5 Free AI Courses and Workshops You Can Start Right Now (Oct 2026)

Free courses only help if they are open when you want to start. I checked these five on October 31, 2026. Four are self-paced and one is a live workshop on November 3. Each entry says what it covers, who it suits and where the catches are.

Format: self-paced video on the freeCodeCamp.org YouTube channel, about 2 hours. Cost: free. Level: intermediate; for developers wiring AI agents to external tools, databases and APIs.

Giving an agent the ability to act opens a new attack surface. The course shows how classic bugs such as command injection, privilege escalation and token leakage play out when an agent acts on untrusted data. It also covers the basics of MCP, the OWASP MCP Top 10 and the pillars of an MCP security program.

Link: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/secure-your-ai-agents-free-model-context-protocol-mcp-security-course

Format: self-paced, four units, ending in a benchmarked final project. Cost: free, and Hugging Face states the certification process is free too. Level: beginner to intermediate; basic Python and some LLM familiarity help.

The course moves from the definition of an agent to a framework tour of smolagents, LlamaIndex and LangGraph. It ends with a final project assessed against a benchmark and leaderboard. It has no fixed deadline. Hugging Face's own materials describe the certificate as earned by completing work, not just watching videos.

Format: self-paced lecture recordings, 9 lectures on YouTube. Cost: free to watch. Level: advanced graduate material; ML basics expected, and RL knowledge helps.

The lectures were recorded in Autumn 2025 and posted by Stanford Online in August 2026. They cover test-time compute, verifiers, learning from feedback, planning, scaling RL, deep research agents and agent evaluation. One caveat: the for-credit version carries tuition on Stanford Online and is not open for enrollment, so the free route means watching and reading only, with no credit or certificate.

Format: self-paced online course. Cost: free. Level: beginner; no programming or complicated math needed.

The intro course explains what AI is, what it can and cannot do, and how it affects daily life. The Building AI course goes into the algorithms behind AI methods. It's a good first stop for non-engineers on your team, or a refresher on the fundamentals before you dive into agents.

Format: live, on campus and livestreamed. Date: Tuesday, November 3, 2026, 08:30-18:00 Pacific Time. Cost: free registration. Level: intermediate to advanced; aimed at industry, academic and startup practitioners.

The agenda centers on tabular and relational foundation models, agentic systems and applications in biology and science, with research talks, case studies and discussion. The schedule is tentative per the event page, so check it before you plan your day.

Link: https://snap.stanford.edu/graphlearning-workshop-2026/

Criteria: (1) free to access, or free to watch, as stated on the provider's page or in the sources below; (2) open now, with no expired registration; (3) relevant to software engineers, from beginner to advanced; (4) a mix of formats. Data was checked on October 31, 2026. I excluded items I couldn't confirm, including a viral "1-hour Stanford agent course" claim and social posts that gave no official page. Certificates and prices can change, so confirm on each provider's page before you enroll.