SQL remains to be one of the most widely used languages even going into 2023. With widespread uses in Database administration, Data science, SEO Analytics and Software Engineering, SQL is a mainstay of programmers today. Furthermore, it is a high in-demand skill and valuable in many industries.
In this guide, I ranked and reviewed the best 7 SQL courses online, along with my top 3 choices, so you can choose the best one.
The Ultimate MySQL Bootcamp: Go from SQL Beginner to Expert (Udemy)
A one-fits-all course that covers a vast range of topics and introduces real world SQL applications
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PostgreSQL for Everybody (Coursera)
A professional course offered by University of Michigan and covers beginner to advanced topics
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An Introductory Guide to SQL (Educative)
A user-friendly and easy to follow course that places an emphasis on getting students interview ready
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What Are The Best SQL Courses?
A beginner SQL course should be able to have students comfortable with the fundamentals of working with a database and creating tables, as well as crafting queries to retrieve information from the databases. A great course would have students applying their knowledge to practical applications.
They should also not require the students to have any prior knowledge to be able to enroll in the course.
My top picks are The Ultimate MySQL Bootcamp: Go from SQL Beginner to Expert (Udemy), PostgreSQL for Everybody (Coursera) and An Introductory Guide to SQL (Educative).
Most of these courses are extremely affordable and well under $100, making it easy and a worthwhile investment to get started.
Here are my top picks for the best SQL courses for beginners:
- The Ultimate MySQL Bootcamp: Go from SQL Beginner to Expert (Udemy)
- PostgreSQL for Everybody (Coursera)
- An Introductory Guide to SQL (Educative)
- The Complete SQL Bootcamp: Go from Zero to Hero (Udemy)
- Learn SQL (Codecademy)
- Introduction to SQL (Pluralsight)
- Building Basic Relational Databases in SQL Server Management Studio (Coursera)
1. The Ultimate MySQL Bootcamp: Go from SQL Beginner to Expert (Udemy)
The Ultimate MySQL Bootcamp by Colt Steele and Ian Schoonover is an all-in-one course that covers everything from the fundamental concepts of SQL to working with complex databases and performing data analytics. This culminates in a grand total of 38 hours of material, quizzes and projects.
Colt Steele is no stranger in the online course scene. With close to 1.4 million students, 350,000 of which are from this course alone, Colt has developed a massive following through his well-constructed and in-depth courses. This course is no exception.
The course builds the students’ fundamental knowledge to a great depth, not skipping on important explanations, and gets students to apply their knowledge to practical applications, even tasking students to answer company’s performances through data analysis. Students will be confident entering the industry after this course.
Furthermore, they have just updated the course in December 2022 with 325 new video lectures and several new topics.
Overview
The Course has approximately 38 hours of content and comes with a Certification.
- Learn the ins and outs of SQL syntax
- Generate reports using sales and user data
- Analyze data using Aggregate Functions
- Run complex queries using MySQL logical operators and string functions
- Write all the common SQL joins
- Work with large datasets containing thousands of entries
- Design and implement complex database schemas
- Learn to navigate the treacherous world of storing dates and times
- Clone the database structure of a photo sharing social network
- Work with MySQL 8.x Window Functions: RANK, LEAD, LAG, NTILE, etc.
- Create MySQL database views and virtual tables
- And much more!
Pricing
- $118.98 lifetime access with 30 day money back guarantee
- With Udemy Discounts: $21.98
What I Liked/Disliked About The Course
What I Liked:
- Extremely wide range of topics and tests the students knowledge with exercises throughout
- Colt is a fantastic teacher and provides lots of detailed information
- The course applies the students’ knowledge to real-world applications and gets them job ready
What I Disliked:
- The amount of content does not exactly reach “expert” level, but it is certainly more than enough for any beginner to be busy with for a long time.
Wrap Up
All in all, if you want a course that will cover all your bases and get you job ready with real world applications, this is the course for you.
2. PostgreSQL for Everybody (Coursera)
PostgreSQL for Everybody is a course offered by University of Michigan through Coursera and can be treated as a fully fledged course that would be akin to that from an actual university. It features a 4 month program that can be done at your own pace, with video lectures, readings, practice quizzes and assignments.
The course is taught by Charles Russell Severance, who has more than 3.6 million students to his name, and his quality of teaching shows through.
The course covers a great depth of topics, as you would come to expect from Coursera courses. With a large timeframe, the course spends a vast amount of time to solidify the students’ basics, which is perfect for a beginner course.
It ranges into advanced topics such as Natural Language Processing and database architecture, which will be more than enough for any learner to be kept busy for a long time.
Overview
The Course has approximately 4 months of content at 4 hours/week and comes with a Certification.
