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Free SQL Certification: The 9 Best Free Certificates, Ranked

By Owen Middleton · Updated November 2026

Yes, you can get a SQL certificate for free, but on many "free SQL course with certificate" offers, you pay for the certificate.

If you are new to SQL, take Coddy SQL Fundamentals. Of the free certificate courses that we did not build, we give it the highest score: rank 2, with 9 of 12 points. You learn SQL online free, you write and run SQL in every lesson up to window functions, and Coddy says that anyone can check your certificate by its ID. The limits: on the free plan, Coddy sets a daily limit on how much you can do, and in the Fundamentals section, you also answer 360 quiz questions, not only SQL challenges.

If you already write SQL, take HackerRank's free SQL test. In SQL (Basic), you get 30 minutes for 2 questions, and HackerRank gives each certificate a public page that anyone can open with no account. We give it rank 2 too, with 9 of 12 points.

We make SQLMaxx Learn, and we put its certificate through the same tests as the other eight. We give it rank 1, with 11 of 12 points, and we take one point away on the exam test: you take no exam for it.

For a data analyst who wants a free SQL certification with BigQuery, take Kaggle Intro to SQL and Advanced SQL, from a Google company, if you know some Python. We give it rank 5, with 7 of 12 points.

Our take. With a test certificate and with a course certificate, you show an employer different things, so first decide which one you need. If you are learning SQL from the start, we would earn a course certificate where you write and run queries in each lesson, not one for videos only. For a place to start that we did not build, we would pick Coddy: you learn up to window functions, and you can share the certificate ID. Once you can write joins and GROUP BY, we would also take HackerRank's free SQL (Basic) test, because anyone can open your HackerRank certificate page with no account. We would not pay for a certificate from a "free" course until you have one of these.

Free SQL certifications compared

The 9 best free SQL certifications
Rank	Certificate	Kind	To earn it	Score	Earning (×2)	Exam	Depth	Public check	Access	Updated
1	SQLMaxx LearnWe make it	Course	Master 66 lessons, a graded problem in each	11 / 12	4	0	2	2	2	1
2	Coddy SQL Fundamentals how we know	Course	Finish a section's lessons and challenges	9 / 12	2	0	2	2	2	1
2	HackerRank SQL certificates how we know	Test	Timed test, 2 questions	9 / 12	2	1	2	2	2	0
4	LearnSQL.com Certificate of Competency in SQL how we know	Test	Test of 18 tasks, 70% to pass	8 / 12	2	1	2	1	2	0
5	Kaggle Intro to SQL and Advanced SQL how we know	Course	"Correct" on every exercise question	7 / 12	2	0	1	2	2	0
6	Cognitive Class SQL and Relational Databases 101 how we know	Course	Review questions and a 1-hour exam	6 / 12	2	1	1	0	2	0
6	freeCodeCamp Relational Databases how we know	Course	Five projects and a 50-question exam	6 / 12	2	1	1	1	1	0
8	Oracle Dev Gym Databases for Developers: Foundations how we know	Course	All exercises: videos, tutorials, quizzes	5 / 12	2	0	1	0	2	0
9	Simplilearn SkillUp SQL how we know	Course	Video lessons; requirements not listed	3 / 12	0	0	1	1	1	0

"Earning (×2)" is what you do to earn it, counted two times. "Exam" is a test that you must pass. "Depth" is the SQL depth that you must reach. "Public check" means that anyone can check it. "Access" is no installation and no time limit. "Updated" is a date of change in the last two years. The full rules are in how we checked the free SQL certifications.

Our own certificate is above Coddy and HackerRank because of the earning test, which we count two times. We built the grader of SQLMaxx Learn, so we know that you get a grade on the result of each query. For the other certificates, we score what each company says or publishes about its checks, and we gain from this difference. Coddy says that it grades each challenge, but you also answer quizzes, and we found no statement from Coddy on what it checks when it grades. We found no statement on what HackerRank checks in its certification tests.

The free SQL certifications, one by one

1. SQLMaxx Learn

Made by SQLMaxx

Best for beginners who want a grade on every query, from SELECT to window functions

Cost: Free; all 66 lessons, all 615 practice problems and the certificate
Public check: Its own public page at sqlmaxx.com/verify/, with no account
What decides it: A grade on the result of every query, but no exam
Strength: You master all 66 lessons and solve a graded PostgreSQL problem in each.
Limit: You take no exam, and you need an account to claim the certificate.

Score: 11 of 12 points.

Go to SQLMaxx Learn

To try one lesson before you sign up, learn ORDER BY and Result Sorting in lesson 7.

