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239 Best + Free PHP Courses & Certificates [2026]
Ranked by Michael Kuhlman, CourseDuck's founder, from student reviews across every provider. How we rank · Embed this list
Our guide: The 9 Best Web Development Courses on Udemy in 2026
Our top picks
- WordPress Development with Bootstrap: The Complete Course [Udemy]
- Practical PHP: Master the Basics and Code Dynamic Websites [Udemy]
- PHP with Laravel for beginners - Become a Master in Laravel [Udemy] - Best Paid Course
- Write PHP Like a Pro: Build a PHP MVC Framework From Scratch [Udemy]
- The Complete Web Developer Course 3.0 [Udemy]
- Web Development Masterclass - Online Certification Course [Udemy]
- The Complete MySQL Developer Course [Udemy] - Best Paid Course
- Learn Object Oriented PHP By Building a Complete Website [Udemy]
- The Complete 2020 Fullstack Web Developer Course [Udemy]
- Laravel & PHP Mastery: Build 5 Real-World Projects [Udemy]
About the best PHP courses
CourseDuck compares the 239 PHP courses listed here from 7 providers, 54 of them free, and ranks them from the 349,000 ratings and reviews their students have left, with the price, length and level of each one side by side. No course pays to be listed or ranked. As featured on Harvard EDU, Stackify and Inc. How we rank
Frequently asked questions
- Udemy and Eduonix are best for practical, low cost and high quality PHP courses.
- Coursera, Udacity and EdX are the best providers for a PHP certificate, as many come from top Ivy League Universities.
- YouTube is best for free PHP crash courses.
- PluralSight, SkillShare and LinkedIn are the best monthly subscription platforms if you want to take multiple PHP courses.
- Independent Providers for PHP courses & certificates are generally hit or miss.
PHP is one of the many server-side languages you can learn to build web sites. It joins other languages such as Java, ASP.NET, Ruby, and R. PHP has consistently demonstrated its ability to scale the largest web sites while at the same time having an easier learning curve than other languages. ...
- Average
- $91,735 a year
- Middle half earn
- $70,000 to $110,000 25th to 75th percentile
- Full range
- $30,500 to $146,000
Share of US job postings in each pay band; the dark bar holds the average, the striped bars the 25th and 75th percentiles. Source: ZipRecruiter salary data, gathered when this guide was first published in October 2026.
Yes and No. Certified PHP developers on average make more money. Having a PHP certificate greatly increases the chance of landing an interview and can open otherwise closed doors. Coursera, Udacity and EdX offer excellent certificate options for impressing your future employers. Eduonix, Udemy and several other providers offer certificates, but they aren't as reputable. If you have a Computer Science Degree, certificates are not as important. Still, many employers won't care about certificates, but rather your interview skills, experience and/or skills assessment.
239 Filtered Courses
1
WordPress Development with Bootstrap: The Complete Course (2024)
4.5
Brad Hussey's long-running guide to turning a Bootstrap site into a custom WordPress theme, refreshed in 2024 with new sections on Kirki and custom Elementor widgets.
Best for: Designers and front-end coders who know HTML and CSS and want to build custom WordPress themes for clients.
Pros
Cons
-
- Walks through converting a static Bootstrap site into a working WordPress theme, step by step
- 2024 refresh adds about 11 hours on Kirki customizer setup and custom Elementor widgets in PHP
- Reviewers call Hussey engaging; one says repeating the WordPress loop several times made it stick
- Covers taking the site from a local install to a live server, a step one reviewer singled out
-
- Roughly half the 22.6 hours is the old Bootstrap 3 and WordPress 4 version, kept as a retro track
- Older reviews report tooling drift (Underscores, WordPress versions) and trips to the Q&A for fixes
- One quiz and no coding exercises or assignments, so practice is limited to following along
Sponsored
2
Become a WordPress Developer: Unlocking Power With Code (2025)
4.6
A 46-hour, code-first path from basic HTML to custom WordPress themes, plugins, React blocks and the REST API, taught by Brad Schiff and refreshed in 2025.
