Best Machine Learning Courses for Beginners in 2024 [Bonus: Intermediate and Advanced Machine Learning Courses]

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TLDR: Best Machine Learning Courses for Beginners (+ Intermediate and Advanced)

Sign up for courses using the links below. Check out the Table of Contents to learn more.

Beginner Courses:
💥 DataCamp: Machine Learning for Everyone
💥 Codecademy Pro: Learn the Basics of Machine Learning
💥 Treehouse: Machine Learning Basics
💥 Udacity: Introduction to Machine Learning
💥 Coursera: Machine Learning for All

Intermediate Courses:
💥 Educative.io: Machine Learning for Software Engineers
💥 Educative.io: Grokking the Machine Learning Interview
💥 Zero to Mastery: Complete Machine Learning and Data Science

Advanced Course:
💥 Udacity: Become a Machine Learning Engineer

Are you a machine learning newbie?

If you don’t know where to start, don’t worry.

It’s easier than you think.

Check out our hand-picked machine learning courses for beginners to get started today.

Machine Learning Courses for Beginners

DataCamp: Machine Learning for Everyone

⚠️ Level: Beginner
👨‍🏫 Lessons: 37
📂 Projects: On platform
📚 Learning style: Text and Video
⏲️ Estimated completion time: 4 hours
⌨️ Embedded code editor: Yes

Course Layout

Machine Learning for Everyone is a non-technical course.

So there’s no coding required.

Exercise in Machine Learning for Everyone, one of the best machine learning courses for beginners on DataCamp.

Using hands-on exercises and videos, it explains where machine learning is used and how it works.

Three chapters cover:

🟣 What is Machine Learning – concepts, lingo, recognizing handwritten digits, supervised vs. unsupervised, building a model

🟣 Machine Learning Models – regressions with class, clusters, evaluating and improving performance, hyperparameter tuning

🟣 Deep Learning – computer vision, image data, natural language processing, classification, limits

And more.

Video explanation of evaluating performance in DataCamp’s course Machine Learning for Everyone.

This is one of the best machine learning courses for beginners with no or minimal coding experience.

✅ Projects

While there are no projects in this course, there are over 85 projects on the platform.

✅ Certificate of Completion

DataCamp offers a Statement of Accomplishment for every completed course, skill track and career track.

💰 Cost

You can get a yearly subscription to DataCamp for $33.25 per month.

This gives you access to over 340 courses, 85 projects, skill and career tracks, and much more.

Sign up for Machine Learning for Everyone on DataCamp
👉 here. 👈

Note: DataCamp is our favorite platform for machine learning and data science. Check out our full review of DataCamp
here.


Codecademy Pro: Learn the Basics of Machine Learning

⚠️ Level: Beginner
👨‍🏫 Lessons: 13
📂 Projects: 8
📚 Learning style: Text and Video
⏲️ Estimated completion time: 20 hours
⌨️ Embedded code editor: Yes

Learn the Basics of Machine Learning is for students who already have a basic understanding of Python.

Course Layout

With lessons, projects, quizzes and articles, you’ll learn foundational machine learning algorithms.

Lesson and interactive exercise in the course Learn the Basics of Machine Learning on Codecademy Pro. The embedded code editor is ideal because you don’t need to open multiple windows. Instead you can see the lesson, instructions, code and results all on the same page.

It covers:

🟣 Linear regression – predict future points

🟣 Multiple linear regression – use 2 or more variables to predict value of dependent variable

🟣 Classification vs. regression – supervised learning algorithms to predict different types of outcomes

🟣 Decision trees – random forests, predicting

🟣 Clustering: K-means – find structure in unlabeled data with unsupervised learning

🟣 Perceptron – divide linearly-separable data

And much more.

Perceptron lesson in the course Learn the Basics of Machine Learning on Codecademy Pro. This is one of the best machine learning courses for beginners with a background in Python.

✅ Projects

There are 8 beginner projects in this course.

✅ Certificate of Completion

Codecademy Pro offers a Certificate of Completion for every course, skill path and career path.

💰 Cost

A yearly subscription to Codecademy Pro costs $20 per month.

This gives you complete platform access to hundreds of courses, skill paths and career paths. And more.

