11 Best Free AI Prompting Courses for 2026 (Beginner to Advanced)

From content creation to education and business, AI is everywhere today! But at the heart of it all is AI prompting! You simply type in a few words, and boom, you get an instant output! When you tweak your words a little, the output changes dramatically! 

Well, that’s the magic of prompting. And if you’ve been struggling to craft effective prompts to get the most out of AI tools, you’re in the right place! 

In this article, I’ll walk you through the 11 Best Free AI Prompting Courses for 2026. These are ideal for beginners, intermediate users, and even seasoned professionals looking to sharpen their skills.

So, are you ready to unlock the true power of AI and write better prompts? Let’s get started!

11 Best Free AI Prompting Courses (2026)

11 Best Free AI Prompting Courses

1) ChatGPT for Everyone

ChatGPT for Everyone is one of the most popular and widely taken courses with 82k+ learners around the globe. It’s offered by Learn Prompting and was created in collaboration with OpenAI. 

Instructed by popular faces like Sander Schulhoff and Shyamal Anadkat, this short 1-hour course is designed for beginners. It takes you through the fundamentals of ChatGPT -the initial setup, basics of prompt creation, its real-world use cases, AI safety, and its limitations. 

The only downside is that you don’t get a certificate for free. To earn a certificate, you need to upgrade to its paid subscription for $21/month. Overall, if you are a beginner, student, AI enthusiast, or even just curious about AI, this course is perfect for you! 

2) Google Prompting Essentials

Google Prompting Essentials is an esteemed course offered by Google. It is hosted on Coursera and is designed for beginners with no AI experience. Taught by AI experts from Google, this course shares a 5-step prompting framework to generate effective outputs.

It also explains multimodal prompting techniques, prompt chaining, and how to build reusable prompt libraries. It is designed to be completed within 6 to 10 hours. However, to get a certificate, you’ll need to purchase the Google Career Certificates subscription for $49/month. 

So, if you want to specifically learn to write better prompts for everyday use cases, like creating content, analyzing data, or summarizing text, do check out this course! 

3) OpenAI Prompt Engineering Best Practices

Next, we have a simple, straightforward, yet effective guide from OpenAI. It basically shares the best prompting practices and offers tips on providing clear and effective instructions to OpenAI models. 

The entire guide is designed for beginners and is easy to follow. You’ll be able to read through it and implement the tips in under 10-15 minutes. I liked how each point is explained clearly with real-world examples. 

If you want a practical and hands-on guide to learn the basics of constructing a good prompt, this guide is the right fit for you! However, it doesn’t provide any certifications. 

4) Introduction to Prompt Engineering 

This is another popular course offered by Learn Prompting that revolves around fundamental concepts of ChatGPT. With over 48k learners enrolled, this course is designed for complete beginners. It’s taught by Sander Schulhoff and Fady Yanni, the founder and co-founder of Learn Prompting! 

It dives deeper into elements of a good prompt, how large-language models like ChatGPT work. It also offers various problem-solving techniques and shares how to manage your outputs, handle hallucinations, and biases.  

It’s a self-paced course that you’ll be able to complete within 3 days. If you’re a beginner, student, business professional, content writer, educator, or AI enthusiast, this insightful course will help you get equipped with the basics of good prompting.

5) Prompt Engineering for ChatGPT

Prompt Engineering for ChatGPT is a free course offered by Vanderbilt University through Coursera. It is designed for beginners and would take about 18 hours to complete. Taught by one of the top instructors, Dr. Jules White, this course has over 487k learners enrolled in it! 

This insightful course walks you through 6 modules covering introduction to prompts, different prompt patterns and types with real examples, and the process of creating prompt-based applications to simplify different areas of your life, education, and business. 

By taking this course, you’ll not only learn the latest concepts from the experts, but also develop skills and expertise required for many modern jobs today. So, if you’re preparing for jobs around AI skills, do check it out! However, certificates of completion are only available with paid plans. 

6) Generative AI: Prompt Engineering Basics 

Generative AI: Prompt Engineering Basics is a well-known course among the AI community. Offered by IBM through Coursera, this course has over 351k learners and a 4.8-star rating. It’s taught by esteemed instructors like Antonio Cangiano and Rav Ahuja of IBM.

In this 9-hour course focused on beginners, you’ll get to learn the basic concepts and best practices of prompt engineering. It alsos explores different prompt techniques, like zero-shot prompting, few-shot prompting, chain-of-thought prompting, and more, and explore common prompt engineering tools. 

The certificate is only available with a paid subscription, though. Overall, if you want to learn the different methods of prompting to get the best outputs out of an AI model, this is the course you should go to! 

7) Prompt Engineering for ChatGPT

Prompt Engineering for ChatGPT is another free course offered by Great Learning. Focused towards beginners, it has garnered over 1.1 lakh learners and has a 4.57-star rating! 

