Udacity Nanodegree Cost 2024: Should You Enroll It?
Match your goals to Udacity’s programs, explore your options, and map out your path to success.
Udacity is giving peronalized discounts
If you want to enroll in the Udacity Nanodegree courses, you must read this post. Below we’ve shared Udacity Nanodegree cost and other details.
We’re currently living in a skills based economy and companies like Udacity know that. For many of us the skills that are desirable and lucrative in the workplace are constantly changing. Even if you did get a degree, the material and skills taught to you in that degree might not be as popular as they were when you got it.
That being said our education system is still working on the assumption that you’ll learn skills in school or college, get a job and then grow those skills and develop new ones in that role. But what happens if the role you have does not give you the opportunity to develop the skills you need to get the job you want?
You could go back to school to get them, but that will be both time consuming and expensive. You could try learning them on your own, but if you don’t have a practical application for them it would be hard to prove that you have the right skills in your CV or during an interview. Or you could take a targeted online course that focuses on the skills you need. Better yet if that course is applied and lets you build a portfolio of proven work.
That’s where the Udacity Nanodegree programme comes in. Built in partnership with industry giants like Google, Microsoft and Amazon their courses teach you valuable (and lucrative) skills and most importantly give you practical experience in applying them to real problems.
Online learning portal Udacity provides both free and fee-based courses. Students at Udacity expand their knowledge and expertise in fields like software development, data science, product management, and programming.
How is Udacity different?
Content and Projects
Their courses are self paced and are a combination of video lectures and practical examples that you can download and play around with yourself. Depending on the course there might be skills testing questions throughout each lesson or at the end.
Udacity splits all their courses into modules with each module having a practical project at the end related to the content you have just learned. These projects are evaluated by instructors and specially selected former alumni. You will get personalised feedback on your project so you can improve if your first attempt was not good enough to pass.
One important thing to highlight is that waiting for a project to be evaluated does not stop you from progressing. Because the courses are self-paced you can continue learning while your project is being assessed and come back to that project later once you get the feedback, this means you’re in full control of your learning experience.
Learning Style
Another important advantage of the self-paced nature is that you can plan it around your work or home commitments. Udacity even recommends a number of study hours you should be aiming for each week and helps you plan out when you’re going to do those hours on a calendar.
And because the course is self paced you can speed though the sections you understand easily and spend more time on the sections you find challenging. If you can’t work them out on your own there are also forums for each course where formal alumni will answer any questions you have on the materials or assignments in the module.
Pricing: Udacity Nanodegree Cost
Now come to Udacity Nanodegree cost, read on to learn more.
The reason Udacity helps you plan out your study hours is because of their unique pricing model. Unlike other self-paced courses or learning platforms you don’t pay a monthly fee to access all the content on the platform and you don’t pay a fixed price for the course, you pay a monthly price for each course you want to take. This is not capped, so you continue paying until you complete the course or drop out.
You will see 3-month or 6-month pricing on some courses, but this is just a bundle you pay upfront based on how long Udacity thinks you should spend doing the course (based on the recommended number of study hours each week), if you do not complete it in that time you will continue paying monthly until you cancel or graduate. It’s important to mention that if you graduate you retain access to the course but if you drop out you lose all access including to completed modules.
Courses
Over the years Udacity has expanded their offering from their core development courses to new and in demand areas like data science, cybersecurity and cloud computing. Next we’ll explore the programs in each area and the estimated cost for each if you follow Udacity’s guidance on course duration.
Decision Paralysis
As you’re about to see, Udacity’s course offering is extensive and a lot of the courses seem to overlap in significant ways – especially in the AI / Data Science tracks. We would recommend that you make a short list of every course you are interested in and then compare the syllabus and projects for each course in detail to find the course that best meets your needs.
