Last Updated on February, 2025
Are you someone looking to learn a new skill or upgrade a particular skill? Or are you a course creator searching for an online learning platform to share your course?
If YES, you might have encountered Udemy and Skillshare, two competitive online learning platforms.
Now you are in a dilemma about which one is the best. Stop overthinking and keep reading the article.
In this article, I have given a detailed Udemy vs. Skillshare comparison that includes the course quality, instructors, pricing, customer reviews, and features.
After going through the article, you can choose the right platform effortlessly.
Let’s dive in.
Quick Summary
When deciding between Udemy and Skillshare, it is essential to carefully assess all relevant factors, including course availability, content, target audience, potential for earnings, and business plans.
Udemy offers more courses than Skillshare in a broader range of categories and has a larger user base, while Skillshare mainly focuses on creative skills and has a more engaged community.
Both platforms offer opportunities for course creators to earn passive income, but the process and potential earnings differ.
Contents
- Udemy Vs. Skillshare: In a Nutshell
- Udemy Vs. Skillshare: Features of Online Learning Platforms
- Udemy Vs. Skillshare: Overview
- Udemy Vs. Skillshare: Course Quality
- The Most Popular Online Courses on Udemy and Skillshare
- Free Courses At Udemy and Skillshare
- Udemy Vs. Skillshare: Online Learning Platform Design
- Udemy Vs. Skillshare: Instructor Quality
- Udemy Vs. Skillshare: Pricing
- Udemy Vs. Skillshare: Languages
- The Support System of Udemy Vs. Skillshare
- Certifications and Accreditations on Udemy And Skillshare
- How to Teach on Udemy and Skillshare?
- Factors to Consider While Choosing Between Udemy Vs. Skillshare
- Udemy Vs Skillshare: Which is the Best for Business?
- Key Differences Between Udemy and Skillshare
- Udemy Vs Skillshare: Which is the Most Popular Online Learning Platform?
- Pros and Cons of Udemy and Skillshare
- Udemy Vs. Skillshare: Alternatives
- FAQs
- Udemy Vs Skillshare: Which One is the Best for You?
The table below presents a brief summary of essential information about both platforms.
Aspect | Skillshare | Udemy |
Platform Type | Creative-oriented skills | Broad range of categories and skills |
Number of Users | Over 13 million | Over 64 million |
Course Selection | Creative skills such as design and cooking | Wide variety of fields, including business, IT, personal development, and more |
Free Courses | No free courses, but offers a free trial | Offers around 600 free courses |
Course Length | Short, bite-sized video lessons | Varies in length, often in-depth |
Subscription Plans | Monthly or annual subscription only | Individual course purchases or subscription plans |
Course Categories | Limited to creative categories | Diverse categories and subcategories |
Languages | Primarily in English | Courses offered in over 60 languages |
Platform Design | User-friendly but lacks some advanced features | Well-designed with advanced features |
Instructor Quality | Mostly industry experts and professionals | Open platform, anyone can become an instructor |
Pricing | Monthly or annual subscription plans | Individual course pricing and subscription plans |
Business Plans | Offers team plans for businesses | Offers team and enterprise plans for businesses |
Certificates | No course completion certificates | Course completion certificates available, but not accredited |
Earning Potential | Potential to earn based on video views | Potential to earn based on course sales and enrollments |
Community Engagement | Active community for learning | Less community engagement |
Below are some of the special features of Udemy and Skillshare.
Udemy Features
Udemy and Skillshare are two popular elearning platforms. Let’s have an overview of them before going into detail.
Udemy
Udemy is one of the most popular and oldest online learning platforms. It was started in 2009. It’s also one of the largest ed-tech companies of its kind.
Udemy has around 64 million users. It offers over 210,000 online courses in various fields such as personal development, business, IT & software, design, and music.
The specialty of Udemy is that you can buy individual courses or a subscription to access all the courses. Additionally, Udemy offers more than 500 free courses.
Did You Know: More than 80% of the Fortune 100 companies recommend Udemy to improve the valuable skills of their employees.
Learn more in our honest Udemy review.
Skillshare was founded in 2011 and is one of the largest online learning platforms for upskilling creative-oriented skills.
Skillshare has over 13 million users and around 40,000 creative courses related to creative skills such as cooking, filmmaking, content creation, graphic designing, music, and social media entrepreneurship.
The courses are divided based on the beginner, intermediate, and advanced skill levels. You must purchase a Skillshare subscription to access all the classes.
