Intro

Did you know that Coursera offers you the chance to access all of the courses for free without paying a subscription?
Yes, that’s right – you can watch all the videos and access all the content for FREE. This is called auditing the course. It allows you to smash through the course and watch the videos when you want so you can still learn a lot with this method.


Here, we’ll discuss how to audit a course on Coursera to get the most out of the course without paying a dime.

What Is Coursera Course Audit? 🤔

Coursera course audit is a method by which you can access courses on Coursera for free.

So, you can watch videos of the course for free and access some other materials, thereby accessing valuable education; however, an audit cuts off access to class activities like assignments and quizzes.

That means you can’t earn any credits for taking the course, and you won’t be able to get certifications.

Auditing a course on Coursera sounds like a fantastic idea because the knowledge gained is invaluable and is accessed for free. To access classwork and get certificates for taking the course, you must pay for it.

Some people may have reached a point in their career where they don’t need a certificate anymore but need knowledge that can be accessed on Coursera.


Auditing a course on Coursera may also be a great way of starting your learning on the platform. It is not entirely different from a free trial, which you get for the first seven days after sign-up. That means you can audit a course if you need it just for personal development.


It should, however, be noted that only individual courses can be audited, and not entire disciplines. You cannot find the audit option on the Specialization, MasterTrack, or Professional Certificate Pages.


Some courses are also available on the “Full Course No Certificate” plan. You can access courses without getting certificates when you sign up for them. The advantage of this option is that it provides access to certain assessment items.

How to Audit a Course on Coursera: A Step-by-Step Guide

Choose a Course You Like

The first and most obvious step is to select a course that you find helpful or useful or the one that looks interesting to you.

As it turns out, this is a specialization instead of a course, so it’s comprised of several courses that will take you from being a beginner to an intermediate or even advanced Python programmer.

Select “Audit the Course”

If we click on this particular course, we’ll see that it’s comprised of several courses; we cannot audit complete specializations – instead, we’d have to audit each course within the specialization, one by one.

If we try to audit the specialization by clicking on the “Enroll for Free” button, this is what we see:

As you can see, there is no option to audit the course, as it should be there when you try to audit an individual course.


What you have to do instead is go to the “Courses” section of the specialization and select the course you’d like to audit from there:

This is what pops up when we click on “Courses”. Now we can choose our preferred course from the specialization, and audit each course from here on.

Let’s select the first course as it looks like a great course for beginners. Once you’re on the course’s page, you have to select the “Enroll for Free” button.

When you click on that button, a pop-up window will prompt you to select the 7-day free trial and then, later on, pay for the course in full. That’s neat if you’re sure you will need the certification from the course, but if you just want to access the course’s content and watch the videos without taking assignments or certifications, you can do so by auditing it.


To audit the course, simply select the “Audit the course” button on the pop-up window asking you to take a 7-day trial of the course:

Just click on this button and congratulations, you’re now auditing the course!

Audit the Course

Now you’re in the auditing mode of the course. You can view all the video materials of the course, which is how most of the courses are constructed on Coursera.

You can also read the materials in the course, make notes, and even read the forum of the course.

You can watch the videos and makes notes for yourself, and you can still learn a lot from the course this way. However, there are certain things that you won’t be able to do if you don’t purchase the course in full. This includes:

❌ Completing assignments and quizzes
❌ Getting certifications
❌ Accessing external tools
❌ Accessing certain parts of the course

For example, you can see that certain parts of the course appear to be locked and inaccessible.