Sign up for Learn the Basics of Machine Learning on Codecademy Pro
👉 here. 👈


Zero to Mastery: Complete Machine Learning and Data Science

⚠️ Level: Advanced Beginner
👨‍🏫 Lessons: 369
📂 Projects: 2
📚 Learning style: Video
⏲️ Estimated completion time: 43 Hours
⌨️ Embedded code editor: No

Andrei Neagoie headshot creator of The Complete Web Developer in 2020 Zero to Mastery
Andrei Neagoie, founder of Zero to Mastery

Complete Machine Learning and Data Science is an absolutely massive course with beginner, intermediate and advanced concepts.

It’s designed to teach you:

  • data science
  • data analysis
  • machine learning
  • Python with TensorFlow and pandas

And beyond.

Course Layout

With about a dozen modules, you’ll learn:

🟣 Machine Learning 101 – types of machine learning, evaluation, modelling

🟣 Data Science – environment setup, Conda, Jupyter Notebook

🟣 Pandas: Data Analysis – data frames and CSVs, manipulating data

🟣 NumPy – types and attributes, arrays and matrices, comparison operators

Anatomy of a Numpy array video explanation in Zero to Mastery’s course Complete Machine Learning and Data Science.

🟣 Matplotlib: Plotting and Data Visualization – scatter and bar plots, plotting from pandas DataFrames

🟣 Scikit-learn: Creating Machine Learning Models – convert data to numbers, handling missing values, evaluating a classification model

🟣 Data Engineering – database types, OLTP, Apache Spark, Apache Flink

🟣 Neural Networks – using a GPU, validation sets, preprocess images, turn transform predictions to text

And lots more.

Projects

Complete Machine Learning and Data Science has two portfolio-ready projects:

  1. Supervised Learning (Classification)
  2. Supervised Learning (Time Series Data)
Zero to Mastery Complete Machine Learning and Data Science project syllabus with diagram in video
Diagram of what to expect in the Supervised Learning project in Complete Machine Learning and Data Science course on Zero to Mastery.

✅ Certificate of Completion

Zero to Mastery has a Certificate of Completion for each course.

💰 Cost

A monthly subscription to Zero to Mastery is $29 per month.

Or you can get a yearly subscription for $22 per month. And this gives you perks like downloadable courses and exclusive content.

Sign up for Complete Machine Learning and Data Science on Zero to Mastery
👉 here. 👈

Treehouse: Machine Learning Basics

⚠️ Level: Beginner
👨‍🏫 Lessons: 12
📂 Projects: No
📚 Learning style: Video
⏲️ Estimated completion time: 2 Hours
⌨️ Embedded code editor: No

Machine Learning Basics teaches fundamental machine learning concepts, supervised vs. unsupervised learning, frameworks and more.

Course Layout

With 3 modules, you’ll learn:

🟣 Introduction to Machine Learning – supervised and unsupervised learning, frameworks

🟣 Machine Learning Vocabulary – examples and features, labels and classifiers

🟣 Writing a Classifier – loading a dataset, making predictions

Video explanation of making predictions with a classifier in the course Machine Learning Basics on Treehouse.

After watching the videos, you’ll take brief quizzes to test your knowledge.

Projects

Machine Learning for Beginners does not have any projects.

Certificate of Completion

Treehouse offers a certificate of completion for higher-level tracks called a Techdegree.

Note: This is not an actual degree.

💰 Cost

You can sign up to Treehouse for $25 per month.

Or for $49 per month you’ll get extras like workshops and downloadable courses.

Sign up for Machine Learning Basics on Treehouse
👉 here. 👈

✨ Udacity: Introduction to Machine Learning

⚠️ Level: Beginner
👨‍🏫 Lessons: 10
📂 Projects: 0
📚 Learning style: Video
⏲️ Estimated completion time: 10 weeks
⌨️ Embedded code editor: No

Course Layout

With 10 video modules with multiple lessons, you’ll learn about:

🟣 Naive Bayes – splitting data, calculating posterior probability

🟣 Support Vector Machines – choose the right kernel for SVM classifier

Naive Bayes video explanation in the course Introduction to Machine Learning on Udacity.

🟣 Decision Trees – formulas for entropy and information gain

🟣 Clustering – supervised vs unsupervised learning, K-means in Python

🟣 Feature Scaling – preprocess data with feature scaling

And much more.

Projects

There are mini projects in this course.