The lessons are short and easily digestible. Most of the courses are taught by the experts in the specific industries.
Learn more in our honest Skillshare review.
Now let me provide a rundown of both platforms Course Quality.
Udemy
Udemy offers more courses than Skillshare in a broader category.
Anyone with knowledge and experience can upload courses to Udemy. However, there are some standard guidelines, such as each course being 30 minutes long and having a minimum of 5 separate lectures.
Udemy courses don’t have projects at the end. They are more of an instructor talking with PowerPoint presentation videos. Udemy offers the option to upload quizzes and Q&As to increase student engagement.
The courses are published after review and evaluation.
Skillshare has fewer courses than Udemy, specifically to improve your creative skills. Skillshare courses are relatively short, varying between 30 minutes to 1 hour. Skillshare encourages short, bite-sized video classes.
At the end of each lesson, there’s a project for the student to apply the concepts. Professionals teach most courses, but anyone with the skill can upload courses to Skillshare. The courses are not reviewed before publication.
The course quality varies in both learning platforms according to the background and experience of the instructors.
How Can You Identify The Best Courses?
In Udemy, you can look for course reviews to find the best courses. Skillshare automatically filters the best courses, and they appear on the top.
Summary: The content quality varies in Udemy and Skillshare, but Udemy has more rigorous guidelines and standards for course publication than Skillshare.
Let’s compare Udemy Vs. Skillshare courses.
Udemy Courses
Udemy courses come under 13 categories and many subcategories.
The main categories are listed below:
Unlike Skillshare, Udemy has an advanced filter you can use while choosing a course. You can filter courses based on the student rating, video duration, topic, subcategory, level, price, and language.
Under each Udemy course, there is a video presentation about the course content, the instructor, available resources, and student reviews.
The courses are in prerecorded video formats, where the instructor will walk you through the lessons.
Following are some popular Udemy courses:
Skillshare offers courses in 3 main categories and many subcategories as follows.
Create: Animation, Creative Writing, Film and Video, Fine Art, Graphic Design, Illustration, Music, Photography, and Web Design.
Build: Freelance and Entrepreneurship, Marketing
Thrive: Lifestyle, Productivity
There are many filters to help you choose the right course. The topic, free vs paid methods, class duration, and the course creation date are some of them.
In addition, they are classified as beginner, intermediate, and advanced according to the learners’ opinions. It makes the course selection process more manageable.
There’s also a review section to get more ideas about the course. Under each course, information about the class structure, a video about the course and instructor, and other resources are mentioned.
Following are some popular courses on Skillshare:
Are there any courses try out withou paying in Udemy or Skillshare? Let’s find out.
Udemy Free Courses
Udemy offers around 600 free courses with limited features.
This means you gain access to the course, but you can’t get certifications, access to Q&A sessions, or direct messaging. In short, you will get a partial learning experience.
Skillshare doesn’t offer access to any course without paying first.
You must sign up for the premium plan and get a one-month free trial. You gain access to all the creative courses and other available resources during this period. You can cancel the plan before the trial ends, so you don’t have to pay any money.
Before browsing through the platform, you must sign up. So ,here’s a quick rundown of the registration process before moving to the platform designs.
Both Udemy and Skillshare have almost the same registration process, which is super easy. You can sign up through your Gmail, Facebook, Apple, or Email account.
Now, about the interface.
Udemy
Udemy has a well-designed, easily navigable platform. There are separate tabs to save the course you create and learn.
While playing an online course video, you can adjust the play speed, video quality, and subtitles and add notes whenever necessary.
The course chapters are on the right-hand sidebar. You can tick off the lessons after completing each one.
Skillshare also has a well-designed platform like Udemy, but it’s less advanced than Udemy.
Why?
Skillshare lacks unique features, such as adjusting the video quality and subtitle management.
The right-hand sidebar lists the course chapters, but you don’t have an option to tick them off.
You can access Udemy and Skillshare platforms through any browser on a desktop or laptop. It’s also available as an app on iOS and Android devices.
Summary: Udemy and Skillshare have well-organized, easy-to-use platform designs. Udemy has much more advanced features than Skillshare.
The instructor quality decides the quality of the course in any online learning platform. So, you must know about the instructors before choosing a course.
Udemy
Udemy is an open online learning platform where anyone with the skill, knowledge, and passion can create, upload, and share a course. The course videos must align with the given guidelines.