Best for: People who know basic HTML and the WordPress admin and want to write PHP and JavaScript for custom themes and plugins.
Pros
Cons
-
- Builds one full project, a university site, from blank theme to live deployment, so every concept has a use.
- Reviewers say the explanations cover why the code works, not just what to type.
- Covers newer WordPress too: block themes, Gutenberg blocks in React, and the Interactivity API.
- Refreshed April 2025, with 41 articles and 16 caption tracks alongside the videos.
-
- Setting up the local WordPress dev environment trips up some students and help is thin.
- Front-end code leans on jQuery, and one low-star review says the block theme chapters need code fixes to run.
- Prerequisites run deeper than stated; a front-end dev found it repetitive past the halfway point.
Sponsored
3
PHP for Beginners - Become a PHP Master - CMS Project (2026)
4.5
A 40-hour, beginner-first PHP course that builds a WordPress-style CMS and a small MVC framework, refreshed in May 2026 and backed by roughly 25,000 reviews.
Best for: Total beginners with a little HTML who want to finish with a working CMS, not just syntax drills.
Pros
Cons
-
- Ends with real projects: a todo app, a PDO-based CMS and a hand-rolled MVC framework with routing.
- Reviewers say Diaz and the Coding Faculty team answer Q&A questions quickly and help students debug.
- Last updated May 2026, with separate setup sections for Windows, Mac and Ubuntu.
- Beginners repeatedly say it is easy to follow and never boring, even at 40 hours.
-
- Low-star reviews say the early modules jump around and repeat themselves before real code starts.
- Simple ideas can be over-explained while harder logic is skimmed, according to one long-time student.
- No quizzes or coding exercises; all practice comes from following along with the projects.
4
Practical PHP: Master the Basics and Code Dynamic Websites (2015)
4.5
A free, six-hour PHP primer from 2015 that walks total beginners from variables and loops to a working restaurant website, still rated 4.5 by more than 16,000 students.
Best for: Total beginners who know a little HTML and CSS and want a free, gentle first pass at PHP before paying for anything.
Pros
Cons
-
- Completely free, with a 4.5 rating from over 16,000 reviews and 271,000 enrolled students
- Ends with a 14-lecture restaurant website project that reviewers mention as a highlight
- Hussey's clear, enthusiastic explanations get repeated praise from people new to code
- Short at 6.3 hours, so it fits in a weekend or a week of evenings
-
- Last updated July 2015 and built on PHP 5, so syntax and tools look dated
- No database or MySQL section, and no coding exercises, just one quiz
- One reviewer found later lectures rambling, one calls parts repetitive, and a two-star dislikes plugs for paid courses
Best Paid Course
5
PHP with Laravel for beginners - Become a Master in Laravel (2021)
4.4
A 43-hour Laravel course that covers every Eloquent relationship type, then builds a CMS with roles and permissions, from a PHP instructor students find clear and fun.
Best for: PHP developers who know basic OOP and want one long, patient walk through Laravel's core ideas before building a CMS.
Pros
Cons
-
- Covers every Eloquent relationship type, including polymorphic, each with its own CRUD section
- Reviewers say Diaz explains things several ways and the repetition makes concepts stick
- Q&A support gets repeated thanks in the reviews, even years after release
- Includes a Git and GitHub section and deployment to shared hosting, not just Laravel itself
-
- Last updated March 2021; the newest sections target Laravel 7 and the CMS is also built in Laravel 5.2
- At 43 hours and 409 lectures, one reviewer calls it too big for a beginner
- No quizzes or coding exercises, so practice comes only from following the build
6
Write PHP Like a Pro: Build a PHP MVC Framework From Scratch (2026)
4.7
Write faster, easier to maintain, more secure PHP websites by creating your own Model View Controller framework
What You'll Learn
- Efficiently organise your PHP code into models, views and controllers
- Separate application code (PHP) from presentation code (HTML)
- Learn concepts like dependency injection, templating and middleware
- Best practices for handling errors and exceptions in PHP
- How frameworks like Laravel or CodeIgniter work
- Have pretty URLs instead of PHP filenames
- Object-oriented (OO) techniques such as inheritance, interfaces, abstract classes and more
7
The Complete Web Developer Course 3.0 (2026)
4.5
A 31-hour tour of the whole stack, HTML to PHP, MySQL, WordPress and SEO, from Rob Percival, with over 317,000 students enrolled and a refresh in February 2026.
