Coursera Reviews

The 7 day free trial ran out and they charged me $49 for the next 9 months. Yes, it was bad that I didn't check my credit card but really disappointed that I never received one email from them. No monthly receipt, no check in to see if I wanted to actually engage and sign up for a course. They were just glad to get my money without providing a service. And then it's like a maze to cancel your sub. Please don't use this service. PS It's not just me. I just came to Trustpilot to write this review and the Ai overview said this is the same complaint that MANY others were voicing.

I applied for financial aid for the Google AI Professional Certificate, expecting assistance for the program as a whole. Instead, Coursera breaks the certificate down per individual course, requiring separate payments or discounted fees for each module. Here is the problem: a standard monthly subscription lets you complete as many modules as you can in a month for roughly $39–$49 total. However, when "financial aid" is applied per course across 7 modules, the individual fee required for each module adds up to over double what you would pay for a standard subscription.

I tried the free trial week, completed 3 courses, but now Coursera will not let me get the 3 certificates until I pay at least 82 CAD for Coursera Plus. It is shown nowhere that you do not get a certificate during the trial week. Discussions with their AI and personal (?) assistant were useless.

This is the worst site. Terrible customer service. Very unhelpful. If you have a problem you will never get to speak with a person. You will have bots regurgitating their policies over and over again. If you expect a refund or have any issues - kiss your money goodbye. Not worth it. I hated the course.

I am filing a complaint against Coursera regarding an unauthorized automatic renewal charge. My daughter signed up for Coursera around June 21, 2026, and used the service for approximately one week to complete her project. Near the end of the month, she attempted to cancel her subscription but experienced issues with the website’s cancellation system. She also tried to contact Coursera, but the AI customer service assistant was not helpful. Because of these technical issues, her subscription was not successfully cancelled, and she was charged $54 on July 21, 2026, without her intention to renew.

I am filing this review against Coursera regarding unfair, deceptive billing practices and the use of predatory subscription models. I initiated a free trial in a course on Coursera and was under the impression that my subscription was canceled when I went to the website and used their "cancel subscription" guide. Instead, Coursera continued to charge my card automatically for two consecutive months following my cancellation. They did this without my explicit knowledge, without sending any pre-billing reminders, and without providing any invoices or email notifications that a charge had occurred. Discovering these unauthorised charges on my bank statement was a complete surprise. Charging consumers indefinitely after a cancellation or an educational objective is met, while completely hiding the transactions by withholding basic payment receipts or notifications, constitutes a "dark pattern" designed to drain money from unsuspecting users.

Horrible customer service! I signed up for an individual course and was changed over to a subscription without my knowledge. After three months of being charged 59.99, my wife noticed that we were being charged a subscription. I contacted customer service and explained the issue. However, after chatting with a bot for a while and then finally a live agent; the agent came online and stated that there are no refunds and ended the chat after typing that in. I'm so disgusted with this company.

Do not come close to these thieves, they will charge your credit card without permission.

These guys are scammers, do not even come close. I subscribed for a trial, they charged me 59$ even though I haven't used the platform, I explained to them that I agreed only on a trial, they did not care.

Stay away from them and keep charging you and charge even when you cancel the subscription, and you can't get a refund. They are not worth the trouble.

I signed up for a free trial and was billed after 7 days. Fine. I cancelled the next month 24 hours after i was billed. No real customer service, only AI and an email person with generic prompts sent with questions reporting no refund no question. DO NOT SIGN UP. This has been a nightmare and I had to.

Auditing is gone. They built their reputation as an institution offering free knowledge, then they pulled the rug and made it subscription based. I'll talk about this to anyone who has ears to listen.

Terrible company to deal with. Coursera is refusing to honor its own refund policy for Coursera plus. My subscription auto-renewed and they say you have 14 days to cancel. I tried to request a refund following their steps which gave me a system error every time and error message to contact customer support. Who would only tell me to go back through the exact same steps causing the same error and telling me to contact customer support again. This went on until the 14 days passed then they refused to issue the refund because 14 days passed. Terrible company to deal with. Worst customer service experience I've ever had with a company. They still refuse to honor their own refund policy.

