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139 Best + Free Adobe After Effects Courses & Certificates [2026]
Ranked by Michael Kuhlman, CourseDuck's founder, from student reviews across every provider. How we rank
Our guide: The Best Video Editing Courses on Udemy in 2026: Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, CapCut and More
Our top picks
- Adobe After Effects CC Bootcamp: Beginner to Advanced [Udemy]
- After Effects CC Masters: VFX, Motion Graphics, Animation+ [Udemy]
- After Effects - Motion Graphics & Data Visualization [Udemy]
- After Effects CC: The Ultimate Motion Graphics Masterclass [Udemy]
- Adobe After Effects Templates for Beginners [Udemy]
- Adobe After Effects CC - Motion Graphics Design & VFX [Udemy]
- After Effects Motion Graphics Beast [Udemy]
- After Effects Essentials: Complete VFX and Motion GFX Guide [Udemy]
- Kinetic Typography in After Effects: Motion Graphics Course [Udemy]
- Motion Design & Animation Principles in Adobe After Effects [Udemy]
About the best Adobe After Effects courses
CourseDuck compares the 139 Adobe After Effects courses listed here from 2 providers, 3 of them free, and ranks them from the 115,000 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 Adobe After Effects courses.
- Coursera, Udacity and EdX are the best providers for an Adobe After Effects certificate, as many come from top Ivy League Universities.
- YouTube is best for free Adobe After Effects crash courses.
- PluralSight, SkillShare and LinkedIn are the best monthly subscription platforms if you want to take multiple Adobe After Effects courses.
- Independent Providers for Adobe After Effects courses & certificates are generally hit or miss.
Adobe After Effects is a 2.5D animation software used for animation, visual effects, and motion picture compositing. After Effects is used in film, TV, and web video creation. This software is used in the post-production phase, and has hundreds of effects that can be used to manipulate imagery.
- Average
- $71,248 a year
- Middle half earn
- $53,000 to $84,000 25th to 75th percentile
- Full range
- $20,000 to $124,500
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 Adobe After Effects developers on average make more money. Having an Adobe After Effects 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.
139 Filtered Courses
1
Adobe After Effects CC Bootcamp: Beginner to Advanced (2026)
4.6
A bestselling 34 hour, 429 lecture walk through After Effects, from first keyframes to camera tracking and keying, refreshed in May 2026 with project files for several recent versions.
Best for: Complete beginners who want one long, structured course covering motion graphics and VFX rather than scattered YouTube tutorials.
Pros
Cons
-
- Clear, patient explanations that cover when and why to use a technique, not just where the button is.
- 429 lectures across 40 sections, from interface basics to motion tracking, keying and rotoscoping.
- Refreshed May 2026, with project files for After Effects CC 2019, 2020, 2024 and 2025.
- After the first six sections the course is modular, so students can pick the topics they need.
-
- 34 hours is a real commitment; a three star reviewer said it took forever to finish.
- A few project files don't match the videos, such as the missing airplane file in the motion path section.
- Only two quizzes and no assignments, and some auto-translated captions read poorly.
2
After Effects CC Masters: VFX, Motion Graphics, Animation+ (2024)
4.5
Phil Ebiner's 28-hour, project-first After Effects course for true beginners, with the basics up front and a long tail of bonus animations to copy.
Best for: Video editors and YouTubers who have never opened After Effects and want click-for-click projects over theory.
Pros
Cons
-
- Step-by-step, click-for-click lessons that reviewers say make a scary program feel simple
- Core skills like trim paths and masking get reused across many different projects, so they stick
- Wide coverage in one place: green screen, rotoscoping, motion tracking, puppet tool, expressions, export
- Around 17 hours of bonus tutorials and projects, including kinetic typography and a 223-minute shape animation section
-
- Last updated April 2024, and a reviewer says later lessons were made on pre-2017 versions and miss newer features
- A few lessons skip steps, leaving some students hunting for fixes on YouTube
- One two-star reviewer could not get the course files to appear or work
3
After Effects - Motion Graphics & Data Visualization (2025)
4.6
A 6.5 hour beginner course that turns Excel spreadsheets into animated pie charts, bar graphs and infographics, taught by an instructor students find genuinely fun to watch.
Best for: Complete beginners who need to animate charts and infographics for work presentations, not learn all of After Effects.
Pros
Cons
-
- Real workflow: Excel data becomes animated pie, line and bar charts, then exports for YouTube, PowerPoint and GIF
- Daniel Walter Scott's relaxed, down-to-earth delivery is the most praised thing in the reviews
- Exercise files, a cheat sheet and Dan's saved project files for every video to compare against
- Refreshed January 2025, and 93 percent of nearly 9,000 ratings are four or five stars
-
- Pace is quick; reviewers say they had to pause and rewind, and one found the topic-jumping hard to follow
- Effects and presets get only a light touch, and there are no quizzes or graded assignments
- Needs Illustrator and Photoshop as well as After Effects for a few steps
4
After Effects CC: The Ultimate Motion Graphics Masterclass (2025)
4.5
Motion-graphics-only After Effects training that covers shape layers, bounce expressions, loops, morphing and fake 3D, refreshed in late 2025 and rated 4.5 across nearly 5,000 reviews.
Best for: Beginners or After Effects users who want to specialise in 2D motion graphics and animated explainer-style visuals.
