R:
✅ Bonus Project: Getting Started with R

So if you’re a beginner, we think any of these R courses will be a good start.

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Readers of Best R Courses are also reading:

• 18 Best R Programming Books
• 12 Best Data Science Books for Beginners
• Top 11 Python Books for Data Science
• 9 Best Data Science Courses for Beginners
• Data Science for Non-Programmers

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