Artificial Intelligence
| Course | Partner | Duration | Udacity Guide Price | Monthly Price |
| Become a Machine Learning Engineer for Microsoft Azure | Microsoft | 3 Months (5-10 hrs/week) | $1017 | $399 |
| AI for Healthcare | 4 Months (15 hrs/week) | $1356 | $399 | |
| Edge AI for IoT Developers | intel | Coming Soon | Coming Soon | $399 |
| Intro to Machine Learning with TensorFlow | Kaggle & AWS | 3 Months (10 hrs/week) | $1017 | $399 |
| Intro to Machine Learning with PyTorch | Kaggle & AWS | 3 Months (10 hrs/week) | $1017 | $399 |
| Become an AI Product Manager (Also in the Product Manager Track) | appen | 2 Months (5-10 hrs/week) | $678 | $399 |
| AI Programming with Python | 3 Months (10 hrs/week) | $1017 | $399 | |
| Artificial Intelligence for Trading | Worldquant | 6 Months (10 hrs/week) | $2034 | $399 |
| Become a Computer Vision Expert | Affectiva & nVidia | 3 Months (10-15 hrs/week) | $1017 | $399 |
| Become a Natural Language Processing Expert | Amazon alexa & IBM Watson | 3 Months (10-15 hrs/week) | $1017 | $399 |
| Become a Deep Reinforcement Learning Expert | Unity & nVidia | 4 Months (10-15 hrs/week) | $1356 | $399 |
| Artificial Intelligence | 3 Months (12-15 hrs/week) | $1017 | $399 | |
| Become a Machine Learning Engineer | Kaggle & AWS | 3 Months (10 hrs/week) | $1017 | $399 |
| Deep Learning | AWS & facebook AI | 4 Months (12 hrs/week) | $1356 | $399 |
| AI for Business Leaders | BMW | 4-8 Weeks (5 hrs/week) | $678 | $399 |
| Machine Learning DevOps Engineer | 4 Months (10 hrs/week) | $1356 | $399 | |
| Digital Freelancer | 1 Month (10 hrs/week) | N/A | $399 |
Autonomous Systems
| Course | Partner | Duration | Udacity Guide Price | Monthly Price |
| Intro to Self-Driving Cars | None | 4 Months (10 hrs/week) | $1356 | $399 |
| Become a Robotics Software Engineer | None | 4 Months (10-15 hrs/week) | $1356 | $399 |
| Become a C++ Developer | None | 4 Months (10 hrs/week) | $1356 | $399 |
| Flying Car and Autonomous Flight Engineer | None | 4 Months (15 hrs/week) | $1356 | $399 |
| Self-Driving Car Engineer | Waymo & Mercedes-Benz | 5 Months (10 hrs/week) | $1695 | $399 |
| Become a Sensor Fusion Engineer | Mercedes-Benz | 4 Months (10 hrs/week) | $1356 | $399 |
| Become a Machine Learning Engineer | Kaggle & AWS | 3 Months (10 hrs/week) | $1017 | $399 |
| Digital Freelancer | 1 Month (10 hrs/week) | N/A | $399 |
Business (some also available under Product Management)
| Course | Partner | Duration | Udacity Guide Price | Monthly Price |
| Activation and Retention Strategy (Also in the Product Manager Track) | None | 1 Month (10 hrs/week) | N/A | $279 |
| Agile Software Development (Also in the Product Manager Track) | Thoughtworks | 3 Months (5-10 hrs/week) | $1017 | $399 |
| Data Science for Business Leaders | alteryx | 4-8 Weeks (5 hrs/week) | $678 | $399 |
| Become a Data Product Manager (Also in the Product Manager Track) | None | 3 Months (10 hrs/week) | $1017 | $399 |
| Monetization Strategy (Also in the Product Manager Track) | None | 1 Month (10 hrs/week) | N/A | $279 |
| Become a Growth Product Manager | None | 3 Months (10 hrs/week) | Coming Soon | Coming Soon |
| Learn SQL | None | 2 Months (10 hrs/week) | $678 | $399 |
| AI for Business Leaders | BMW | 4-8 Weeks (5 hrs/week) | $678 | $399 |
| Become a Product Manager (Also in the Product Manager Track) | None | 4 Months (10 hrs/week) | $1356 | $399 |
| Business Analytics | Tableau & Mode | 3 Months (10 hrs/week) | $1017 | $399 |
| Become a Marketing Analyst | None | 3 Months (5 hrs/week) | $1017 | $399 |
| Become a Digital Marketer | Google, Hootsuite, Hubspot, Mailchimp, MOZ & facebook | 3 Months (10 hrs/week) | $1017 | $399 |
| Become a UX Designer (Also in the Product Manager Track) | None | 3 Months (10 hrs/week) | $1017 | $399 |
| Predictive Analytics for Business | Alteryx & Tableau | 3 Months (10 hrs/week) | $1017 | $399 |
| Cloud Computing for Business Leaders | 4-8 Weeks (5 hrs/week) | $678 | $399 | |
| Digital Freelancer | 1 Month (10 hrs/week) | N/A | $399 |
Cloud Computing
| Course | Partner | Duration | Udacity Guide Price | Monthly Price |