2. Coddy SQL Fundamentals

Best for a free course up to window functions, with a checkable certificate ID

Cost: Free; on the free plan, Coddy sets a daily limit on how much you can do
To earn it: Finish every lesson and challenge in a section; Coddy gives a certificate for each section
Public check: A unique ID and a public URL, in Coddy's own words
Limit: You run SQL on SQLite and get 360 quiz questions too; we found no final test and no statement on what Coddy checks.

how we know

Score: 9 of 12 points.

Go to Coddy SQL Fundamentals

2. HackerRank SQL certificates

Best for proving the SQL that you know now, in a short timed test

Cost: Free, at all three levels
To earn it: 2 questions per test: 30 minutes for SQL (Basic), 35 for Intermediate, 1 hour for Advanced
Test rules: You can retry after 30 days, and HackerRank keeps failed attempts private; you agree to use no other websites or AI tools
Public check: HackerRank gives each certificate its own page; we opened six with no account
Limit: For SQL (Basic), HackerRank lists simple queries, relationships and aggregators. HackerRank names joins, subqueries and window functions only for the higher levels.

how we know

Score: 9 of 12 points.

Go to HackerRank SQL certificates

4. LearnSQL.com Certificate of Competency in SQL

Best for a free test of 18 hands-on tasks, up to recursive queries

Cost: Free; you make a free account first
To earn it: A score of at least 70%
Public check: Only your PDF or LinkedIn post; we found no public verification page
Limit: You pass at 70%. LearnSQL.com says that a certificate "may be verified", but we found no public page for this.

how we know

Score: 8 of 12 points.

Go to LearnSQL.com Certificate of Competency in SQL

5. Kaggle Intro to SQL and Advanced SQL

Best for a data analyst who wants BigQuery, if you know some Python

Cost: Free
To earn it: A "Correct" result on every exercise question
Public check: A public page by user name and course; we opened one with no account
Size: Two short courses, about 3 and 4 hours
Limit: You write queries inside Python notebooks, and some graded answers are numbers, a table name or a Python list.

how we know

Score: 7 of 12 points.

Go to Kaggle Intro to SQL and Advanced SQL

6. Cognitive Class SQL and Relational Databases 101

Best for a short course with a timed final exam

Cost: Free, with a Cognitive Class account
To earn it: Review questions and a final exam; in most courses, you pass at 70%
Public check: We found no way
Limit: A 1-hour final exam, but we found no lesson after joins and grouping.

how we know

Score: 6 of 12 points.

Go to Cognitive Class SQL and Relational Databases 101

6. freeCodeCamp Relational Databases

Best for PostgreSQL projects and a closed-book exam

Cost: Free, with the exam
To earn it: Five projects and a 50-question exam; one try each week
Public check: A link; you can open the page with no account only if its owner keeps it public
Limit: You work in GitHub Codespaces, Ona or on your own computer, not in the regular freeCodeCamp editor.

how we know

Score: 6 of 12 points.

Go to freeCodeCamp Relational Databases

8. Oracle Dev Gym Databases for Developers: Foundations

Best for Oracle SQL, with lifetime access and no database of your own

Cost: Free, with an Oracle Account
To earn it: Complete all the exercises in 12 modules
Public check: We found no statement
Limit: Videos, tutorials and quizzes, and no module on subqueries or window functions.

how we know

Score: 5 of 12 points.

Go to Oracle Dev Gym Databases for Developers: Foundations

9. Simplilearn SkillUp SQL

Best for a 7-hour video course

Cost: Free
To earn it: We found no list of the requirements for the SQL course
Public check: A LinkedIn share; we found no public verification page
Limit: Simplilearn stops your access after 90 days, and we found no graded work or test.

how we know

Score: 3 of 12 points.

Go to Simplilearn SkillUp SQL

Free SQL courses with a paid certificate

On these courses, you learn free, but you pay for the certificate. We read their price pages, and we did not score them.

Coursera: To earn a certificate, you upgrade or apply for financial aid; Coursera charges $59 a month or $399 a year for Coursera Plus. how we know
Codecademy Learn SQL: You need a Plus or Pro plan for a certificate of completion; Plus is $14.99 a month, billed annually, or $29.99 billed monthly. how we know
W3Schools SQL certificate: W3Schools charges $95 for the SQL certificate exam, with 3 attempts. how we know

On one free course page, Great Learning names both a free certificate and a certificate fee:

Great Learning Introduction to Database and SQL: Great Learning says both "a free Database and SQL course completion certificate" and "upon successful completion of the course and payment of the certificate fee, you will receive a completion certificate". Great Learning sells Academy Pro+ at $29 a month, after a 7-day free trial. how we know

You get no certificate from Khan Academy Intro to SQL, SQLBolt, SQLZoo or the free Udemy courses. how we know

We did not rank LinkedIn Learning: you get a 1-month free trial, and after the trial, you pay for a subscription. how we know

We could not confirm the certificate facts of Intellipaat, Scaler, UniAthena and DataFlair, so we did not rank them.

