Is Udemy subscription worth it? Personal Plan vs buying courses

Job-ad data: October 2026 · Editor: · Updated

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Our answer to "Is Udemy subscription worth it?" is yes for the months you study several of the courses it includes, and no for a single course you want to keep. Udemy says a course you buy gives you lifetime access, but subscription courses, and the certificates earned on them, stay open only while you pay.

Udemy is an online marketplace where instructors sell single courses. Its Personal Plan is a monthly or annual individual subscription to a set of those courses. Lifetime access, in Udemy's terms, lasts as long as you have your Udemy account and Udemy still holds a license to the course (Udemy course pricing FAQ, archived February 10, 2026).

A Udemy certificate of completion shows that you finished every item in a paid course. It is not a certification, which is a credential you earn by passing a supervised exam set by the company or professional body behind it. Our guide to certificate vs certification explains the difference.

No chart here yet: our job-ad export (October 2026) and fact checks have no figures for Udemy that we could chart. Charts appear once checked data arrives.

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On this page
  1. What does a Udemy subscription get you?
  2. Is it worth buying courses on Udemy instead of subscribing?
  3. What are Udemy's refund and cancellation rules?
  4. Is a Udemy certificate of completion worth it?
  5. Can Udemy courses get you a job?
  6. What is Udemy Business?
  7. Are Udemy courses and certificates worth it? What Reddit posters say
  8. Is Udemy part of Coursera now?
  9. Is Udemy worth the money for you?
  10. What we did not check
  11. Sources

What does a Udemy subscription get you?

The Personal Plan gives you unlimited access to its courses for as long as you pay. Udemy describes it as "a monthly or annual subscription with access to thousands of courses in hundreds of course topics," covering IT, web development, soft skills, business, marketing and design.

Three limits come with it:

  • Udemy says "not all Udemy courses are included in a Personal Plan subscription."
  • The annual option "is not available to all learners."
  • Free trials are promotions for new subscribers only. You can cancel during the trial without a charge; otherwise it "will automatically convert to the applicable subscription fee."

Subscribing does not change your access to courses you bought earlier. Your Subscriptions page shows the length of any free trial.

Sources: Udemy Personal Plan FAQ, pricing page and subscription sign-up article (dates under Sources).

Is it worth buying courses on Udemy instead of subscribing?

Buying is worth it for one or two courses you will come back to; the subscription pays off for a short run of study across several included courses. The difference is what you keep when the payments stop.

Term One course bought on its own Personal Plan subscription
Price Varies: the same course can carry different promotions Listed on Udemy's pricing page
What you get That course only Included courses (not all courses)
Access Kept, on the terms above Until the last paid billing day
Certificate of completion Yes, for paid, approved courses Yes
Refund For eligible courses (rules) None on Udemy.com, unless the law requires one

Source: Udemy help center pages on course pricing, the Personal Plan, refunds and certificates (archive dates under Sources).

Since prices move, decide on these terms:

  • A course you will use as a reference next year: buy it.
  • A certificate you want to keep showing: earn it on a bought course.
  • Several included courses studied in the same months: add up the current prices of those courses, compare the total with the plan's price on Udemy's pricing page, and pay for whichever is lower.

What are Udemy's refund and cancellation rules?

Eligible courses you buy can be refunded within 30 days; the Personal Plan cannot. Udemy's refund policy says its subscription plans bought on Udemy.com "do not offer a 30-day satisfaction guarantee, and no refunds or partial refunds are available unless otherwise required by applicable law."

  • Udemy can refuse a course refund when "A notable amount of the course has been consumed or downloaded by a student before the refund was requested."
  • A subscription bought in the iPhone or Android app is refunded under Apple's or Google Play's rules; Udemy says it cannot process those requests.
  • If you cancel the Personal Plan, you keep access until the final date of your billing period, shown on your Subscriptions page.
  • After that, "the course progress and certificate access for the courses will be lost."

Set a reminder for the day before a trial converts to a paid plan, and for each billing date after it.

Sources: Udemy refund policy and Personal Plan FAQ (dates under Sources).

Is a Udemy certificate of completion worth it?

It has value as a record that you finished a course, not as formal accreditation. Udemy says: "Udemy is not an accredited institution. Certificates demonstrate skills and accomplishments, but they cannot be used for formal accreditation." Accreditation here means formal approval by a recognized education body.

A Udemy course certificate comes only from paid, approved courses. To earn one, "each curriculum item must be marked as complete." Free courses and courses that contain only practice tests give no certificate (Udemy certificates FAQ, archived October 7, 2025).

Is a Udemy SAP certification worth it?

Not if you need an SAP certification: a Udemy certificate of completion, in any subject, including SAP software (business software from the company SAP), is not a certification from SAP. If a job ad asks for an SAP certification, look up the exam it names on SAP's own site before you pay for a course.

Can Udemy courses get you a job?

A Udemy course can teach a skill that a job asks for. Where a job ad names a certification, the course is preparation; the ad asks for the certification, earned by passing its exam.

Best Udemy courses for jobs: start from the exam

For job-focused study, choose the exam first and the course second. Udemy's topic pages name prep courses for these three exams (Udemy pages, archived September 30, 2026).

Certification (exam) Who awards it Experience the certifying body asks for
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon's cloud computing business "could have up to 6 months of exposure to AWS Cloud, but this is not required"
PMP (Project Management Professional) PMI (Project Management Institute) "Minimum 36 months/3 years" leading projects with a bachelor's degree, "Minimum 60 months/5 years" with a secondary (high school) diploma
CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional) ISC2, a nonprofit that certifies security professionals "a minimum of five years cumulative, full-time experience in two or more of the eight domains" (topic areas of the exam); a degree or an approved credential can cover one year

Source: AWS and PMI certification pages (read October 3, 2026); ISC2 experience requirements (read October 5, 2026).