Certificate of Completion

There is no certificate of completion for this course.

But Udacity does offer a Nanodegree program.

Note: Udacity is not an accredited institution, so the Nanodegree certification is merely symbolic.

💰 Cost

This course is free.

But if you like Udacity’s teaching style it’s worth upgrading to access over 300 courses for $20 per month.


Coursera: Machine Learning for All

⚠️ Level: Beginner
👨‍🏫 Lessons: 55
📂 Projects: 1
📚 Learning style: Video
⏲️ Estimated completion time: 4 weeks
⌨️ Embedded code editor: No

This course is designed to introduce you to machine learning basics without using any programming.

Course Layout

There are 4 modules in Machine Learning for All:

🟣 Week 1 – artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques

🟣 Week 2 – data representation, data features

🟣 Week 3 – testing, societal impact of machine learning

🟣 Week 4 – machine learning project

Video introduction to Machine Learning for All, one of the machine learning courses for beginners on Coursera.

Projects

In Machine Learning for All, you’ll build a project collecting a dataset, training a model and testing it.

Certificate of Completion

Coursera does offer a Certificate of Completion for this course.

💰 Cost

Machine Learning for All is $49.

And if you like the learning style, check out their other courses, specialized programs and accredited online degrees.

Sign up for Machine Learning for All on Coursera
👉 here. 👈



Intermediate Machine Learning Courses

Ready to level up?

Rev up your Naive Bayes because it’s time to jump into these next-level machine learning courses.

Educative.io: Machine Learning for Software Engineers

⚠️ Level: Intermediate
👨‍🏫 Lessons: 87
📂 Projects: 0
📚 Learning style: Text
⏲️ Estimated completion time: 15 hours
⌨️ Embedded code editor: Yes

Course Layout

Machine Learning for Software Engineers is designed to help you write useful code and create industry-level applications.

With 87 lessons containing quizzes, challenges and projects, you’ll learn:

🟣 Data Maniuplation with NumPy – arrays, math, aggregation, statistics

🟣 Data Analysis with pandas – grouping, filtering, metrics, DataFrame

🟣 Data Preprocessing with scikit-learn – standardizing data, robust scaling, data imputation

🟣 Data Modeling with scikit-learn – regressions like LASSO, and Bayesian, cross-validation, evaluating models

LASSO Regression lesson in the course Machine Learning for Software Engineers on Educative.io. There are code snippets, instructions and playgrounds.

🟣 Clustering with scikit-learn – cosine similarity, K-means clustering, DBSCAN

🟣 Gradient Boosting with XGBOOST – cross-validation, storing boosters, hyperparameter tuning

🟣 Deep Learning with TensorFlow – metrics, optimization, training

🟣 Deep Learning with Keras – model output, configuration and execution

And beyond.

Deep Learning with Tensorflow module in the course Machine Learning for Software Engineers on Educative.io. What you see is part of the reading for the Metrics section. What you can’t see is the swarm of code playgrounds.

❌ Projects

There are no projects in this course. But you’ll learn practical skills and actionable insights.

And these will help you complete projects on your own.

✅ Certificate of Completion

Educative.io does have a Certificate of Completion for all completed courses, skill paths and career paths.

💰 Cost

You can get this course for $99 per year.

Or for $21 per month you’ll get full access to over 185 courses on the Educative.io platform.

Check out the course Machine Learning for Software Engineers on Educative
👉 here. 👈


Educative.io: Grokking the Machine Learning Interview

⚠️ Level: Intermediate
👨‍🏫 Lessons: 49
📂 Projects: No
📚 Learning style: Text
⏲️ Estimated completion time: 15 hours
⌨️ Embedded code editor: Yes

Grokking the Machine Learning Interview helps you build problem solving skills. And it goes over some of the most common problems asked at FAANG interviews.

Course Layout

First you’ll learn about practical machine learning techniques and concepts.

Then you’ll work on 6 problems:

🟣 Search Ranking – Design a search relevance system for a search engine.

🟣 Feed Based System – Design a Twitter feed system that will show the most relevant tweets for a user based on their social graph.

🟣 Recommendation System – Display media (movie/show) recommendations for a Netflix user.

Recommendation System problem in Grokking the Machine Learning, a course on Educative.io.

🟣 Self-Driving Car: Image Segmentation – Design a self-driving car system focusing on its perception component

🟣 Entity-linking system – Design an entity-linking system.

