Data Analyst roadmap › Courses
Best courses for Data Analysts
This path starts with the two skills every analyst job uses first: querying data with SQL and describing it with statistics. Then it adds Python, charts and a reporting tool.
Two structured programs from Google and IBM give a beginner one start-to-finish path with a project at the end. Everything else is a short, free, hands-on course you can take on its own.
The tool exams (Power BI and Tableau) are here for one reason: some postings name the tool. Take the one your target employers use.
Most of the learning material is free. The Google and IBM programs and the exams are the paid parts.
Which course to take first
- Start
- Begin with Intro to SQL and Statistics and probability. If spreadsheets are still your main tool, Excel Skills for Business is a sensible detour.
- Build
- Pandas and Data Visualization are the next steps once queries feel comfortable. Power BI and Tableau suit you once you are building reports for other people to read.
- Lead
- Google Advanced Data Analytics and A/B Testing cover the methods behind harder questions. dbt Fundamentals is worth a look if your team models data in a warehouse.
- 15 items in 3 stages: 13 courses and tutorials, 2 certifications.
- We opened every page on October 7, 2026 and show only what the provider states.
- No prices, ratings or enrolment counts.
See the full Data Analyst roadmap →Best books for Data Analysts →
How to choose your courses
A short method, so you spend your hours on the right thing for where you are instead of collecting certificates.
Find your stage
Getting started · 6 items
SQL, statistics, spreadsheets and one structured beginner program. Aim to answer a real question with data before you move on.
Jump to this stage ↓Doing the job · 6 items
Python for cleaning and charts, a deeper statistics course, and the reporting tool your target employers use.
Jump to this stage ↓Senior and leading · 3 items
Experiments, analytics engineering and an advanced program for analysts who want to model data, not just describe it.
Jump to this stage ↓
If you are unsure, start one stage lower than you think. Later items assume what the earlier ones teach.
Begin with one course
Our starting pick
SQL Tutorial: Learn SQL for Data Analysis
ThoughtSpot (formerly the Mode SQL Tutorial)
It is free, needs no coding background and gets you to your first real query quickly. SQL is the skill most analyst work starts from.
See the course ↓Then pick by your situation
Choose the next course by the problem in front of you, not by its place in the list.
If you want one structured path with a capstone project
take Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate (getting started)
If your analysis lives in spreadsheets today
take Excel Skills for Business: Essentials (getting started)
If you are being asked whether a change actually worked
take A/B Testing (senior and leading)
Free path or paid path?
7 of the 13 courses and tutorials can be read or taken without paying, so you can build most of the skill at no cost. Certification exams are where money enters.
- SQL Tutorial: Learn SQL for Data Analysis
- Intro to SQL
- Statistics and probability
- Pandas
- Data Visualization
- Data Analysis with Python Certification
- A/B Testing
Paid courses earn their place when you need structure, deadlines or feedback. Check what the provider says is included before you commit.
Course or certification?
Certifications are optional for analyst work. A small portfolio of real analyses is the clearer thing to show.
They help most when:
- Your target employers name Power BI or Tableau in their postings
- You are changing careers and want a structured, recognised credential
- You work better with a deadline
The tool exams (PL-300 and Tableau Desktop Foundations) are exams. The Google and IBM programs are courses that end in a certificate. Pick the tool exam that matches the tool in the postings you are targeting.
Check it against what Data Analyst postings ask for
These skills come from our analysis of live Data Analyst job postings. Each links to the learning resources we list for it.
Each step on the scale reflects how often live job postings name the skill, tool or credential, based on our analysis of those postings. With fewer than 100 postings behind this page, treat the scale as directional: a sample this size can shift a skill by a step or more.
Set a time budget
| Stage | Items with a stated length | Hours of material | At 4 hrs a week |
|---|---|---|---|
| Getting started | 1 | 3 hrs | 1 wks |
| Doing the job | 2 | 8 hrs | 2 wks |
| Senior and leading | 1 | 5 hrs | 1 wks |
| All stages | 4 | 16 hrs | 4 wks |
Totals are approximate.
Exam time is not included, and hands-on practice takes longer than the material itself. Treat this as a floor.
Judge any course before you commit
Who runs it
Prefer courses from the people who build or govern the tool. They tend to stay current, and an exam from a tool’s own maker is the clearest credential for that tool.