Does Google offer a free SQL certification course?

No, not from Google itself. In the U.S. and Canada, you pay $49 a month for the Google Data Analytics Certificate after a 7-day free trial, and you can get financial aid. In it, SQL is one tool, with spreadsheets, Python and Tableau. how we know

The free choice from a Google company is Kaggle: in March 2017, Google announced that Kaggle would join Google Cloud. On Kaggle, you write SQL for BigQuery, and we give Kaggle Intro to SQL and Advanced SQL rank 5, with 7 of 12 points. how we know

How does the free SQLMaxx Learn certificate work?

The SQLMaxx Certificate of Completion is free, and you take no exam for it. You master all 66 lessons and solve at least one problem in each, for example in the Temp Tables and CREATE TABLE AS SELECT lesson (lesson 41).

A sample certificate. Yours shows your name, the issue date and a certificate ID.

Anyone can check a certificate on its public page at sqlmaxx.com/verify/ followed by its ID, with no account. SQLMaxx is not an accredited body, and the certificate is not a professional license.

To earn it, start with lesson 1 of our practice-first SQL lessons. A related topic is a SQL course with a certificate.

Questions about free SQL certifications

Is there any free SQL certification?

Yes. We found nine SQL certificates that you earn for free, and we ranked them all. Two are tests with no course: HackerRank's SQL certificates and LearnSQL.com's Certificate of Competency in SQL. For the other seven, you finish a free course. Many companies that say "free" charge for the certificate, for example Coursera, Codecademy and Great Learning.

Which free SQL courses give a free certificate?

Seven on our list. From the most points down: SQLMaxx Learn (ours, 11 of 12), Coddy SQL Fundamentals (9), Kaggle Intro to SQL and Advanced SQL (7), Cognitive Class (6), freeCodeCamp Relational Databases (6), Oracle Dev Gym Databases for Developers: Foundations (5) and Simplilearn SkillUp SQL (3). Of the seven, we found lessons on both subqueries and window functions only in SQLMaxx Learn and Coddy.

Is there a free Microsoft SQL certification course available?

The training is free, but the certification is not. Microsoft's SQL certification is Microsoft Certified: SQL AI Developer Associate, and you earn it when you pass Exam DP-800. Microsoft says that it typically charges US$165 for Associate exams, and that it sets the price by country or region. You can read Microsoft Learn modules free, for example the Transact-SQL learning path, with no profile. Microsoft also gives Applied Skills credentials for Azure SQL Database, in a lab; we found no price on those pages.

Which certificate is best for SQL?

Pick by what you must show. With a test certificate, you show the SQL that you know on the test day; with a course certificate, you show that you did the course work. On our six tests, we put our own certificate at rank 1, with 11 of 12 points, but you take no exam for it. Of the free certificates that you earn in a test, we give HackerRank's the highest score: rank 2, with 9 of 12. We rank paid SQL certifications on a separate page: the best SQL certifications.

How can I learn SQL for free?

Take a free course in which you write queries and get a grade on each one. We rank free SQL courses on a separate page: the best free SQL courses.

Does freeCodeCamp give SQL certificates for free?

Yes. The Relational Databases certification is free, with its exam: you finish five projects and pass a 50-question exam. freeCodeCamp says that a certification is yours to keep after you claim it. You do the SQL workshops in GitHub Codespaces, Ona or on your own computer. On our tests, we give it rank 6, with 6 of 12 points.

How we checked the free SQL certifications

We read the pages of the other eight companies about their certificates, with a free account on HackerRank, and we paid for nothing and took no certificate test or exam.

Where we could not see a feature work, we give what the company says. On the source page of each company, we mark that fact "Product's own words".

We ranked a certificate only if you pay nothing for it, and nothing for the work that you do to earn it. Then we gave each certificate a score on each of these six tests. We count the earning test two times, because this test is about what you must do to earn the certificate. In the table, we show its score two times, so you see a 2 as a 4. Without the double weight, the order is the same.

What you do to earn it. 2 if, in every part, you write SQL and you get a grade on the result. We give 2 only when the issuer says so, in its pages or its code, or when we saw it. 1 if you do graded work of a different kind, or if we could not find what the issuer checks. Examples are quizzes, multiple choice and a check on the text of your code. 0 if you only watch videos or finish modules, or if we found no graded work.

A test that you must pass. 1 if you must pass a test to get the certificate: a final exam, a timed test, or an assessment with a pass mark. 0 if you do not.