🟣 Ad Prediction System – Build a system to show relevant ads to users.

And more.

Self-driving Car: Image Segmentation diagram in Grokking the Machine Learning Interview on Educative.io.

❌ Projects

Since this is an interview prep course, there are no projects.

But you will work on 6 problems commonly asked at FAANG interviews.

✅ Certificate of Completion

Educative.io has a Certificate of Completion for all completed courses, skill paths and career paths.

💰 Cost

You can get this course for $79 per year.

Or for $21 per month you’ll get full access to over 185 courses on the Educative.io platform.

Sign up for Grokking the Machine Learning Interview on Educative
👉 here. 👈

Want to know more about Grokking the Machine Learning Interview? Read our review.



Advanced Machine Learning Course

You’ve seen our picks for best machine learning courses for beginners and intermediate learners.

Now it’s time for the major leagues with this advanced learning machine course.

✨ Udacity: Become a Machine Learning Engineer

⚠️ Level: Advanced
👨‍🏫 Lessons: 18
📂 Projects: 4
📚 Learning style: Video
⏲️ Estimated completion time: 3 months
⌨️ Embedded code editor: No

Become a Machine Learning Engineer is part of Udacity’s Nanodegree program.

There’s a massive amount of information and projects. And it typically takes about 3 months to complete.

Course Layout

This brand new Nanodegree program includes 4 courses:

🟣 Software Engineering Fundamentals – write production-level code, practice object-oriented programming

🟣 Machine Learning in Production – deploy machine learning models to a production environment using Amazon SageMaker

Supervised Learning video explanation in the course Become a Machine Learning Engineer on Udacity.

🟣 Machine Learning Case Studies – explore data, deploy built-in and custom-made Amazon SageMaker models

🟣 Machine Learning Capstone – select a machine learning challenge and propose a possible solution

Projects

There are 4 projects in Become a Machine Learning Engineer:

  1. Build a Python Package
  2. Deploy a Sentiment Analysis Model
  3. Plagiarism Detector
  4. Capstone Proposal and Project

Certificate of Completion

This is part of Udacity’s Nanodegree program. So you’ll receive a Nanodegree certificate.

Note: A Nanodegree certificate is not an accredited document.

💰 Cost

You can get complete access to the Become a Machine Learning Engineer Nanodegree program on Udacity for $399 per month.


Best Machine Learning Courses for Beginners: Conclusion

Ok… That was a lot of information we threw at you.

So let’s do a quick recap of the best machine learning courses for beginners, intermediate and advanced programmers:

Beginner Courses:
DataCamp: Machine Learning for Everyone
Codecademy Pro: Learn the Basics of Machine Learning
Treehouse: Machine Learning Basics
Udacity: Introduction to Machine Learning
Coursera: Machine Learning for All

Intermediate Courses:
Educative.io: Machine Learning for Software Engineers
Educative.io: Grokking the Machine Learning Interview
Zero to Mastery: Complete Machine Learning and Data Science

Advanced Courses:
Udacity: Become a Machine Learning Engineer

Looking to learn Data Science?

Check out our review of DataCamp and Codecademy Pro here.


  1. What are the best machine learning courses for beginners?

    There are many platforms that offer machine learning courses for beginners. These include: 1.) DataCamp – Machine Learning for Everyone. 2.) Codecademy Pro – Learn the Basics of Machine Learning. 3.) Zero to Mastery – Complete Machine Learning and Data science. 4.) Treehouse – Machine Learning Basics 5.) Coursera – Introduction to Machine Learning. 6.) Coursera – Machine Learning for All.

  2. Is there a Coursera introduction to machine learning course?

    Coursera has an introductory course Machine Learning for All geared towards beginners. So it will teach you machine learning basics without using any programming. It’s a 4-week program that covers machine learning techniques, societal impact of machine learning, and more. Plus you’ll work on a machine learning project.

  3. Where can I learn machine learning from scratch?

    Online courses are a useful way to learn machine learning from scratch. There are different types of learning such as video courses and text-based courses. If you prefer learning with videos, the platforms Zero to Mastery, Udacity, Coursera or Treehouse might be right for you. But if you like interactive text-based learning, Educative has some quality machine learning courses. And if you like a blend, check out Codecademy Pro.