14 courses, the full sheet
| Row | Issuer | Course | Certificate free | Field | Hours | The catch, if there is one |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cisco Networking Academy | Introduction to Cybersecurity, plus Networking Basics and other entry courses | Yes | Cybersecurity and networking | About 6 hours for Introduction to Cybersecurity | The course page itself reads FREE, 6 hours, beginner, 7 labs, with badges you can earn; the Cisco certificate of completion and the Credly badge both cost nothing, and over 10 million people have enrolled. Available in German as well as English. The final exam is 15 questions at 70 percent to pass. Do not confuse this with CCNA, which is a separate paid exam. |
| 2 | Forage | Job simulations from employers including BCG, PwC, Citi, Goldman Sachs and Bloomberg | Yes | Consulting, finance, law, tech and other professions | Roughly 1 to 5 hours per simulation | Forage states the simulations are 100 percent free, open access and self-paced, with over 250 of them from more than 90 employers, and each finished one issues a free completion certificate you can attach to an application. It is a simulation and not an internship, so describe it accurately on a CV; it is one of the few free credentials that shows employer-specific task work. |
| 3 | Google (Skillshop) | Google Analytics Certification and Google Ads certifications | Yes | Marketing and analytics | Exam is 75 minutes; the linked courses add roughly 4 to 6 hours | Free to take with a Google account, 50 questions, 80 percent to pass, retake after 24 hours with no cap on attempts. The certification expires after 12 months and you retake the exam to keep it valid. Skillshop serves German as well as English. Deep links change often, so navigate from the Skillshop homepage rather than bookmarking a course URL. |
| 4 | Harvard University (CS50) | CS50x: Introduction to Computer Science | Yes | Computer science | 11 weeks of material, self-paced, commonly 100 to 200 hours in total | Confirmed on the CS50x 2026 FAQ: score 70 percent or higher on every problem set, lab and the final project and you claim a free CS50 Certificate from your own Gradebook, issued by CS50 itself. The edX verified certificate is the separate paid route at about 219 US dollars and is optional. Neither carries academic credit. |
| 5 | Hasso-Plattner-Institut, Potsdam (openHPI) | openHPI courses in IT, security, data and digital skills | Yes | IT and computer science | Typically 2 to 6 weeks at 3 to 6 hours a week per course | Both records are free, confirmed on openHPI's own record-types page in August 2026: the Confirmation of Participation for visiting at least 50 percent of the material, and the graded Record of Achievement for more than 50 percent of available points. Correction to a figure that still circulates: the proctored paid certificate is no longer sold. openHPI states it is not offering that type at the moment, so there is now no paid tier on the platform at all. Run by a German university institute, so German recruiters recognise the name. |
| 6 | HubSpot Academy | Inbound Marketing, Digital Marketing, Email Marketing and other certifications | Yes | Marketing and sales | About 2 to 6 hours per certification | HubSpot states plainly that creating an Academy account is 100 percent free and unlocks the full library, the exams and the certificates, with no subscription or exam fee on any of the 50 plus certifications. Two things to plan for: certifications expire after 12 or 24 months depending on the program, and the software-specific ones expect hands-on work inside a HubSpot portal, which the free tier covers for most but not all of them. |
| 7 | IBM (SkillsBuild) | AI, cybersecurity, data analytics and cloud learning paths | Yes | IT, AI and data | Varies by course, roughly 2 to 20 hours | IBM describes SkillsBuild as 100 percent free learning, and the digital credentials it issues through Credly are free too; you just need a Credly account to claim them. IBM sells certificates for its courses on Coursera and edX, so make sure you are on skillsbuild.org and not the paid route. |
| 8 | KI-Campus (Stifterverband, funded by the German federal education ministry) | AI and machine learning courses from German universities and research institutes | Yes | Artificial intelligence | Varies by course, commonly 5 to 30 hours | The homepage bills itself as the free learning platform for AI and states that over 175,000 learners have earned more than 100,000 certificates; registration and certificates both cost nothing, checked August 2026 with 2026-dated posts on the site. Most courses are in German and a smaller set is in English, so check the language tag on each course before you start. |
| 9 | Microsoft | Microsoft Applied Skills credentials in AI, Azure, security and Microsoft 365 | Yes | Cloud, AI and IT | Prep paths run several hours; the lab assessment is one sitting | Applied Skills are lab-based assessments that are still free to attempt as of August 2026 and issue a shareable Microsoft credential; there is no checkout page. The catalogue churns hard, though, and the AI retirements have already happened rather than being upcoming: Create agents in Microsoft Copilot Studio retired 8 July 2026, Create agentic workflows with Microsoft Foundry 17 July 2026, and three more on 30 June 2026. Microsoft currently lists none scheduled to retire, but open the credential page and check before you invest the prep time. Role-based Certifications such as AZ-900 and AI-900 are paid exams, so do not assume the whole Microsoft catalogue is free. |
| 10 | The Open University (OpenLearn) | Badged open courses across business, IT, languages and health | Yes | Mixed academic and professional subjects | About 24 hours per badged course | Free digital badge and statement of participation, both downloadable from your OpenLearn profile once you finish, and the majority of badged courses are CPD accredited. This is a university-issued record of study, not an OU qualification, and it carries no credit toward a degree. |