Most Udemy teachers are professors, Tech CEOs, and industry experts.
For example:
A team of Udemy instructors creates Udemy’s official courses.
Similar to Udemy, Skillshare is also an open platform. Anyone can create and upload an online course onto the platform by following the guidelines.
Most of the courses on Skillshare are designed by industry experts.
Some of them are:
Skillshare creates its courses by teaming up with professionals and successful companies. These courses are called Skillshare Originals.
Now, how will you ensure the instructor’s quality?
Summary: Anyone can upload a course to Udemy or Skillshare, but professionals, experts, and CEOs conduct most lessons on both platforms.
Below is everything you need to know about the cost of each platform.
Udemy
In Udemy, you can buy an individual course or go for a subscription plan.
The price of an individual course varies from $12.99 to $199. If you purchase an individual course, you get lifetime access to that particular course and the course material.
If you’re unsatisfied with Udemy, you can request a refund within 30 days. (More about Udemy Refund policy here.)
Now about the subscriptions;
The monthly or annual subscription plan gives access to 11,000+ top courses, practice tests, exercises, and Q&A sessions. A monthly subscription costs $20; you can cancel it anytime.
In Skillshare, you can’t purchase an individual course like Udemy; instead, you must buy a premium plan.
The premium plan can be monthly or annual, giving access to all their courses, community forums, and the flexibility to study offline.
Looking at the cost, you will need to splash $29 per month or go for the annual plan which comes in at $99 (around $8.25 per month) to gain access.
The yearly plan is cheaper. On top of that, you have a 30-day free trial to check if the platform is suitable for you.
Both Udemy and Skillshare offer special discounts and coupon codes at certain times of the year. These offers can save you a few extra bucks.
If you are looking for a particular single course, purchasing that specific course on Udemy is better. A subscription plan works better if you want to study continuously and learn new skills.
Summary: Udemy has single course purchases and subscription plans, while Skillshare offers only subscriptions.
Udemy offers courses in more than 60 languages, including Italian, French, Turkish, and others.
You can use the languages filter option to select the language you prefer. For some courses offered in English, you can add subtitles in a different language.
Even though Skillshare encourages teaching courses in any language, almost all the courses are available only in English.
Udemy and Skillshare have a community forum to share your ideas and discuss with fellow learners, but there are some differences.
Udemy is designed for people to work independently, whereas most Skillshare classes are community-based. It means you have a tight-knit community or fellow learners with whom you can study together.
The Skillshare community is more engaged, with fewer users and courses than Udemy. An involved community is a stand-out feature of Skillshare.
Now, about customer support.
Udemy has well-organized tutorials to guide you through the system, prices, and other issues. So you’ll be able to read and understand everything correctly. If you need any extra help, you can email them at [email protected].
As with all large platforms, the reply will take much time. You may sometimes have to send emails repeatedly to get a response.
Skillshare is the opposite of Udemy. Its tutorial could be less descriptive, but Skillshare has excellent customer service. You can send your queries to [email protected], and you’ll get a response quite fast.
Summary: Skillshare is an online learning platform that has an engaging community and excellent customer support, while Udemy’s customer support takes longer to respond due to the large size of the platform.
After completing a course, you can download your course completion certificate from Udemy.
However, these certificates don’t have any real formal value because Udemy is not an accredited institution.
You can’t put these certifications on your resume for a job hunt. Still, these courses are helpful to hone your skills and succeed in your careers.
Skillshare doesn’t offer a certificate after completing a course.
Summary: Completion certificates are offered by Udemy and not by Skillshare.
So far, we have discussed the facts that learners must know about Udemy and Skillshare. Now, let’s talk about course creation.
As you already know, both Skillshare and Udemy are open platforms. So anyone can create courses and earn money.
On Udemy, you can publish any number of free and paid courses. Your commission will be based on the number of videos sold, and you’ll not get commissions for free courses.
On Skillshare, teachers earn money based on a royalty system. If more students watch your videos, you’ll make more money.
So Skillshare and Udemy are good ways to earn a passive income. Udemy has a higher earning potential with its large user base, but the competition is also high.
Uploading a course to Udemy or Skillshare is a simple process. I’ll walk you through the steps.
Create a Course on Udemy
Under each video, you can also add extra resources such as practice questions and assessments. You can also break up your videos and add them as different sections.
If you publish a paid course, you must fill in more information and become a premium instructor.