- Course 1: Database Design and Basic SQL in PostgreSQL
- Course 2: Intermediate PostgreSQL
- Course 3: JSON and Natural Language Processing in PostgreSQL
- Course 4: Database Architecture, Scale, and NoSQL with Elasticsearch
Pricing
- Can be enrolled for Free
- Professional Certificates from $39.99 a month (Coursera Subscriptions)
What I Liked/Disliked About The Course
What I Liked:
- Treated as a fully fledged course, endorsed by University of Michigan, and comes with a professional certificate
- Charles is an extremely experienced teacher and it shows in the course
- Extremely structured learning and good selection of topics
What I Disliked:
- Sizeable time investment that might not be suitable for some
Wrap Up
All in all, if you are looking for a professional option that can be used to boost your portfolio for job applications, this is the course for you.
3. An Introductory Guide to SQL (Educative)
Educative courses have started becoming increasingly popular with students due to their user friendliness and tailor-made to get students industry ready. They focus their courses around teaching useful material from the top software companies such as Meta and Google.
An Introductory Guide to SQL is their beginner course for getting started with SQL. As expected of an Educative course, the syllabus is extremely structured, providing comprehensive video lectures that are clearly categorized for each topic, making it extremely easy for students to follow and navigate.
It is packed with learning material, with a total of 98 lessons, 73 quizzes, 72 playgrounds (to test code) and 336 illustrations or diagrams. Furthermore, it prepares students with common SQL interview questions to build the students’ competence in interview readiness.
Overview
The Course has approximately 13 hours of content and comes with a Certification.
- Introduction to SQL
- Basic SQL
- Joins
- Nested Queries
- Multi Table Operations
- Views
- Stored Procedures
- Triggers
- Practice and Prep
- And much more!
Pricing
- $19.99 per month Educative subscription after a 7 day free trial
- Provides access to Educative’s features and over 500 courses
What I Liked/Disliked About The Course
What I Liked:
- The course focuses on getting students industry ready, touching on things such as interview readiness that is left out in many courses
- Extremely structured and easy to follow for newer programmers
- Educative has a great community of programmers and selection of follow-up courses
What I Disliked:
- Most of the practice and review questions are at the end of the course as opposed to throughout the course. Students just have to do their due diligence to do the practice questions regularly
Wrap Up
All in all, if you are looking for a compact and easy to follow course that will get you ready for job interviews, this is the course for you. Be well-versed with SQL in 1 to 2 days!
4. The Complete SQL Bootcamp: Go from Zero to Hero (Udemy)
The Complete SQL Bootcamp is another staple course from the well-known Jose Portilla. Jose Portilla is something of a legend in the online course scene, with over 3.1 million students, of which over 600,000 are from this course alone. His teaching expertise shows in this course.
The course is extremely beginner friendly and Jose handholds students from complete beginners to becoming comfortable working with SQL. He covers each topic in great depth, as to be expected from his courses, focusing on the fundamentals rather than a range of concepts. I think that is great for a beginner course.
Furthermore, he supplements the lessons with 3 assignments interspersed in the course, which serve as great review points for students to consolidate and test their knowledge. The course is also very hands-on oriented, which is great for many students and is what I would personally prefer.
Overview
The Course has approximately 9 hours of content and comes with a Certification.
- Get started with PostgreSQL and PgAdmin , two of the world’s most popular SQL tools
- Learn the basics of SQL syntax
- Analyzing data using aggregate functions with GROUP BY commands
- Running advanced queries with string operations and comparison oper+ations
- Learn to use logical operators to add logic flow to your SQL queries
- Learn common SQL JOIN commands
- Learn to create tables and databases with constraints on data entries
- Learn to use Python to further advanced your SQL skills
- and much, much more!
Pricing
- $138.98 lifetime access with 30 day money back guarantee
- With Udemy Discounts: $21.98
What I Liked/Disliked About The Course
What I Liked:
- Focuses more on solidifying the fundamental concepts rather than covering a wide range
- Takes a more hands-on approach, which is great for teaching beginner programmers
- Jose is an amazing teacher with an incredible repertoire
What I Disliked:
- For the price, perhaps several more topics could have been covered
Wrap Up
All in all, if you are looking for a digestible course that focuses on the fundamentals of SQL and covers topics in great detail, this is the course for you.
5. Learn SQL (Codecademy)
Learn SQL by Codecademy is a short and sweet course that can be finished in a single day to get students up and running with SQL. As expected of a Codecademy course, it is extremely user-friendly and easy to follow. For a beginner course, this is perfect to get students introduced to the world of SQL.
As a shorter course, it covers fewer topics. However, in the duration, students will learn more than enough to be able to get programming with SQL comfortably and be able to start their own projects. The course comes with 4 lessons, 5 projects and 4 quizzes.
As with other Codecademy courses, it is extremely well-structured and has a nice balance of teaching content and review questions/quizzes. For anyone who is brand new to programming, they would have no problems getting started.