⚠️ WARNING TO ANYONE CONSIDERING COURSERA PLUS ⚠️ **Coursera is refusing to honor its own refund policy and using fabricated information to deny legitimate refund requests.** On April 24, 2025, I purchased a Coursera Plus Annual subscription under my account. Coursera's own published policy guarantees a full refund if you cancel within 14 days of purchase. I requested my refund within 2 days, well inside that window. What followed was two rounds of deliberate runaround:

I am not sure how it happened, but my subscription continued after I thought I had cancelled it. I discovered the $50+ month charges months later. I contacted Coursera for a refund, or alternatively, to receive credit for future months. I am 90% confident that I never reached a human. The AI denied my request, claimed to have escalated the request, and denied me again. I found an email for Coursera and wrote to it. The response said the email was for investors only, directed me to the chat, and said there would be no further communication beyond the single reply. The matter feels like a money grab. Don't engage with Coursera unless you watch your account closely.

Buyer beware! This is a fraudulent company. They charged me a day prior to the end of my free trial, and even though I cancelled in time, they refused to refund a full one month fee. I’ve never experienced this type of situation before with any company. I will be filing a fraud claim with my bank which I’ve never had to do in my life.

Be careful with Coursera subscriptions. I signed up for what I thought was a free trial, but was charged for a subscription without the billing terms and strict no-refund policy being clearly presented in a meaningful way. I reached out immediately after the charge and explained that I hadn’t used the service, but support refused to help and kept repeating their policy.

0/10 Would not recommend. I was charged even after canceling my subscription, and when I reached out to customer support, they were extremely rude and completely unhelpful. I contacted them immediately when the subscription renewed and did not use the service at all, yet no resolution was provided.

I had a terrible experience. I was charged even after canceling my subscription, and when I reached out to customer support, they were extremely rude and completely unhelpful. I contacted them immediately when the subscription renewed and did not use the service at all, yet no resolution was provided. I would strongly advise others to keep screenshots and records of any cancellations just in case.

They charged me for three years and because of high interest debt and life circumstances that were overwhelming I was being charged after opting what I thought was one month...And when I did try again to formally cancel on phone still was charged a year after...I regretfully can't validate any other way than seeing that my content was never accessed. Awful....I did make attempts and will continue to write about these companies who charge and do not produce formal invoices each month but auto charge in with small fine print that aims to bind. This is unjust and makes for deceit.

Preposterous to accept that online is the new standard for learning, especially in the fast paced, zero time for absorbency world of "you are now a computer, you will be a computer" method of learning. Throwing ridiculously complicated concepts at you for IT learning that would take years to understand all in a 3 minute video with a smarmy guy on the screen who is clearly reading from a teleprompter. The quizzes and tests are abstract, ambiguous and very difficult for "introduction to networking." One way to kill someone's interest in learning is exactly the way Google has with Coursera. Save your money, do not give in to the world of online schooling, it is a joke.

I needed this learning for career prospects. The course ended up having sections midway through in another language including audio and transcripts. I completed the course, but learned nothing in those chapters, essentially having to skip them. I just winged the quizzes for those and got a lower score in quizzes that asked me questions from those chapters in another language. Coursera support troubleshooted and found nothing wrong on my end as, I cleared cookies/cache, used a different browser, assured my settings both in the platform and browser were in English and gave them my browser console details. They had to escalate this to the owner of the course and nothing was done. Now I have to pay to get my certificate.

They auto-renewed at double the price and will not send out any notification of payment or autorenewal. They are deliberately hoping that a consumer will forget so they can silently charge you over $400. And they won't refund it. Terrible, unethical business practices.

One of those companies that preys on you forgetting about previous subscriptions, then they drastically raise the price and just pull it. It's really disgusting behavior, there are plenty of free sites to learn from. Ditch Coursera. They into sketchy business.

I cancelled my subscription (just didn't have time unfortunately), but then was billed the following month anyway. Had to block them at my bank in the end. Support experience was shocking, bounced between several agents, had to retell story each time, and in the end they just closed the ticket with no resolution. Will never use again, or recommend, which is a shame. But seems from the reviews here this is business as usual for them. :-(

The course I attempted to take was not interesting, very vague and after researching other companies' courses, I found out those certificate were not really useful! And they charged me after I cancelled my subscription. Would not give a refund even though I never accessed it after the first day I started the course. They have unfair policies and seem to be a greedy company! Beware and go elsewhere!!!