Udemy has many resources to guide you through the process of course creation. Ensure you go through them for the best results.
Create a Course on Skillshare
Skillshare doesn’t allow you to upload additional resources, which helps you to save time.
If you are a course creator, you might wonder which online learning platform is the best to publish your course; here’s the answer.
Consider the Time Available for You
You need to invest 3-5 hours per week to create and upload a course on Udemy for a couple of months.
In Skillshare, you can record, edit, and upload an entire system within a few hours. If you have limited time, Skillshare is a better option.
Course Content
Ask yourself what type of content you are planning to create.
If you want to record bite-sized, short videos for surface learning, choose Skillshare. If you want to offer in-depth lessons with additional resources such as assessments and quizzes, go for Udemy.
Think About Your Target Students
Get in the shoes of your students. What do they want? How do they learn? Which platform is the best for them? Answer the above questions before recording a course.
If your students are creative and require a more practical-based approach, Skillshare is better than Udemy. If your students are super busy business owners and professionals, then Udemy is the best.
Earning Potential
You publish an online course mainly to earn an extra income. So you must consider the income potential.
As you already know, Udemy has more earning potential due to its more extensive user base, even though the platform is competitive.
Consider the four main factors above and choose the best learning platform to publish your course.
Udemy and Skillshare offer team plans for companies needing to upskill their employee’s skills.
Udemy
Udemy has two business plans.
Team Plan: Access to 6,500 courses for up to 20 users. $360 per person annually.
Enterprise Plan: Access to custom courses for more than 20 users. The price varies according to the number of people.
In addition, there’s a leadership development plan with more than 100 executive-level video lessons, live events, and AI analytics.
Here’s my honest review of Udemy for Business if you want to learn more.
Skillshare offers three types of business plans as below;
Starter Plan: Unlimited access to all its courses for 19 people. It costs $159 per person annually.
Enterprise plan: Suitable for 20-50 users. You can access all available courses and additional benefits like a separate accounts manager and reporting facilities. The price is customizable.
Revive Plan: Suitable for companies with more than 50 people. It has the benefits of the enterprise plan and some other extra perks. Again, the price is not fixed.
Summary: Skillshare team plans are much cheaper, but if you’re specifically looking for leadership development, Udemy is the best.
We discussed Udemy and Skillshare in detail.
I’ll summarize the key differences between the two:
Udemy is one of the most popular and most prominent online learning platforms.
Udemy provides many courses in various niches and over 60 languages, while the courses on Skillshare are limited to entrepreneurs and creatives.
So, Udemy targets a broader audience than Skillshare. Hence, Udemy has more than 64 million users, and Skillshare has only 13 million users. Udemy is far more popular.
There are benefits and downsides to Udemy and Skillshare. Keep reading to find out.
Udemy Pros and Cons
Pros
Cons
Pros
Cons
Udemy and Skillshare are just some of the options for online learning platforms. There are many others. Here’s a brief overview of some alternative online learning platforms.
Coursera
Coursera is among the most prestigious e-learning platforms, collaborating with many accredited universities and organizations.
Coursera offers multiple masters courses, university courses, and hands-on projects in various fields, such as computer science, life science, business, health, arts, and humanities. Coursera also has degree programs and master’s courses available.
If you’re looking for verified certificates, Coursera is the best choice. Many unpaid courses are available on Coursera, but to earn a certificate, you must pay.
edX
edX is another platform similar to Coursera. It collaborates with leading universities like Harvard, Texas, and MIT.
edX offers multiple courses on business, leadership, management, accounting, and finance fields. You can learn some courses for free, but you’ll have to pay to earn a certificate. The certificates of edX are accredited.
MasterClass
MasterClass is a streaming platform focusing on gaining experience rather than academic learning.
There are more than 180 cooking, writing, acting, music, and sports courses. The world’s best celebrities teach the classes in their respective fields. MasterClass is a subscription-based platform, so you can’t purchase single courses.
Other comparisons you might want to read:
- Codecademy platform vs Udemy platform
- Pluralsight platform vs Udemy platform
- Udemy platform vs Coursera platform
FAQs
Both Skillshare and Udemy offer quality courses at affordable prices. If you’re looking for a more comprehensive selection of classes with the opportunity to purchase courses individually, Udemy is the best for you.
If you want to learn creative skills, improve your existing skills, or streamline your business operation, Skillshare is the right choice.
Consider your learning needs, learning styles, time availability, and budget before investing.
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