Pros
Cons
-
- Detailed, unhurried explanations that reviewers say make keyframes and expressions feel simple
- Practice files and a full start-to-finish project built from imported Illustrator graphics
- Refreshed in November 2025, so shape layer and expression lessons match current After Effects
- Ready-made bounce, overshoot and loop expressions students can reuse in their own work
-
- Roughly 11 of the 24 hours is an archived copy of the old course, which muddies the runtime
- No quizzes or assignments, so practice depends on following along with the project files
- Skips VFX, tracking and compositing entirely; this is motion graphics only
5
Adobe After Effects Templates for Beginners (2024)
4.4
A free, under-an-hour walkthrough of customizing bought After Effects templates, taught by Phil Ebiner, for people who never plan to learn the full program.
Best for: Video creators and marketers who bought a Videohive template and just need to swap in their own text and logo.
Pros
Cons
-
- Clear, plain-spoken teaching that a non-native English speaker says is easy to follow
- Explains why each step matters, not just which button to press, according to reviewers
- Includes a free titles template so there is something to practice on without buying anything
- Shows how to send compositions straight to Premiere Pro, which one reviewer called the biggest takeaway
-
- Only 54 minutes and 15 lectures, so it teaches templates, not After Effects
- Most templates it points at cost money on Videohive, and the free one arrives late in the course
- Last updated April 2024, and no certificate is offered
6
Adobe After Effects CC - Motion Graphics Design & VFX (2025)
4.6
A short, friendly After Effects starter that walks complete beginners through more than 15 small motion graphics projects, from lower thirds to animated pie charts.
Best for: Complete beginners who want short, easygoing lessons and small portfolio pieces in After Effects.
Pros
Cons
-
- Short lessons, 52 lectures over 5.2 hours, that are easy to replay and review
- Daniel's delivery is easygoing and funny, and reviewers say he explains fundamentals clearly
- Covers lower thirds, masking, green screen, parallax and animated bar, line and pie charts
- Downloadable exercise files plus finished files to check your own work against
-
- Rotoscoping and camera sections no longer match current After Effects versions, per reviewers
- Requirements still point to CC 2015 and CS6, so the tooling feels dated
- One reviewer could not follow the narration, another wanted the content split into smaller pieces
What You'll Learn
- From basics of After Effects
- To using After Effects as professional motion designer
- Students will master motion in After Effects
- Animation Principles
- Types of Keyframes
- Types of Graph editors
- Text Animation
- Shape Modifiers Animation
- Lettering Animation
- Morphing Animation
- You will learn how to make 4 real client projects
- You will learn how to make Modern Gradient Liquid Title Animation
- You will learn how to create callout professional Titles
- You will learn Advanced Motion tracking
- You will learn how to create up to date Infographics and charts
- You will add motion designer to your CV
8
After Effects Essentials: Complete VFX and Motion GFX Guide (2017)
4.3
Your complete guide to create amazing Visual Effects and Motion Graphics using Adobe After Effects CC 2017.
What You'll Learn
- Create awesome visual effects and motion graphics using Adobe After Effects
- More advanced After Effects techniques
9
Kinetic Typography in After Effects: Motion Graphics Course (2024)
4.4
A 90-minute After Effects project that teaches the cut, scale, rotate and revolve text reveals behind kinetic typography, from an instructor students find unusually clear.
Best for: Video editors who know their way around After Effects and want text animation basics in an evening.
Pros
Cons
-
- Each lecture animates one scene of a real sample video, so the techniques build into a finished project
- Reviewers call it quick and to the point, with shortcuts repeated just enough to stick
- Downloadable After Effects project file so you can follow along step by step
- Updated in April 2024, and the process works in older versions of After Effects too
-
- Only about 88 minutes; several reviewers wanted more techniques and more content
- Some tools get used without being named, so complete beginners can get lost
- Sample voiceover audio isn't provided, and one recent review calls the type and final look dated
10
Motion Design & Animation Principles in Adobe After Effects (2025)
4.8
Learn motion design and the animation principles to create outstanding motion graphics in Adobe After Effects.
What You'll Learn
- By the end of the course you will be able to create animations like a pro animator - (not just motion)
- All the techniques in the course are Quick & Easy. It's all about fun and enjoyable animation.
- Master Animation Principles used by Pro Animators - Exaggeration - Overshoot - Bounce - Follow through & Overlapping action and more...
- You will learn Motion Graphics Techniques used by Professional to create animated movies
- The Motion Techniques and Graphic Effects to implement the Animation Principles.
- How to add Sound Effects and adjust the pitch
- How to work with time to create flowing animations
- You will have the option to download all the graphic artworks used in the course and design your own animations
- I'll show you how to download free vector artworks (AI), how to organize them in Illustrator ready to animate in After Effects
- How to create In and Out Transitions for Explainer Videos
11
Adobe After Effects Crash Course for Creatives (2025)
4.4
Learn After Effects, Theory, Projects : Create Stunning Social Media Video and Motion Graphics with ZERO Experience
What You'll Learn
- Learn the Adobe After Effects software from scratch
- You will have a solid understanding of Motion video theory
- Learn how to create compelling social media ads
- Understanding technical terms like resolution, frame rate and more
- Create real world motion projects like a logo animation, a cinematic logo intro, a motion typography project, a video ad project and more!
- Learn to work with motion typography
- Learn After Effects Essentials like Keyframes, Compositions, Easy Ease, Null Objects, Masks, Wiggle, Camera, Effects and More!
- Social Media Video Creation
- Scroll Stopping Video Creation
- NEW! Learn how to create CINEMATIC TITLES in AFTER EFFECTS