Of the three, only the AWS certification asks for no work experience, so a beginner can go for it first. The PMP and CISSP certifications need years of it, though ISC2 lets you pass the CISSP exam first, as an Associate of ISC2 (a junior status), and earn the experience within six years. Our list of certifications worth getting covers more starting points.

Is Udemy worth it for programming?

Yes for learning to code: the Personal Plan lists web development among its topics. For a programming job, in our view, code you can show weighs more than a certificate of completion, so pick a course that ends with a project you can share.

What is Udemy Business?

Udemy Business is the version of Udemy sold to teams and organizations. On the Udemy Business plans page (archived September 1, 2026), the Team Plan lists at $360 per user a year (list price, before any promotion), with a 14-day free trial. It includes "28,000+ top courses," certification prep for "200+ exams" and practice tests. The Enterprise Plan has no listed price: "Contact sales for pricing." The page lists the Team Plan for 2 to 50 people and the Enterprise Plan for "More than 20 people."

Are Udemy courses and certificates worth it? What Reddit posters say

The two posts we read on r/Udemy, Reddit's Udemy forum, show two traps: paying for unused courses, and certificates that end with the plan. One poster with an annual subscription wrote that they "didn't add or use additional courses enough to warrant paying for the yearly rate." They then forgot to cancel and could not find how to request a refund for the renewal (r/Udemy). That matches Udemy's refund policy for subscriptions.

Another poster planned to subscribe "for a few months then unsubscribe" and asked whether the certificates would remain (r/Udemy). Under Udemy's Personal Plan rules, they would not.

Which Udemy courses are best? Reddit picks vs your own test

Reddit threads on the best Udemy courses are personal picks. The best course teaches what your target exam or job lists, so test it yourself, on a bought course or while you already pay for the Personal Plan.

Is Udemy part of Coursera now?

Yes, at company level. Coursera's blog says "As of May 11, 2026, Coursera and Udemy are now one company," and that "Coursera and Udemy will continue to operate as separate platforms for now" (Coursera blog, read October 8, 2026).

Our Coursera vs Udemy comparison sets the two side by side. See also our Coursera page, the Coursera Plus page on its all-access subscription and the learning platforms hub.

Is Udemy worth the money for you?

Udemy is worth the money when you pay only for the access you will use: a bought course for anything you want to keep, the Personal Plan for a short burst across several included courses. Your first step:

  • No target job yet: buy one course in a subject you are weighing and judge it early, within the refund rules.
  • A job ad you want names a certification: open our page for it, check its experience rule, then choose a course.
  • An employer with Udemy Business: ask for access before you pay.

What we did not check

  • The US price of the Personal Plan, monthly or annual, and the length of its US free trial. Udemy's pricing page has the current terms.
  • US prices of single courses, which change with promotions.
  • Which courses the Personal Plan includes, course by course, and the quality of any course.
  • Whether Udemy has topic pages for exams other than AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner, the PMP and the CISSP.
  • Udemy's terms for instructors and what they earn.
  • Job ads: we count no Udemy job-ad figure. Our job-ad data from Adzuna, a job-ad search site, has no Udemy row.

Sources

Questions people ask

What does a Udemy subscription get you?

Udemy's subscription for individuals, the Personal Plan, gives you unlimited access to thousands of courses in topics such as IT, web development, business and design for as long as you pay. The plan does not include every Udemy course, and the annual option is not offered to every learner. When the plan ends, you lose access to its courses; courses you bought separately stay in your account (Udemy Personal Plan FAQ). Udemy lists the plan on its pricing page.

Do employers take Udemy seriously?

Udemy says its certificates cannot be used for formal accreditation (see our certificate section). We have no count of US job ads that name a Udemy certificate. In our view, a Udemy course is worth what it teaches you, shown in a project or an interview. Where a job ad names a certification, such as the PMP (Project Management Professional) for project managers, the ad asks for that certification, which you earn by passing its exam, not for a course.

Is Udemy or Coursera better?

In our view, Udemy suits a single course you buy once and keep. Udemy also sells a Personal Plan subscription whose courses close when you stop paying. Since May 11, 2026, both belong to one company, and the Coursera blog says they "will continue to operate as separate platforms for now." Our Coursera vs Udemy comparison sets their prices and certificates side by side.

Does a Udemy certificate have any value?

A Udemy certificate of completion records that you finished every lecture and item of a paid, approved course; free courses and courses made only of practice tests give none. Its value is as a record of what you studied; Udemy says its certificates cannot be used for formal accreditation (quote). A certification is different: you earn it by passing a supervised exam set by the company or professional body behind it.

Can you get a refund on a Udemy subscription?

A Udemy subscription is not refundable under standard terms: plans bought on Udemy.com have no money-back guarantee, and Udemy gives no refunds or partial refunds unless the law requires one. A free trial can be canceled at any time without a charge. Plans bought in the iPhone or Android app fall under Apple's or Google Play's refund rules, not Udemy's. Single courses follow different rules, set out in our refund section.

Do you keep Udemy certificates after canceling the Personal Plan?

You lose Personal Plan course progress and certificate access when the plan expires or is canceled, Udemy says. After you cancel, you keep access until the last day of the billing period you paid for. Courses you bought separately are not affected (Udemy Personal Plan FAQ, archived September 11, 2025). If you want a Udemy certificate of completion you can keep, earn it on a course you bought.

Is Udemy worth it for instructors, and is there a Udemy course instructor salary?

This page does not rate Udemy for instructors or give a Udemy course instructor salary. We did not check Udemy's instructor terms. Read Udemy's current instructor terms before you publish a course.