Best for: Total beginners who want one broad pass across front end, PHP, MySQL and WordPress before picking a specialty.
Pros
Cons
-
- Covers HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, Bootstrap 5, WordPress, PHP, MySQL, APIs, Python and SEO in one place
- Rob Percival's delivery is clear; beginners say the early sections are easy to follow
- Refreshed in February 2026 and running since 2016, with 4.5 stars from over 72,000 reviews
- Real builds included: a portfolio site, a WordPress site with contact form, a Python word game
-
- Resource links, code downloads and the promised freebies are widely reported broken or unavailable
- Some sections are taught by Codestars staff, and one reviewer found them weaker than Rob's own lectures
- No React, Node or coding exercises; breadth over depth in every language it touches
8
Web Development Masterclass - Online Certification Course (2022)
4.5
Cloud Computing | Web Apps | Linux | Web Servers | DBMS | LAMP Stack | HTML | CSS | JavaScript | PHP | + More
What You'll Learn
- Understand the essentials of Local and Wide Area Networks
- Setup a basic network.
- Register a domain name with Domain Privacy
- Forward a domain, renew and administer a domain
- Configure Nameservers and DNS Zone Files
- Create and Configure a Testing server on a Local Windows or MAC System.
- Configure a Production web server on popular cloud hosting platforms.
- Create disk backups and install disk images on a virtual server
- Setup Ubuntu on a Virtual Machine
- Install and configure WAMP for Windows
- Install and configure MAMP for MAC
- Administer a remote server using PuTTY or Terminal
- Proficiently navigate the Linode Virtual Server Dashboard
- Configure Security Settings on a Virtual Ubuntu Server
- Scale a virtual server up and down depending on needs
- Install LAMP Stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, PhpMyAdmin) on a local and remote server
- Setup users and access privil
Best Paid Course
9
The Complete MySQL Developer Course (2025)
4.5
MySQL: Learn how to use MySQL and PHP to build Reports and work with Databases for Web Applications
What You'll Learn
- Apply for jobs as junior MySQL developers
- Build web applications using MySQL and PHP
- Establish a solid foundation for databases and SQL
10
Learn Object Oriented PHP By Building a Complete Website (2018)
4.4
Quick and Easy Guide to Master OOPs in PHP
What You'll Learn
- Build a complete website using classes and objects in PHP
- Understand the concepts behind object oriented PHP
- Learn all about Abstraction and Inheritance
- Learn how to deal with RDBMS within OOPS framework
11
The Complete 2020 Fullstack Web Developer Course
4.4
A patient, very long beginner survey of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and Git, with Python and PHP on the menu, that has taught close to 100,000 students since 2012.
Best for: Beginners who want one long course covering front end basics, Git, and a taste of Python and PHP.
Pros
Cons
-
- Slow enough to follow, fast enough to stay awake, say reviewers describing the teaching pace
- HTML and CSS sections are praised for thorough coverage of both languages
- Projects include a portfolio page, an 8-bit site, a modal and a calculator, plus launching on GitHub Pages
- Sections stand alone, so topics you already know can be skipped
-
- Last updated August 2020, and one reviewer notes some content is outdated
- JavaScript lessons are ordered badly, with key concepts arriving after the tasks that need them
- Support is thin: a 1-star reviewer says questions went unanswered and a project asset file is missing