Coursera Reviews 1,227

Accidentally clicked “subscribe to Coursera Plus” when paying for my course and had no option to go back and change it so I immediately cancelled the subscription. They refused to refund me or give me access to the course that I paid for, saying that the payment I made was allocated to the subscription so I need to pay again to do the course. Unbelievably bad experience. I feel as though they’ve stolen from me when they could have simply let me do the course that I paid for and I would have been a return customer and advocate of the company.

I enrolled in the Google AI course with Coursera.
I started the course and 5 minutes in was prompted to apply for free access to Google Gemini - an essential part of the course. For some undisclosed reason my application was declined (possibly because I am in New Zealand) so I was unable to continue with the course. I immediately cancelled the subscription and requested a refund - which Coursera declined.
Coursera are very difficult to work with - there is no "person" you can deal with. Every email is from a "no reply" address and they try to put everything thru their AI robot. As far as I am concerned they have stolen my money. DO NOT DEAL WITH THIS ORGANISATION.

I signed up for a "Free Google AI Certification" course and wondered why they needed my credit card, but there was no information explaining it. I spend about one hour looking at the course and then forgot about it. One week later, I received a notification from my bank that $41 had been charged to my card by Coursera. I had no idea that the Google AI course was even related to them, as I knew already what scumbags they are. I immediately canceled my account and then wrote to request a refund. After several back-and-forths with a stupid AI emailer, I finally heard from a "human being" who tried to be polite when he refused to refund, "according to our Terms of Service". Coursera is not an education company. It's a get-rich-quick scheme run by Silicon Valley tech assholes. Don't buy anything from them, and don't ever give them your credit card information. They won't even give you a reminder. They just steal your money in the middle of the night.

Scam. Silently take payments and the AI won't let you cancel. Avoid at all costs

Far from the only one, I requested a refund within the 14-day window permitted by EU consumer regulation but for slapped with Coursera's arbitrary refund policy.

STAY AWAY: Not worth the stress. Customer service does not exist. There is chatbot, Cora or whatever, that is so annoying. States it is trained, but very inadequate, GhatGPT it much more sophisticated, Money was taken from my subscription, but my course disappeared and now it is telling me to take another subscription. No way. My bank will deal with them.

Coursera is truly a scam! I’m not sure how they’re still a functioning company. The certs are BS. And customer service is terrible.

I browsed there courses and then found a payment of £43 had been taken from my account. I think their courses must have been behind a free trial or paywall. I wasn’t interested in their courses after browsing and shocked they would have charged me. Infuriating experience talking to their chatbot.

I completed all 5 courses in Google AI Essentials on March 23, 2026, achieving 100% in every course. Immediately after completion, Coursera sent me 5 emails with the subject line "Get your certificate when your free trial ends" stating "you'll get your certificate" with absolutely no mention that cancelling the free trial would block certificate issuance or that payment was required.

Their free trial is essentially useless. Coursera never tells you upfront that completing a course during the free trial means nothing unless you pay. You can study hard, pass every assessment with 100%, and still walk away with nothing if you cancel. The free trial gives you access to the content but they conveniently forget to mention that the certificate you worked for is locked behind a paywall.

When I contacted support, agents Adrian and Gene simply quoted their help article and refused to issue my certificate. When I submitted a formal complaint (Case 06153250) citing misleading conduct under Australian Consumer Law, the response was identical with no escalation and no resolution.

Coursera's own help documentation clearly states certificates cannot be earned during a free trial, yet this critical information was deliberately omitted from every single completion email they sent me. Instead they actively encouraged me to "Add your certificate to LinkedIn" implying it was already mine.

This is misleading and deceptive conduct. Their automated emails make promises their policy does not honour. I have retained all 5 emails as evidence and am escalating to the ACCC and FTC.

