Udemy Vs Udacity Online Course Platform | Differences & Similarities

Udemy Vs Udacity

Before you join the Udemy vs Udacity argument about which is better, you must have decided to study online. Udemy and Udacity are online platforms where you can take courses with certification.

They are two out of several available Massive Open Online Course (MOOCs) platforms but the most popular. Therefore, choosing between Udemy or Udacity will depend on factors we’ll disclose to you in this post.

If you’re looking for a way to update your professional or personal development skills you may then have to start considering Udemy or Udacity.

Also, you may discover a particular skill set trending and lucrative and decide it’s the skillset for you, then Udemy or Udacity is one of the first places to head to.

In any of these platforms, you’ll get industry experts who will take you through your course or skill of choice for a fee, after which you may get a certificate.

However, choosing a particular online learning platform may depend on the type of skill you’re looking for or how long you wish to acquire the skill. Different people will have different reasons to want to study with any MooCs platform.

These reasons, however, brings us back to the question: Udacity or Udemy, which is better?

To desist from making generalized and maybe bias conclusions, let’s look at the overview of Udemy and Udacity. From there, we’ll check out their similarities and then their differences.

Udemy Overview

Udemy likes to refer to themselves as “an online learning marketplace.” Eren Bali, a successful software designer is the founder of Udemy.

Through dedication and quality work, Udemy, which was launched in 2010, now has a student base of over nine million students. These students enroll in more than sixty-five thousand (65,000) courses.

Furthermore, Udemy’s instructors, who teach a vast majority of the online courses, bag enough experience in their academic fields.

Meanwhile, to make learning online easier, Udemy offers downloadable on-demand videos of class lectures. Also, their curriculum of online courses includes business, software development, languages, and health & fitness.

Udacity Overview

Sebastian Thrun, David Stavens, and Mike Sokolsky founded Udacity to offer massive open online courses (MOOCs). The name, Udacity, comes from the organization’s desire to be “audacious for you, the student.”

Udacity hopes to provide university-level education with high quality and at low cost. Thus, to achieve this, the platform brings together commendable instructors and a large number of students from around the world.

Although Udacity started out by offering university-style courses, now, it focuses more on vocational courses for professionals. Now, it offers more than one hundred and fifty (150) courses.

Udacity also offers self-paced courses and timed programs they refer to as Nanodegrees. These degrees provide you feedback, coaches, a feel of belonging to a community, as well as a verified certificate.

From Udemy vs Udacity overview, you can deduce that they share some similarities. What are these similarities?

Similarities Between Udacity and Udemy

One of the most important Udemy vs Udacity similarities is that they both are platforms to take online courses or MooCs. With the rate at which people are embracing MooCs you may ask, would MooCs replace college?

MooCs may be the future, but integrating the course credits into the schooling system to counts towards a degree from a college is a challenge. This stands to slow MooCs adoption.

Another Udemy and Udacity similarity is that both platforms allow for downloadable on-demand video instruction. However, for both of them, you can’t get Live Classes.

Both Udemy and Udacity offer beginners, intermediate, and expert level courses, as well as provide quizzes and assessments.

Also, both Udacity and Udemy offer courses that are taught by accomplished instructors who have gained work and Industry experience.

Furthermore, these courses come with an affordable price tag compared to their likeness in educational and vocational institutions.

In addition, if you are sensitive about site navigation, you’ll find that both Udemy and Udacity sites are fast and easy to navigate.

However, in as much as there are similarities between Udemy and Udacity, there are still certain differences between them. Some of these Udemy vs Udacity differences may look like north and south pole when you place the two side by side.

Let’s now proceed to critically differentiate between Udemy and Udacity.

Differences Between Udemy and Udacity

True, there are differences between Udemy and Udacity. This is the reason for the Udemy vs Udacity argument and why someone will prescribe you either Udemy or Udacity. But before you proceed to act on their recommendation, you should know why you should take one instead of the other.