| Become a Cloud DevOps Engineer | None | 4 Months (10 hrs/week) | $1356 | $399 |
| Become a Cloud Developer | None | 4 Months (10 hrs/week) | $1356 | $399 |
| Become a AWS Cloud Architect | None | 3 Months (10 hrs/week) | $1017 | $399 |
| Cloud DevOps using Microsoft Azure | Microsoft | 3 Months (5-10 hrs/week) | $1017 | $399 |
| Become a Cloud Developer using Microsoft Azure | Microsoft | 4 Months (5-10 hrs/week) | $1356 | $399 |
| Become a Hybrid Cloud Engineer | Nutanix | 3 Months (5-10 hrs/week) | $1017 | $399 |
| Cloud Native Application Architecture | Suse | 4 Months (10 hrs/week) | $1356 | $399 |
| Cloud Computing for Business Leaders | 4-8 Weeks (5 hrs/week) | $678 | $399 | |
| Digital Freelancer | 1 Month (10 hrs/week) | N/A | $399 |
Cybersecurity
| Course | Partner | Duration | Udacity Guide Price | Monthly Price |
| Introduction to Cybersecurity | Security Scorecard | 4 Months (10 hrs/week) | $1356 | $399 |
| Security Analyst | None | 4 Months (10 hrs/week) | $1356 | $399 |
| Security Engineer | None | 4 Months (10 hrs/week) | $1356 | $399 |
| Enterprise Security | None | 4 Months (5-10 hrs/week) | $1356 | $399 |
| Security Architect | None | 4 Months (10 hrs/week) | $1356 | $399 |
| Ethical Hacker | None | 2 Months (5-10 hrs/week) | $678 | $399 |
How to pick the right course for you?
Before we went through each individual course, we mentioned the decision paralysis that such an extensive course offering can induce. It’s easy to look at the course list and come away thinking you need to do 2 or 3 courses to get the skills you want. However, it’s important to remember that the purpose of nanodegrees is to give you very targeted knowledge, so unlike a university course which offers wide exposure to multiple topics, the nanodegrees focus in on a very narrow learning objective.
To pick the right course we recommend you ask yourself the following questions:
- What skills do I want/need for my next role? (Research and make a list)
- How much experience do I have in each of these skills (you should find a course that is focused on the skills you’re least experienced in, you don’t want to re-learn what you already know)
- How much time can I dedicate to learning – as we mentioned at the beginning the Guide Price is just a guide, if you can’t commit to the recommended number of learning hours a month you can easily fall behind and end up paying $399 a month until you complete the course) If you can’t commit the required number of hours a week for one of the more intensive courses you should consider one of the shorter ones first.
- Do I care about the learning partners for each course. For example the Natural Language Processing course has Amazon Alexa and IBM Watson as partners, two companies at the forefront of NLP. While you should be under no illusion that you’ll get access to their most cutting edge knowledge their experience might be useful especially for the more advanced courses.
Tips on saving some money on tuition
Udacity’s refund policy is quite restrictive, you can only cancel your subscription and get your money back within the first 2 days, after that you can cancel but you will not get a refund.
That being said if you subscribe and have more time available meaning you can commit to learning full time, you could complete the courses much faster. Spending 6-8 hours of learning every day you’ll be able to finish most courses in half to a third of the recommended time. That means that for the short courses you could end up paying only $399 for the entire course if you are dedicated.
You should remember though that most courses have projects that need to be evaluated and passed before you graduate, these need to be handed in well in advance of your renewal date for you to get your feedback, otherwise you will have to pay for the following month as well.
Another way to save money is by taking advantage of the frequent sales and coupons Udacity offers. They run 60% off campaigns multiple times a year. And currently you can even get up to 75% if you’re currently looking for work because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