Hands-on or watch-only
In this field you learn by running things. Choose material where you build a pipeline, a cluster or a dashboard over material you only watch.
How current it is
Tools change fast. Look for a version or last-updated date on the provider’s page, and check anything several years old against the current docs.
What you will be able to show
Ask what you will have at the end: a working repository, a deployed service or a passed exam. If it is only a certificate of completion, pair it with a project of your own.
Getting started
SQL, statistics, spreadsheets and one structured beginner program. Aim to answer a real question with data before you move on.
- Start hereHands-on tutorialFree to learn
SQL Tutorial: Learn SQL for Data Analysis
ThoughtSpot (formerly the Mode SQL Tutorial)
View course →What you will learn
- Basic SQL: SELECT, WHERE, ORDER BY and LIMIT
- Filtering with comparison and logical operators
- Grouping with GROUP BY
- Intermediate and advanced SQL
Good for
Learning to query data before you touch any other tool.
Also stated by the provider
- The page says no prior coding is required
- mode.com/sql-tutorial now redirects to ThoughtSpot
- CoursePaid
Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate
Google (on Coursera)
- 6 months at 10 hours a week
What you will learn
- Foundations of data analytics and asking the right questions
- Preparing and cleaning data
- Analysing data and sharing it through visualisation
- An introduction to data analysis using Python
- A capstone case study
Good for
Career changers who want one structured, beginner-friendly path that ends in a portfolio project.
Also stated by the provider
- Beginner level; no degree or experience required
- Includes a shareable certificate
- Financial aid is available
- Course
IBM Data Analyst Professional Certificate
IBM (on Coursera)
- 4 months at 10 hours a week
What you will learn
- Excel for data analysis, with dashboards in Excel and Cognos
- Python for data science and data analysis
- Databases and SQL
- Data visualisation with Python
- A capstone project and interview preparation
Good for
Beginners who want Excel, SQL and Python in one structured path, with career preparation at the end.
Also stated by the provider
- Beginner level; no prior experience required
- Expects basic computer literacy and high-school maths
- Includes a shareable certificate
- Financial aid is available
What you will learn
- Getting started with SQL and BigQuery
- SELECT, FROM and WHERE
- GROUP BY, HAVING and COUNT
- ORDER BY
- AS and WITH
- Joining data
Good for
A short, free, hands-on practice round once you have seen SQL syntax.
Also stated by the provider
- The page lists Python as a prerequisite
- Free, like all Kaggle Learn courses
What you will learn
- Describing and comparing data
- Probability and random variables
- Sampling distributions and confidence intervals
- Significance tests and hypothesis testing
- Regression and analysis of variance
Good for
Building the statistics intuition that analysis and A/B tests rest on.
- Course
Excel Skills for Business: Essentials
Macquarie University (on Coursera)
- 3 weeks at 10 hours a week
What you will learn
- The Excel interface, formulas and functions
- Formatting spreadsheets professionally
- Charts to visualise data
- Solving common business problems with Excel
Good for
Anyone whose first analyses will happen in a spreadsheet.
Also stated by the provider
- Beginner level; no prior Excel experience required
- Includes a certificate
- The page says you can enrol for free; financial aid is available
Doing the job
Python for cleaning and charts, a deeper statistics course, and the reporting tool your target employers use.
What you will learn
- Creating, reading and writing data
- Indexing, selecting and assigning
- Summary functions and maps
- Grouping and sorting
- Data types and missing values
- Renaming and combining
Good for
Moving from spreadsheets to Python for cleaning and reshaping data.
Also stated by the provider
- The page lists Python as a prerequisite
- Free, like all Kaggle Learn courses
What you will learn
- Line charts
- Bar charts and heatmaps
- Scatter plots
- Distributions
- Choosing plot types and custom styles
- A final project
Good for
Learning to make clear charts in code with Seaborn.
Also stated by the provider
- Free, like all Kaggle Learn courses
What you will learn
- Jupyter Notebooks
- NumPy arrays and operations
- Pandas DataFrames and conditional selection
- Data cleaning
- Reading data from CSV and text files and from databases
Good for
Practising the full Python analysis workflow, ending in five projects.