SQL depth that you must reach. 2 if you must show joins, GROUP BY, subqueries and window functions. 1 if you must show joins and GROUP BY. 0 if you need fewer topics, or if we found no topic list. We count a topic about grouping or aggregation as GROUP BY. If a certificate has levels or more than one course, we count the topics of all of them together.

Anyone can check it. 2 if each certificate has its own public page, and anyone can open it with no account. 1 if you can only download a file, or share a link or a post. 0 if we found no way to check the certificate.

No installation and no time limit. 1 point if we found no installation step and no separate environment for your code. 1 point if we found no end date for your access. We do not count a time limit on one test.

Updated in the last two years. 1 if the company gives a date of change from the last two years for its certificate or course pages, on the page or in the page information that it gives to search engines. We do not count a copyright year in a footer, or a date that is only the day that we read the page. A 0 means that we found no such date in the last two years.

These tests are not neutral for us. Three of them are an advantage for our own certificate. We count "What you do to earn it" two times, and we give full points on it only to our own certificate. On "Anyone can check it", we give points for a public page where anyone can check the certificate. "No installation and no time limit" is worth 2 points, for no installation and no end date for your access. On one test, our certificate is at a disadvantage: you take no exam for it, so we give it 0 on the exam test, and this test is worth only 1 point.

For the work that earns a certificate, we saw only our own grader in use. For the other certificates, we score the earning test from what each company says, or from what each company publishes about its checks. A score for PostgreSQL would be an advantage for our own certificate, so we do not score the SQL dialect.

We give the same rank to certificates with the same total. Inside a shared rank, we list the other certificates from A to Z, and our own certificate last.

Coddy SQL Fundamentals, what you do to earn it: 1 of 2. Coddy says that it grades each challenge, but we found no statement on what Coddy checks, and you also answer quiz questions.

HackerRank SQL certificates, what you do to earn it: 1 of 2. You solve 2 questions in each test, but we found no statement on what HackerRank checks in the certification tests.

HackerRank SQL certificates, SQL depth that you must reach: 2 of 2. For SQL (Basic), HackerRank lists "aggregators", and we count this topic as GROUP BY. For the higher levels, HackerRank lists joins, sub-queries and window functions. We count the topics of the three levels together.

LearnSQL.com Certificate of Competency in SQL, what you do to earn it: 1 of 2. You do 18 hands-on tasks, but we found no statement on what LearnSQL.com checks.

Kaggle Intro to SQL and Advanced SQL, what you do to earn it: 1 of 2. Some of Kaggle's graded exercise answers are a number, a table name or a Python list, not a query. (Kaggle exercise checks)

Kaggle Intro to SQL and Advanced SQL, updated in the last two years: 0 of 1. We found one date, May 27, 2025. On that day, Kaggle changed its exercise checks, and we count only a date that Kaggle gives for its course pages.

Cognitive Class SQL and Relational Databases 101, what you do to earn it: 1 of 2. You answer multiple-choice and true/false review questions, and you take a final exam.

freeCodeCamp Relational Databases, what you do to earn it: 1 of 2. freeCodeCamp tests each step against the command that you type, not against the result.

freeCodeCamp Relational Databases, anyone can check it: 1 of 2. You can open a certification page with no account only if its owner keeps the certifications public.

freeCodeCamp Relational Databases, updated in the last two years: 0 of 1. We found one date, December 19, 2025. This date is from a news post, not a date that freeCodeCamp gives for its certificate pages.

Oracle Dev Gym Databases for Developers: Foundations, what you do to earn it: 1 of 2. You watch videos, do tutorials and take quizzes, but we found no statement that you get a grade on your query results.

Simplilearn SkillUp SQL, what you do to earn it: 0 of 2. We found no graded work for the certificate.

SQLMaxx Learn, our own certificate: What you do to earn it, 2 of 2. You write SQL in every lesson, and you get a grade on your result rows. In lessons 4 and 32, we also check the text of your query for a type cast. We built the grader, so we saw it in use. A test that you must pass, 0 of 1. You take no exam for the certificate. SQL depth that you must reach, 2 of 2. GROUP BY (lesson 14), joins (from lesson 17), subqueries (from lesson 24) and window functions (from lesson 38). Anyone can check it, 2 of 2. Each certificate is on its own public page at sqlmaxx.com/verify/ followed by its credential ID. Anyone can open it with no account. No installation and no time limit, 2 of 2. You write each query in a PostgreSQL database in your browser, with no installation, and we set no end date for your access. Updated in the last two years, 1 of 1. We used the newest change date of our 66 lesson pages, September 14, 2026.

For the method behind these six tests, read how we test free certificates.