Therefore, we will proceed to point out these differences using key subheadings. We hope that when you’re done reading through you’ll know which online learning platform satisfies your study interest.

Core Objective

Udemy’s major aim is to help anyone learn anything, which is why it is tagged as “an online learning marketplace.”

Udacity, however, provides university-level education with high quality and low cost.

You’ll deduce from the Udemy vs Udacity objective that Udemy targets anyone with study interest. On the other hand, Udacity targets people looking for alternative means of getting a university education.

Course Offering & Quality:

Udemy offers a wide range of courses bordering around almost every field of study. Also, the course material for these courses is in the form of high-quality videos that are accessible from its online library.

However, you may need to check reviews of a course and the attendance number before payment and enrollment. This is because about anybody can offer to teach a course on Udemy.

There is no strict control on the quality of course content an industry expert provides. Remember, the aim is to help anyone learn, thus you may be qualified to teach a course by just knowing the course.

Therefore, Udemy’s course creators are authors, professors, entrepreneurs, and public speakers.

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Here is a broad categorization of Udemy courses:

Business
Marketing
Test Preparation
Languages
Music
Personal Development
Office Productivity
Information Technology
Software Development
Web Design
Lifestyle
Photography
Teacher Training
Health & Fitness.

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Udacity, however, specifically focuses on technology courses, having originated as free computer science classes offered at Stanford University. Also, like Udemy, Udacity’s course material is in high-quality videos.

However, you may find the quality of course content in Udacity more impressive. This is because there is strict content quality control in Udacity. Knowing the subject isn’t just enough here, you may need to provide proof of knowledge.

Therefore, Udacity’s course creators are Industry employers and experts from tech companies.

Here is a broad categorization of Udacity courses:

Web Design
Virtual Reality
Artificial Intelligence
Data Science
Computer Programming
Mobile Device Development
Digital Marketing
Robotics

Course Duration:

The courses in Udemy has no specific or standard time duration. You will find video lectures here that are as short as a few seconds as well as ones that grow into long hours. Also, the course can be finished easily by students based on the time they are available.

However, in Udacity, there are self-paced courses and timed programs or nano degrees. Because Udacity is trying to achieve a university kind of training, its courses take a longer time to complete. Each course has a unique time allotment and may last for as long as a few months, one, or even two years.

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Learning Plan & Difficulty:

Because Udemy aims to attract a larger audience, their courses are interactive and simple so that even beginners can learn them easily. Even though the courses are in video format, Instructors may provide assignments and quizzes from time to time to make the learning effective. Also, your course comes to an end the moment you finish viewing your videos.

While the lectures at Udacity is also available in video form, trainers also make it easy for you to access assignments and quizzes. However, some of the courses are project-based, thus, the content may pose a challenge for beginners to understand.

In most cases, you’ll need to have more than basic knowledge of the subject to follow the course guidelines and study material.

Certification:

Some courses in Udemy provide you certificates after completion. However, some of the courses that help you develop personal skills don’t provide you with certificates in the end.

However, for Udacity, learners get certificates for studying a Nanodegree. Meanwhile, to receive these certificates, you’ll have to pay by subscription for the courses.

You can further explore our 30 Free Online Education Courses With Certificates

Pricing and Discount:

Udemy offers a wide range of free courses, however, they are mostly beginners courses. This does not mean that there aren’t any free intermediate and expert classes. No, there actually are free classes at all levels, but more for beginners.

The price of paid courses is actually one of the beauties of Udemy – it is very affordable. The cost range for Udemy courses varies between $19 to $199 and special discounts are occasionally available.

Presently, you can get some courses at Udemy for as low as $9.99. This discount ends on the 13th of June, however, at 11:59 p.m. PDT.

Udacity, on the other hand, started out offering courses for free. In February 2012, they were operating on open enrollment. This allows students to study online at their preferred rates and get certificates without paying a class fee. However, in April 2014, Udemy started requiring students to pay for courses to receive a certificate of completion.