It’s a fairly short, self-paced course that’ll take you about 2.25 hours to finish. It starts with an introduction to Generative AI, LLMs, and their working. It also covers the basic concepts of prompt engineering and the process of creating simple and advanced prompts with examples. 

Finally, it also touches on different applications of prompt engineering that align with prompting errors and limitations. So, if you want a well-rounded course on all the aspects of AI prompting, this is the one you should go with! 

After finishing the course, you can get your certificate by paying a non-refundable certificate fee. So, if you want to refresh your fundamental concepts of prompting, you should definitely enroll in this course. 

8) Google Cloud Prompt Engineering Guide

The Google Cloud Prompt Engineering Guide is offered by the Google Cloud Skills Boost platform. It’s a short introductory guide of 45 minutes, comprising a short video and a quiz. 

This guide will help you learn what generative AI tools, how they work, and how LLMs are trained. You’ll also explore the elements and types of prompts and best practices. Finally, you’ll learn how to combine prompt engineering with Google Cloud knowledge to enhance Gemini outputs. 

It doesn’t offer a certificate. But by the end of the guide, you will earn a badge of completion that you can share with your social network! So, if you primarily work with Gemini and need a quick guide to polish your basics, this guide will be of value to you. 

9) ChatGPT Prompt Engineering

ChatGPT Prompt Engineering is a free course on Udemy catering to complete beginners. It is quite a popular course with over 35k learners enrolled and a 4-star rating! 

In this 1-hour course, you will learn the key terms around prompting, the elements of a good prompt, different types of prompts, limitations of LLMs, essentials of writing effective prompts, and more. This course stands out by implementing real-life examples to explain complex concepts. 

By taking this course, you can brush up on the basics of AI prompting. However, you won’t get a certificate of completion for free courses. 

10) Prompt Engineering Guide

As is clear from the name itself, this is a prompt engineering guide by Elvis Saravia (co-founder of DAIR.ai). This is a text-based guide designed for intermediate-level learners and would take several hours to complete. 

In this comprehensive guide, you can learn the basics of prompting, tips for designing prompts, different types of prompting techniques, AI agents, how to optimize prompts, image generation, fine-tuning GPT-4o, and also read about all popular AI models and their capabilities. 

So, if you already have some exposure to AI tools and want to dive into the intricacies and get better at your craft, this course is perfect for you. It will help you effectively command AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, Claude, and more. But you don’t get a certificate with it. 

11) ChatGPT Prompt Engineering for Developers 

ChatGPT Prompt Engineering for Developers is a value-packed course offered by Deep Learning AI in partnership with OpenAI. It is led by popular names like Isa Fulford and Andrew Ng, so you’re sure to learn exciting things! 

This course is designed for developers, so you will require a basic knowledge of Python before starting with it. It delves into the best practices of prompt engineering, iterative prompt design, hands-on coding examples, and also shows you how to design a custom chatbot. 

It’s a fairly short course that would take about 1.5 hours to complete. However, you won’t get a certificate after completing this course. If you are a software developer or a coder interested in learning prompt engineering, give this course a try! 

Bonus: AI Image Prompting Guide by Let’s Enhance

Now that you’ve followed through with me to the end of the article, I have a bonus recommendation for you! It’s an AI Image Prompting Guide by Let’s Enhance. 

Most people today struggle with generating good images with AI. Whether you’re a beginner or a professional, this guide will teach you the basics of writing good image prompts. I loved the way it clarifies prompt engineering concepts using visual examples. 

This guide can help you create captivating images with AI image generators like Midjourney, Dall-E, Stable diffusion, Flux, etc. So, if you are a graphic designer, content creator, or social media enthusiast, you’ll find it valuable.

Why Should You Learn AI Prompting?

Today, the world revolves around artificial intelligence. With tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Midjourney becoming commonplace, AI prompting is quickly becoming a valuable skill. Let’s explore why you should consider learning AI prompting. 

1) More Control Over AI Tools

Are you tired of getting generic outputs from AI tools? Well, learning the art of AI prompting can help you get more precise and accurate results. This skill can help you understand the ways to tweak your prompts to produce effective outcomes. 

2) Boosts Productivity

Whether you are a student or a professional, learning the art of AI prompting can help you save a ton of time. You can easily create content, draft emails, perform research, generate summaries, and even create images in seconds.

3) Remain Competitive in the Job Market

You may have noticed that employers are seeking candidates who have a command of AI skills. AI prompting is becoming a desirable skill in fields like education, technology, marketing, management, etc. Learning this valuable skill can help you stand out amongst your competitors. 

Conclusion

In this article, we looked at some of the Best Free AI Prompting Courses. I hope this comprehensive guide helped you discover the perfect prompt engineering course to enhance your learning, whether you’re just starting or are an AI professional dealing with advanced concepts. 

Anyway, which course caught your attention from our list? And what sparked your interest in learning AI prompting? Share with me in the comments section below. This is Kripesh, taking your leave. I’ll be back with more insightful posts soon. Cheers. 🙂