Furthermore, Codecademy loves hands-on learning (As do I), and has built this course around that principle, resulting in a neat and comprehensive course.
Overview
The Course has approximately 8 hours of content and comes with a Certification (With Pro Subscription).
- Database Manipulation with SQL
- SQL Queries
- Aggregate Functions
- Creating and Manipulating Multiple Tables
- And much more!
Pricing
- Free to get started
- $19.99 per month for the Pro subscription that provides full access to Codecademy features
What I Liked/Disliked About The Course
What I Liked:
- Short and sweet and can be completed in a single day
- Hands-on approach from Codecademy is very effective for newer programmers
- Extremely user-friendly and easy to follow course structure
What I Disliked:
- Not a very wide range of topics. However, as an introductory course, it is most definitely sufficient
Wrap Up
All in all, if you are looking for a short and sweet course that will get you up and running with SQL that is hands-on and easy to follow, this is the course for you.
6. Introduction to SQL (Pluralsight)
Introduction to SQL by Jon Flanders on Pluralsight is one of the most popular programming courses offered by Pluralsight, with close to 4000 good reviews on the course. It covers the absolute basics of SQL in a short amount of time and will have students programming with SQL in around 3 hours.
As an introductory course, it definitely hits the mark in getting students familiar with the fundamentals of SQL programming, focusing mainly on querying and database manipulation. While it may not be as much information as other courses, it is a great foundation and a good starting point for students to explore other SQL courses offered by Pluralsight.
The course is extremely well-structured and digestible. It can be easily finished in a single seating by blasting through the video lectures. It would have been nice to see some review exercises. However, as a content-oriented course, it will serve as a good reference course for students to come back to for clarifying concepts.
Overview
The Course has approximately 3 hours of content and does not come with a Certification.
- Introduction to SQL
- Understanding Basic SQL syntax
- Querying Data with the SELECT Statement
- Filtering Results with the WHERE clause
- Shaping Results with ORDER BY and GROUP BY
- Matching Different Data Tables with JOINs
- Adding, Changing, and Removing Data
- Creating Database Tables
- And much more!
Pricing
- $29 per month Pluralsight Subscription after a 10 day free trial
- Comes with all of the Pluralsight features and courses
What I Liked/Disliked About The Course
What I Liked:
- Extremely digestible and easy to finish in a single seating
- Covers the basics of SQL in good detail
- Great course to set the foundation to move onto other courses from Pluralsight
What I Disliked:
- Not much hands-on exercises and questions
- Last update was over 4 years ago in 2017
Wrap Up
All in all, if you are looking for a solid starting point to progress from, this is a great course to get done and have you programming with SQL quickly.
7. Building Basic Relational Databases in SQL Server Management Studio (Coursera)
This is not so much a course offered by Coursera, but a guided project. Nevertheless, it serves as a great stepping stone for newer SQL programmers to get a project under their belt and apply their SQL knowledge to a practical application.
It is a short, 1 hour based project that is part of Coursera’s guided projects initiative. As mentioned, I think that hands-on learning is by far the best way for newer programmers to learn. If a student has some basic knowledge in SQL (from one of the other courses perhaps), this would be a great avenue to develop their skills.
Overview
This Guided Project has approximately 1 hour of content and does not come with a Certification.
- Load AdventureWorks database into SQL
- Create a database diagram using the Object Explorer window in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS).
- Create and run a simple structured query language (SQL) command to retrieve data from a table.
- Create and run a simple SQL command to create a table and columns.
- And more!
Pricing
- Guided projects start in Coursera for $9.99
What I Liked/Disliked About The Course
What I Liked:
- A great way to test and apply a student’s knowledge with SQL
- A short and sweet project to get done within a day
- Can be added to their portfolio for job applications
What I Disliked:
- None! It is a great investment of time and effort
Wrap Up
All in all, if you already have some knowledge in SQL, this would be a great next step to test and develop your skills.
What is SQL and Why Learn it?
If you are looking for a job in data, knowing SQL is essential. SQL is the most in-demand skill, listed in an incredible 61% of job posts and 1.7 times more than python in analyst roles.
SQL revolves around accessing, manipulating and processing data from databases into digestible results to be analyzed. In an increasingly data-driven world, these skills are becoming more and more sought-after.
Related: 27 Programming Languages You Should Learn in 2023 (Ranked)
Conclusion and Final Words
If you want to upskill and learn a new language, SQL is right up there as one of the most desired programming skills to have and can boost your workplace value tremendously.
With the courses listed above, any one of them will get you to programming with SQL confidently and comfortably. Many of them are also centered around getting you job and industry ready, which is perfect for landing you your next high-paying job.
Personally speaking, I can assure you that learning SQL will be a decision you will not regret and a simple time, money and effort investment can reap incredible returns. So let’s get started programming and creating!
Read More: 7 Best Python Courses For Beginners in 2023 (Ranked)