Do yourself a favour, read every word of their T&Cs before starting any free trial. Don't trust their emails.

experience with Coursera Plus has been very disappointing.
I thought when I signed up for the month-to-month subscription I would have some ability to cancel or get a refund if I decided it wasn’t for me. However, it seems like even though you’ll be charged right away, they do not provide refunds on Coursera.
On top of that, the course quality was, at best, average. While there are some decent materials, much of the content feels outdated or too surface-level to justify the price.
Overall, the combination of non-existent refund flexibility and underwhelming course quality makes this hard to recommend. I expected more from a platform of this scale.

I took a scrum master course, earned a "certificate," then learned that the certificate doesn't hold any value in the real world. It's not part of the Scrum Agile Alliance, so it's not recognized. Why call it a certification if no one outside of Coursera recognizes it as a certification? I felt like I completely wasted my time.

Also, their support teams are awful. I had a critique, and they shut down the case rather than work with me to find the real problem. Very unprofessional.

Coursera was good, a couple of years ago.
I bought a product owner course that suppose to be IBM course!.. I thought I am going to learning something valuable, instead, I got an absolute junk of repeated videos with a bit shuffling to give the illusion that you have an actual material.

I asked for refund because the course did not give me any actual ROI..they refused arguing that I have finished my 7 trial days.and they charged 67 dollars for nothing.

I really do not recommend such a platform anymore..it seems they lost their moral compass and became just another commercial course platform filled with junk material with no absoulte value.

Scam. Avoid.
Does not respond. No support.
Keeps charging credit card even though I have been trying to cancel for months.

Do NOT use this service. I made a trustpilot account just to write this review. If you sign up for a free trial, you will be charged $50 for a monthly subscription even if you CANCEL the free trial. Don't even try to ask for a refund, the customer service is atrocious, and will come up with any reason not to give it to you. Go to your bank and start a dispute. It is sad that this big of company needs to scam their users in order to raise profits. Use ANY other service, I would personally recommend Datacamp, but ANYTHING is better than this crap.

Worse than the absolute worst service, a total scam. I canceled my subscription for a course in Dec 2025 and it still charge me till March 2026. It never email with notifying about the bill and only when the payment was unsuccessful the first time on Feb 2026. Total SCAM by a the CEO

I enrolled in this course intending to pay for just one additional month, but I was automatically placed into a recurring subscription without any clear notification or warning before being charged. Because I didn’t know the charge was coming, I didn’t have the chance to cancel in time.
When I contacted customer support to request a refund, I was told it wasn’t possible. I currently don’t have the time to participate in the course, so being charged for something I can’t use is incredibly frustrating.
This experience left me feeling misled and unsupported. I would strongly encourage clearer billing notifications and more flexible customer service policies.

I would give -3 stars for this company right about now. The company won't help with any issues. I am having an issue with the assessment on the google data analytics. It doesn't give the pictures for the question but it gives answer bubbles to choose. It takes an attempt just to go out, where there is a banner stating that there are updates. I closed and restarted the computer, cleared the cache and cookies and it still didn't work. If you flag it, nothing happens. Coursera has AI that is useless. It can't answer any important questions and it sends an email pushing the accountability on google and then provide FALSE INFORMATION about where to find contact information. This company has an honor code, but won't even assist the customers!! I have flagged this issues, sent emails, and tried the learning community. Yet, there is no way for support or to reach a human support agent. I am losing attempts and time to retake the assessment. It makes you wait 24 hours. I am looking for all means to get this out there. All I need is my assessment fixed and updated with the attempts and it takes days just to continue to get the run around.

Literally the same comment as everyone else.

Terrible refund policy. Zero exceptions made for cancelling a product seconds after it got charged. Just a team that keeps quoting policy. Zero reminders about your card being charged.

I've opened a case with my local consumer protection here in Brazil. I would recommend people do the same for their jurisdiction.

Most of the help is AI driven and even when a human steps in, the person will hide behind policies to avoid refunding or giving you extra time or any solution
You can connect without being subscribed (via link) but you can get charge after the free trial nevertheless and you won't receive any warning prior to the charge. They do everything they can to charge you and then say how it's protected by policies. I prefer Udemy of Skillshare, both more transparent and less shady practice.