Coursera is BIG scam! I’m a student in China and I tried to pay 49$ for one course. However, coursera suddenly showed me misleading ads asking me to pay for the same money for their Plus service which is one month. Then I paid. But it turned out to be automatically s and they charged me 49$ every month without my acknowledge and consent! I tried to talk to their customer service and a guy called Joe was repeating himself and refused to refund due to their unlawful policy! This is ridiculous and SCAM! Don’t use it!

I would have made a considerable investment both in time and finance with Coursera, but the content is so heavily steeped in a political undertone—it's wildly distracting, and so brazen it can only be described as Arrogant.

Coursera’s pricing isn’t just confusing, it’s intentionally vague. The problem isn’t “fine print.” The problem is that there isn’t any meaningful fine print. You are expected to pay first and then contact support afterward to find out what you actually bought. I completed a course/certificate during a 7-day free trial. Only after finishing did I learn that I had to pay a subscription fee just to download certificates I had already earned. That requirement was not clearly stated anywhere during signup or checkout. Not prominently. Not clearly. Not at all. I honestly thought I was paying for a month of their plus service only to find out after it was ONLY for that company's course offerings...

I purchased a year to find out what I wanted to tackle and decided on Bookkeeping. The course material is so-so. I had left them constructive feedback such as not using so much video where the "experts" talk too fast and provide little information than we already learned. I had to use the Coach AI a lot to ask questions that should have been covered if true teachers were present. Coach AI was better than the "experts". What I found terrible is their support. You cannot go back into Discussion Forums once you pass a class. I found that bad as their Case Study was not correct yet I cannot find or post to anyone.

I signed up for the Google Analytics course and used it for a few months. It was ok. I decided to switch over to DataCamp instead and cancelled Coursera. A few months later I noticed they were still billing me. The customer support person said my account was still active, and then literally disconnected and left me talking to myself. Will never use them again.

So, the specialty team ended up reversing the charge, however, I can't in good faith provide a 5th star because of how cold and uncaring the 1 advocate was...

I finally figured out how to contact Coursera and got a ticket and was routed to the "Cora" virtual assistant. The AI agent "Cora" is a failure. None of the "Cora" suggestions made any difference. I should been have routed to a real person when requested. But if I do not get some sort of assurance that the problem is being corrected I will not pay the 50 bucks for any more courses in the future.

They charged me for services I didn't use, and then refused to provide a refund. This isn't legal, but suing them isn't worth it. This is a common practice among disreputable companies. The only way to fight it is to call them out like I'm doing.

Predatory. Coursera preys on individuals wanting to grow their career. They offer a large catalog with no real content (AI reviewed assignments don't actually grow skills). Their worse offense though is their predatory renewal policy. They do not notify that you will be or have been billed, and simply hope you don't notice that you are paying for their platform. Absolute bottom feeders.

I signed up for a course paying what I mistakenly assumed was a one-time purchase. I completed the course in less than a month, and was charged the following month for the subscription. While that is on me to be more attentive to terms, their subscription model is very scammy, continue to charge you for the subscription to content you have already completed. Additionally, while going through the course, I discovered that the content was simply pulled from a free-course offered by Google, and just re-framed with the Coursera site and branding.

VERY DECEITFUL about their subscription process. Charge you for a subscription monthly AND a subscription for the course monthly. It doesn’t make sense. So you get tricked into signing up for 2 subscriptions. I cancelled, the subscription, then I realized what a scam this is when they still continued to charge me. I requested a refund and they refuse, clearly aware of what a terrible process this is for their customers. SHAME ON YOU!! Terrible company. Do not recommend.

I signed up three of my employees for a one-time charge/course. Two of those accounts were charged appropriately, the third somehow magically became a recurring charge. Despite providing proof to Coursera, they refused to refund the charges. Most importantly, my employees said the courses were not useful compared to other learning services. Highly recommend you DON'T use them.

This company stole my money after I canceled my subscription. They're a total scam, stay away. I dealt with a support team member named Marcus who was very rude and not helpful and closed my case before I could explain my issue.

I have done a couple of courses just to get the certificate to pad my resume but I took the course on plans and specifications and it is crap. The AI grading it is wrong about half the time. Says you didn’t include things that are clearly included. On 1 test I got a 32% after about 200 word, added 1 sentence worded a little different and got 100%. They need to considerably fix the AI.