Top 5 Free Coursera Courses for SQL and Database in 2024 - Best of Lot [UPDATED]

Hello guys, if you want to learn SQL and Database and looking for best free resources like books, online courses and websites then you have come tot he right place. Earlier, I have shared best SQL courses, SQL books, and best websites to learn SQL and in this article, I am going to share best free SQL courses from Coursera, one of the best place to learn technical skill from world's top university and companies online. While many people are familiar with Coursera courses and certifications then don't know that most of the Coursera courses can be taken for free-to-audit where you can watch them for free without enrolling on specialization or professional certification. Only thing is you don't have access to quizzes and exercise sand you don't get certificate but you can still learn from worlds' top trainers and instructors. 

SQL is always been one of the most essential skill for programmers and Software developer but in today's world of data, it has become even more important. 

For example, If a company has a huge data collected from their customers or any other sources and wants to get meaningful and insight into these data for making decisions in the future, they probably need to hire a data scientist to help them achieve that goal. 

Nowadays, data science jobs have a huge demand from companies worldwide, and millions of jobs are listed to hire a data scientist.

Data scientists need to learn many skills such as python programming language, mathematic, statistics, and don’t forget the easy and simple language called SQL that is almost required by anyone who wants to dive into data-related jobs like analysis or big data engineer.

SQL language is used to interact with the database and extract the data stored to analyze data and make decisions. It can also link tables together and make new tables inside the database, and more. 

This article will show you the best FREE courses from the Coursera platform to help you learn this language in a short amount of time.

5 Best Free Coursera Courses to learn SQL and Database in 2024

Without wasting any more of you time, here is a list of best free SQL and Database courses from Coursera. These courses are created by world's' top universities and big companies and taught by expert trainers and instructors. 

You can join these courses for free-to-audit, where you get free access to the course for learning but you cannot do exercises, assessments, and quizzes and you won't get any certificate. 

If you need to certificate then you need to join corresponding specialization or professional certificate individually or need a membership like Coursera Plus which gives unlimited access of more than 7000+ Coursera courses, projects, and certifications

1. Introduction to Structured Query Language [Free-to-audit]

This course is provided by Michigan University and is considered one of the best courses to learn SQL. You will first, start by installing the MAMP program commonly used by CMS programs like WordPress and XAMPP to create a PHP development environment.

Next, after setting up all of the requirements, you will begin learning the SQL language. You will see the basic operations and the data types in SQL. Then, you will move to database design and learn things such as normalization and foreign keys and building a physical data schema.  This course is also part of Web Design for Everybody specialization. 

Finally, you will learn the relationship between tables and the many-to-many relationships. This free SQL course is offered by University of Michigan and its one of the highest rated SQL course on Coursera with on average 4.8 rating and ore than 140K students have already joined this course.

Overall one of the best course to learn SQL on Coursera and suitable for all kind of people like programmer and data scientist, and beginners and experienced. 

2. SQL for Data Science with R [Free]

This course offered by IBM is greater for data scientists who want to learn SQL language and have some experience with R programming language. You will learn basic SQL statements like SELECT & INSERT commands and delete and update rows in a live database.

Later you will understand the concepts and relationships between the tables and datasets and discover the SQL statements that allow you to manipulate them. You will also understand some intermediate SQL commands and be a little bit professional in using this language. 

Finally, learn how to use the R programming language with the database. This course is offered by IBM, one of the oldest and top software development  and consultancy company

3. Analyzing Big Data with SQL [Free]

Big data is referred to the large and complex datasets stored in a database that traditional analysis software can’t manage. This course will help you achieve this using the SQL language, starting by learning some simple SQL statements like SELECT commands and understanding different SQL interfaces.

Later, you will see the SELECT statement list, expressions, operators, data types, data types conversion. Next, you will move to filter data and learn comparison operators, logical operators, and conditional functions. 

You will also see grouping and aggregating data, learning different grouping expressions, sorting your data, and limiting your data. This course is offered by Cloudera, one of the top Big Data company. Talking about social proof, its one of the highest rated course with on average 4.9 rating and 22K students. 

4. Foundations for Big Data Analysis with SQL

Another great course for learning the SQL language alongside big data and learning this last is a big advantage since you are going to work with data, and you will start by getting a picture or a view of what is data and databases and why you organize your data and the relational databases and running some simple SQL commands.

Next, you will move to the relational databases and learn things like NULL values, the different data types, the primary & foreign keys, database normalization, and more. Then you will deep dive into more about big data and the distributed storage, distributed processing, unstructured data, and some SQL tools for big data analysis.

Talking about social proof, more than 43K students have joined this course and it has on average 4.8 rating which is amazing.  Both these courses are also part of the Modern Big Data Analysis with SQL Specialization and completing this course will count towards it. 

5. Database Design and Basic SQL in PostgreSQL

Many environments out there where you can use SQL in such as MySQL, NoSQL, and PostgreSQL, and this course is going to teach you how to use it in PostgreSQL, starting by learning the history of relational databases and how to use a service called pythonanywhere.com to run SQL commands.

Next, you will start working with tables and PostgreSQL environment, understand its data types and understanding many SQL commands such as inserting rows and sorting data. You will also learn about the one-to-many data models and the relational database design and database normalization and many-to-many relationship, and its database design.

Talking about social proof, more than 15K students have joined this best PostgreSQL course on Coursera and it has on average 4.8 rating which is amazing.  This course is also part of the PostgreSQL for Everybody Specialization, which means completing this course will count towards that certification. 

That's all about the best free Coursera courses to learn SQL in 2024. If you want to learn SQL and Database skills and love Coursera courses then you will also love these SQL Courses from top universities and companies around the world. 

So this is all for the best SQL courses in their target newbies in this language, but you need to learn more about this language and there is more to cover if you want to have a career in a job that needs you SQL like a data scientist.

By the way, If you are planning to join multiple Coursera courses or specializations, then consider taking a Coursera Plus subscription which provides you unlimited access to their most popular courses, specialization, professional certificate, and guided projects. It costs around $59/ per month but is worth it because you get access to more than 7000+ courses and projects, and you can also get unlimited certificates.

Other Coursera and Programming Articles you may like

• Top 10 Courses Courses for Programmers in 2024
• 15 Free Coursera Courses for IT Professionals
• Coursera Plus Review - A better way to learn on Coursera
• 18 Coursera Courses to learn from top Tech Companies like Google and IBM
• Top 10 Coursera Projects for Programmers and Developers
• Top 10 Coursera Certifications to start your career
• Top 5 Computer Science Degrees you can join online on Coursera
• Udemy vs. Coursera? which is better to learn Tech and Programming
• Does Coursera Certificates helps in Job and Career
• 7 Best Johns Hopkins Data Science Certifications on Coursera
• 5 Best Coursera Professional Certificates for Programmers
• 8 Projects You can do to learn Python in 2024
• 5 Data Science degrees you can earn on Coursera Online
• 10 Data Science and Machine Learning Certifications from Coursera 
• 10 best Data Analysis course on Coursera

Thanks for reading this article. If you like these best free Coursera courses to learn SQL then, please share them with your friends and colleagues. If you have any questions or feedback, then please drop a note.

P. S. - If you are fan of Udemy courses and looking for best SQL and Database course from Udemy then you can also check out this list of best SQL Courses where I have shared both Udemy and Pluralsight courses to learn SQL in depth.