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- Coursera Plus is a $399 annual subscription that grants members unlimited access to over 90% of the e-learning platform’s online courses (over 3,000 classes) for a year.
- Members can also earn unlimed professional certificates to add to their resumes or LinkedIn profiles.
- Below is everything you need to know Coursera Plus, including how payments and refunds work.
Coursera, a popular e-learning platform with thousands of varied online courses, offers an annual subscription called Coursera Plus.
Members pay an upfront annual fee of $399 to get unlimited access to 90% of Coursera classes. For anyone looking to learn a new skill, take multiple classes per year, or earn a certificate they can add to their LinkedIn profile, it could be a good investment (and a cheaper alternative to grad school, depending on your interests).
Below is everything you need to know about how to sign up, which classes are included, and how to get a refund if it’s not for you.
What is Coursera Plus, and what’s included with the subscription?
Coursera Plus is Coursera’s unlimited annual subscription. It’s $399 for the year and gives members unlimited access to over 90% of the platform’s course catalog. You can access more than 3,000 classes taught by top instructors of prestigious universities (like Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, the University of Michigan, or UPenn) and companies (Google Cloud, Goldman Sachs, and VMware, to name a few). Specializations and professional certificates are also included for everything from data science and business to health and personal development.
Once you’re a member, a Coursera Plus badge appears on all the classes included in the subscription. You can browse a few of Coursera’s most popular courses here, or skim the list of classes included with membership.
Coursera Plus does not include degrees or MasterTrack certificates, and some professional certificates are excluded, such as those offered by Amazon Web Services and IBM.
How many certificates can you earn with Coursera Plus?
According to the company, you earn a certificate for every course, specialization, or professional certificate you complete. You can share your certificate on your LinkedIn profile, with your employer, and on your CV and resume.
Does Coursera Plus save you money?
It depends. Without a membership, you can audit Coursera courses either completely for free or only during their seven-day trial, but you won’t get access to all of a class’s features, such as graded homework and verified certificates of completion that you can add to your CV, résumé, or LinkedIn profile. To get full access, you need to pay either a one-time or monthly fee, depending on the course.
So if you plan on paying for full access to multiple courses, Coursera Plus may save you money depending on what they are and how much each individual course costs. But, if you only take one or two paid courses per year, you may be better off without it.
If you’re enrolling in a specialization, which is essentially a bundle of related courses designed to help you master a specific topic, Coursera Plus may save you money — especially if you take longer to complete your specialization than its estimated time frame (which is three months on average) or plan to enroll in multiple specializations and/or other classes in the same year.
Most Coursera specializations charge a monthly fee for access to all the courses within the specialization until you’ve completed every one or you’ve canceled the subscription. When you pay for a specialization and finish it, you get a certificate as well as course certificates for each course you completed within it.
Comparative price breakdown: Coursera Plus subscription vs. specialization subscriptions
A Coursera Plus subscription is $399 for the year, which breaks down to $33.25 a month. On average, a specialization ranges from $49-$79 a month and takes three months to complete, according to Coursera. The average cost is $147-$237 for a specialization without Coursera Plus; you’d pay $99.75 over the same three-month time frame with Plus.
But if you don’t plan on taking other courses and complete the specialization’s courses in three months, you may save money by doing it à la carte. If you want to take your time completing a course, enroll in multiple courses throughout the year, or choose a specialization subscription with a longer time frame (some can take up to a year to complete), you’re probably a good candidate for Coursera Plus.
What happens to any specialization subscriptions you’re already enrolled in when you subscribe to Coursera Plus?
You need to cancel those subscriptions so you aren’t charged twice; they won’t be automatically canceled. Find step-by-step instructions for canceling an existing subscription here.
According to the company, none of your progress will be impacted by canceling previous subscriptions.
Can you get a refund?
You can receive a full refund within 14 days of your payment, but if you earned a certificate using Plus during those 14 days, it would be revoked.
To get a refund, visit your My Purchases page within 14 days of purchase and submit a refund request. The company says your refund will be processed immediately and without questions.
Can you ask your employer to reimburse your Coursera Plus fee?
If your employer offers educational reimbursements that include online-learning programs, you should be able to. You’ll receive an email receipt that you can submit to your employer for reimbursement. But you should check with your employer before purchasing to be sure.