Now, you can still get free courses on Udacify but if you wish to work on a specific, you’ll have to subscribe. Nonetheless, you can study a course at Udacity for as low as $199 monthly.

Also, Udacity offers discounts, but they are limited and not as frequent as Udemy.

Refund Policy:

Udemy offers you the option to get a refund within 30 days of purchase. Therefore, if you book and pay for a course then change your mind later within the month, you’ll get your money back.

However, for Udacity, you can also cancel your enrollment at any time but you can’t get a refund. Once you’ve paid for a given month, you’ll get your money back. You’ll either see the course through or forgo your money.

Meanwhile, Udemy has more than 15 million users and Udacity has over 1.6 million users.

In addition, you can get course material as PDFs for some courses in Udemy, whereas you can always get PDFs in Udacity.

To wrap up the differences, you should know that Udemy partners with Individual Instructors while Udacity partners with notable tech companies like Google.

Finally to further explore both online learning platform, visit their website following the link below:

Udemy Website

Udacity Website

You can also check out Edx vs Udemy: What is the best e-learning platform?

Navigating Udemy and Udacity

Navigation scores a good mark on the Udemy vs Udacity argument. Both Udemy and Udacity’s websites are beautifully designed. They both possess fast downloading speeds irrespective of the volume of traffic.

Navigating Udemy

Udemy’s website organizes coursework by “Sections.” These sections have sub-sections that lists the courses available under a certain curriculum section.

You can read the short description of a course and its curriculum by clicking on a course sub-section. Also, the search box helps you discover courses faster. However, you’ll have to type in the appropriate phrases or keywords. Phrases like “learn web design” or “digital marketing” will give you the desired result.

Signing up for an Udemy course is as quick as playing an audio file on your device.

Also, in Udemy, there’s the self-management tool that allows you to tick lecture boxes to confirm that you’ve completed them. You can as well provide feedback for the course you’re studying and the instructor teaching the course.

Navigating Udacity

Just like Udemy, Udacity also arranges its curriculum by category.

The categories are linked at the top of the screen and clicking on each category gives opens a dropdown menu of sub-categories.

However, if you scroll down a bit, you’ll see an easier classification based on the five (5) Udacity programs. These programs are inboxes. You can click on any one to discover your desired course.

In addition, Udacity allows you to select the academic level of each course. There is the Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced option to select from. You also have the liberty to decide the company or academic institution you want to collaborate with. The same goes for the technology you want to be integrated within the coursework.

Udacity also has an “Explore” section which allows you to check for courses either by the school (Nanodegree) or by skills.

Finally, there’s a chatbot icon at the down right corner of your screen that allows you to send your queries and suggestion to online personnel at Udacity.

Udemy or Udacify

So, we’re back to where we started: The Udemy vs. Udacity argument. which is better?

You can see, however, that Udemy and Udacity have their benefits and shortcomings. Where one has a strong point, the other’s may not be too strong.

This does not make one better than the other. You would only have your preference at the end of the day depending on any of the key subheadings as the reason.

However, reviews from students and other users show that Udemy may be better than Udacity or the other way round depending on the course you wish to study.

Therefore, if you want a more structured course towards a career certificate, you should choose Udacity.

On the other hand, if you want a course towards updating a skill you’re interested in or to learn something entirely new, choose Udemy.

Conclusion

Udemy and Udacity are two very popular Massive Open Online Course (MooCs) platforms where you can update or acquire a new skill. The two platforms have similarities which make them two of the best MooCs available.

However, you may decide to pick one instead of the other, depending on one or more of the factors we’ve listed. But whichever you pick in the end, you have to ensure it suits your skills need.

Meanwhile, reviews have it that Udemy is preferable of the two online learning platforms for short, personal developmental courses. Udacity, on the other hand, is preferable for courses taken towards career development.