Also stated by the provider
- Includes a free certification and five projects
- The page does not state a length
- Course
Statistics with Python Specialization
University of Michigan (on Coursera)
- 4 weeks at 10 hours a week, as the page states
What you will learn
- Understanding and visualising data with Python
- Inferential statistical analysis
- Fitting statistical models to data
- Linear and logistic regression, multilevel models and Bayesian inference
Good for
Analysts who want to move from describing data to testing claims about it.
Also stated by the provider
- Beginner level; high-school algebra is the only required background
- A basic Python or coding background is recommended
- Includes a certificate; financial aid is available
- CertificationPaid exam
Microsoft Certified: Power BI Data Analyst Associate (PL-300)
Microsoft
- Exam: 100 minutes
What you will learn
- Preparing data
- Modelling data
- Visualising and analysing data
- Managing and securing Power BI
- Advanced visualisation techniques in Power BI
Good for
When the postings you are targeting name Power BI.
Also stated by the provider
- The page states a renewal period of 12 months
- No prerequisites are stated on the page
- CertificationPaid exam
Salesforce Certified Tableau Desktop Foundations
Salesforce (Tableau)
- Exam: 40 questions, 70 minutes
What you will learn
- Data integration
- Data management
- Data analysis
- Data visualisation
Good for
When the postings you are targeting name Tableau.
Also stated by the provider
- No prerequisites
- Written for people with foundational Tableau skills and at least 3 months using the product
- The Tableau page redirects to this Salesforce exam page
Senior and leading
Experiments, analytics engineering and an advanced program for analysts who want to model data, not just describe it.
- CoursePaid
Google Advanced Data Analytics Professional Certificate
Google (on Coursera)
- 6 months at 10 hours a week
What you will learn
- Foundations of data science
- Translating data into insights
- Statistics, probability distributions and hypothesis testing
- Regression analysis
- The basics of machine learning
- A capstone project
Good for
Working analysts who want to move toward modelling, statistics and machine learning.
Also stated by the provider
- Advanced level
- Assumes data cleaning, spreadsheets, SQL, programming and dashboard skills
- Designed for people who finished the Google Data Analytics Certificate or something similar
- Includes a certificate
What you will learn
- An overview of online experiments, with policy and ethics
- Choosing and characterising metrics
- Designing an experiment
- Analysing the results
Good for
Analysts who will be asked whether a change actually worked.
Also stated by the provider
- Labelled a free course
- Lists no prerequisites
- Taught by Carrie Grimes, Caroline Buckey and Diane Tang
- The page does not state a length
What you will learn
- Connecting dbt to a data warehouse and a Git repository
- Modelling data
- Sources and testing
- Documentation
- Deployment
Good for
Analysts who want to build tested, documented data models instead of one-off queries.
Also stated by the provider
- The course has you build a model and run tests
- The page does not state a cost
Details such as hours, format and whether material is free are as the providers state them on October 7, 2026, and can change. Confirm on the provider’s page before you commit. See our disclosure.
Frequently asked questions
Which course should a Data Analyst take first?
SQL Tutorial: Learn SQL for Data Analysis, from ThoughtSpot (formerly the Mode SQL Tutorial). It is free, needs no coding background and gets you to your first real query quickly. SQL is the skill most analyst work starts from.
Can a Data Analyst learn this for free?
Largely, yes. 7 of the 13 courses and tutorials here can be read or taken without paying (SQL Tutorial: Learn SQL for Data Analysis, Intro to SQL, Statistics and probability, Pandas and more). Certification exams are the part you pay for.
Do I need a certification to work as a Data Analyst?
Certifications are optional for analyst work. A small portfolio of real analyses is the clearer thing to show. They help most in these cases: (1) your target employers name Power BI or Tableau in their postings; (2) you are changing careers and want a structured, recognised credential; (3) you work better with a deadline. The tool exams (PL-300 and Tableau Desktop Foundations) are exams. The Google and IBM programs are courses that end in a certificate. Pick the tool exam that matches the tool in the postings you are targeting.
How long does it take?
The providers state 16 hours of material across 4 of the 13 courses and tutorials; the rest do not state a length. At four hours a week that is about 4 weeks for the stated material alone, before projects and exam preparation.
How was this list put together?
We opened each course, tutorial and certification page on October 7, 2026 and wrote down only what the page states: who runs it, what it covers, hours and exam format where given, and whether the material is free to read. We do not show prices, ratings or enrolment figures. Details can change, so confirm on the provider’s page before you commit.