| 11 | University of Helsinki and MinnaLearn | Elements of AI: Introduction to AI | Yes | Artificial intelligence | About 30 hours, 6 weeks at roughly 5 hours a week | The Introduction to AI certificate is free, and you can additionally register 2 ECTS free of charge through the University of Helsinki Open University, which is real EU academic credit. Important limit for anyone studying in German: the Open University awards credits only for the Global, Finnish and Swedish versions, not for other language versions, so take the Global English version if you want the ECTS. Treat the follow-on Building AI separately: content and exercises are free, but the shareable certificate costs 50 euros. |
| 12 | freeCodeCamp | Responsive Web Design and JavaScript Algorithms and Data Structures | Yes | Software development | About 300 hours per certification | Confirmed August 2026: every certification is free including the credential itself, which lives at a permanent public freecodecamp.org URL an employer can open. Two practical catches: you must accept the academic honesty pledge and set your profile and certifications to public before that link works for anyone else, and the curriculum is project-based, so what you actually show is the code. |
| 13 | Alison | Certificate and Diploma courses across business, IT and languages | Audit free, certificate paid | Mixed professional subjects | Roughly 1.5 to 3 hours for a Certificate course, 8 to 15 hours for a Diploma | Alison is widely listed as free certification and it is not: the learning is free, the digital certificate costs about 21 to 26 euros and a digital diploma about 34 to 37 euros, with printed versions higher again. The free downloadable Learner Record is a transcript of what you studied, not a certificate. Alison credentials carry little weight with German employers, so spend the money elsewhere. |
| 14 | Google via Coursera | Google Career Certificates such as Data Analytics, IT Support, UX Design and Project Management | Audit free, certificate paid | Data, IT and product | Google suggests about 6 months at 10 hours a week | This is the one most people get wrong: the material can be audited but the certificate sits behind a Coursera subscription of about 49 US dollars a month after a 7-day trial, so a 3 to 6 month completion costs roughly 150 to 300 dollars. Coursera financial aid can bring it to zero including the certificate, but you apply per course, not per program, and Coursera quotes 15 days to review. Link changed: grow.google/certificates now redirects a visitor in Germany to the German Zukunftswerkstatt homepage, which does not show the certificates, so link the Coursera page instead. |
Scroll the table sideways for the remaining columns. Every name links to that organisation’s own page.
Checked against each provider's own current pricing in August 2026. Free tiers change; if one has moved, tell us. These are independent companies and agencies with no relationship to Ankommo. Links change: if you find a dead one, tell us at hello@ankommo.de and we will fix it.
Before you start applying
Free to Learn Is Not Free to Be Certified
Almost every list with this title is wrong in the same direction. The course is free to audit and the credential is not, which you discover at the end, after the work. Google Career Certificates and Alison are both on this page for that reason, marked rather than removed: the learning is genuinely good, and the certificate costs money. Roughly 49 US dollars a month in one case, about 21 to 26 euros in the other.
The other honest thing concerns what these buy you here. German hiring leans hard on formal qualifications, so a badge from a platform nobody recognises does less than the badge-collecting internet suggests. What travels is the issuer: openHPI belongs to the Hasso-Plattner-Institut, KI-Campus is funded by the federal education ministry, CS50 carries Harvard. Those names mean something to a German recruiter.
So use these to close a specific gap named in a specific job ad, put three on the CV rather than ten, and do not expect any of them to substitute for a degree, an Ausbildung or a recognised professional qualification. In Germany, those are still the currency.
Questions People Actually Ask
Why do so many "free certificate" lists get this wrong?
Because two different things are free and only one of them is the credential. On most platforms you can audit the course for nothing, which is genuinely useful, and then the certificate sits behind a subscription or a one-off fee. Google Career Certificates on Coursera work exactly like that: audit the material free, pay roughly 49 US dollars a month to be certified. Alison is listed as free certification almost everywhere and charges around 21 to 26 euros for the digital certificate. Neither is a scam, and both are worth doing. They just do not belong on a page with this title without the qualifier, which is why they are here marked rather than deleted.
Will a German employer actually care about these?
Some more than others, and the pattern is worth knowing. German hiring puts unusual weight on formal, recognised qualifications, so a badge from an unknown platform does less here than it might elsewhere. What does land is a credential from an institution a German recruiter recognises: openHPI is run by the Hasso-Plattner-Institut, KI-Campus is funded by the federal education ministry, and CS50 carries Harvard on it. Treat the rest as evidence that you can finish something and as genuine skill-building, not as a substitute for a degree or an Ausbildung.
How long do these take?
The hours column is what the provider itself states, and providers are optimistic. A course advertised at 15 hours is usually 15 hours of video for somebody who already knows the subject; budget more if you are learning it properly and want to keep it. The short ones, a few hours of marketing or analytics fundamentals, are worth doing in a week. CS50 is a genuine multi-month commitment and is worth more precisely because of that.
Do I put these on a German CV?
Yes, under Weiterbildung or Zertifikate, with the issuer and the completion date. Keep them in a group rather than scattered through the CV, and keep the list short: three relevant credentials read as focus, ten read as someone collecting badges instead of working. If a certificate is not related to the job you are applying for, leave it off that version. The CV builder on this site has a section for exactly this.
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