We independently test and review every course that we recommend.
Please support us by joining our mailing list, and recommending this guide to others.
Course Review
Here is our in-depth review of Full Stack Open, based on hours of rigorous testing and evaluation.
Updated: November 28, 2023
An impressive free, text-based curriculum developed in partnership with tech companies, that offers feedback on coding exercises and certificates of completion.
Fast Facts
Full Stack Open
By Various Authors
#3 in The Best Self-paced Courses for Learning Fullstack Development in 2024
#3 in The Best Self-paced Courses for Learning Fullstack Development in 2024
The curriculum guides you through the fundamentals of full stack web applications, starting with basic client interaction and increasing in complexity. There are in-depth readings, supplemental materials, and hands-on exercises.
Overall, one of the drawbacks to the course is its lack of real-world projects. You'll want to supplement the curriculum by building a full stack application on your own, to synthesize what you've learned and apply it in a new scenario, and to build a portfolio.
If you like learning through videos, you probably want a different solution. The text-first format is excellent, but not for every learner.
The community has a high noise to signal ratio, so it's not very valuable.
Udacity
By Various
#1 in The Best Self-paced Courses for Learning Fullstack Development in 2024
#1 in The Best Self-paced Courses for Learning Fullstack Development in 2024
The best self-paced full stack program money can buy. It's expensive, but well worth the cost for the quality of instruction and the quality of feedback on your work. The emphasis on practice exercises and real-world hands-on projects are standout features.
App Academy
By Various Authors
#2 in The Best Self-paced Courses for Learning Fullstack Development in 2024
#2 in The Best Self-paced Courses for Learning Fullstack Development in 2024
Tremendous free curriculum for learning the foundations of fullstack software development, from one of the top-rated coding bootcamps. Not as seamless an experience as our other recommendations, and lacks assessments and feedback on your work, but it's an excellent option.
Our course reviews are conducted by a team of technical professionals, course developers, and lifelong learners.
The lead of this project, Brian Green, has worked in developer education since 2009. He built the content development teams at Pluralsight and Udacity, implementing quality standards and tutorials to improve course quality and working with hundreds of authors to create courseware. Most recently, he built the product team at App Academy. As of writing, he estimates he has spent nearly a year of his life taking or reviewing online courses, on topics ranging from Web Development, Networking, Server Administration, DevOps, Cybersecurity, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence.
We reviewed this course using the following criteria:
