Best European Alternatives to Udemy
Looking for a European alternative to Udemy? Udemy is a US marketplace where course quality varies enormously, instructors have little control over discounting, and what you hold at the end carries no formal recognition.
European platforms lean towards accreditation — state-recognised diplomas and university microcredentials — and towards corporate training built for European works-council rules.
How we rank these tools — 4-step process
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European ownership, verified
The company is headquartered and incorporated in the EU, EEA or Switzerland, and processes customer data in Europe. A US parent company disqualifies a tool from this page regardless of where its servers are.
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Category fit and hands-on review
What the tool actually does, who it suits, and where it falls short — checked against the vendor’s own documentation, changelog and pricing page rather than its marketing copy.
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Compliance and pricing check
GDPR posture, hosting location and the prices quoted on this page are verified against the vendor’s public pricing before publication, and re-checked when we revisit the category.
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Position on this page
Placement on this page can be paid, and that can affect which tools appear here and the order they appear in. It never buys a good review: a tool that fails the checks above is not here at any price, and payment does not change the shortcomings we write about. A vendor can ask us to correct a factual error — not to remove a criticism.
Vendors can pay for visibility on this page. It never changes what an entry says about a product, including the criticism, and we earn nothing when you click through to a vendor. Paid placement can affect which tools appear here and the order they appear in. Editorial policy
7 European Alternatives to Udemy
LearnWorlds
Build and sell your own fully branded course platform
OpenClassrooms
Diploma-level online programmes with one-to-one mentoring
FutureLearn
University courses, microcredentials and full degrees
360Learning
Collaborative learning where your own experts build the courses
Lecturio
Medical and professional education with spaced repetition
GoodHabitz
Soft-skills training library in 17 languages
Masterplan.com
Business e-learning with unusually high production value
Key takeaways
- Udemy has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Coursera since the merger closed on 11 May 2026, so the marketplace and its largest rival are now the same company.
- The instructor share of Udemy Business subscription revenue has been cut three Januaries running: 25 per cent, then 20, then 17.5, then 15.
- The marketplace split is not 50/50: instructors keep 97 per cent on a sale they bring and 37 per cent on one Udemy brings.
- LearnWorlds is the only tool here that makes the customer yours, which is the thing a marketplace can never give you.
- Nothing on this page replaces cheap self-published video courses, and a page claiming otherwise is describing a different product.
Why people leave Udemy
The first thing to know about Udemy in 2026 is that it is not a company any more. Coursera announced an all-stock combination on 17 December 2025 and closed it on 11 May 2026, exchanging 0.8 Coursera shares for each Udemy share. Udemy, Inc. is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Coursera, Inc., the combined business was valued at around $2.5 billion, and roughly $115 million of annual cost was earmarked for removal.
If you sell courses there, that is your landlord changing hands. If you buy Udemy Business for your staff, it is your supplier being integrated into a larger one. Neither is automatically bad, and neither was something you were asked about.
The second reason is a series rather than an opinion. The instructor share of the Udemy Business subscription pool has been reduced in three consecutive Januaries: from 25 per cent to 20 in 2024, to 17.5 in 2025, and to 15 in 2026. A marketplace that has cut the creator's share three years running has told you what the fourth year looks like.
- Your marketplace now belongs to its largest competitor Coursera completed the acquisition on 11 May 2026 and Udemy became a wholly owned subsidiary. For an instructor, the platform deciding your pricing, your visibility and your revenue share is now run by the company whose catalogue yours sits alongside. For a Udemy Business customer, the supplier you contracted with is inside a group of some 290 million learners with a stated $115 million of cost to take out.
- Three cuts in three years, in the same direction Twenty-five per cent, twenty, seventeen and a half, fifteen. That is the instructor share of subscription revenue in January 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026. The marketplace split has held — 97 per cent when you bring the buyer through your own link, 37 per cent when Udemy does — but subscription is where the platform has been steering learners, and it is the number that keeps moving.
- You never own the customer A Udemy student is Udemy's student. You do not get the email address, you cannot price your own course freely against the platform's discounting, and you cannot contact the people who bought from you to tell them about anything else. Whatever you have built there is an audience you rent. That is the trade, it has always been the trade, and it is only a problem the day you want to leave.
- Nobody vouches for what is in the catalogue Udemy's scale comes from open enrolment for instructors, which is also why quality varies from excellent to unusable within the same search results. A rating tells you whether other buyers were satisfied; it does not tell you whether the content is current, correct or complete. For a hobby that is fine. For a regulated profession or a corporate compliance programme it is not an answer, and the European platforms here sell exactly that difference.
What you have to replace, not just match
Three completely different people arrive at this page, and the tool that serves one is useless to the other two. Decide which you are before reading any further.
If you sell courses, you are replacing a shopfront in someone else's market with one of your own, and the question is whether you can bring an audience.
If you are learning, you are replacing a catalogue of self-published video with something that either carries academic weight or covers a profession properly. If you buy Udemy Business, you are replacing a library licence for a workforce, and the real decision is whether the knowledge you need can be bought at all or has to be written by your own people.
One warning that belongs at the top rather than the bottom: nothing on this page replaces the Udemy marketplace for somebody who wants a €15 video about a spreadsheet on a Tuesday evening. That product exists because a hundred thousand instructors self-publish into it, and no European platform has that catalogue or wants it.
The alternatives compared
| Position | Tool | Headquarters | Pricing | Jurisdiction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | LearnWorlds | Limassol / Athens, Greece | From about $29 per month; higher tiers remove transaction fees | EU (Greece and Cyprus) |
| #2 | OpenClassrooms | Paris, France | Free courses / diploma paths from about €300 per month, often funded by CPF or employer | EU (France) |
| #3 | FutureLearn | London, United Kingdom | Many courses free to audit / certificates and microcredentials paid / degrees at university rates | United Kingdom (adequacy decision, outside the EEA) |
| #4 | 360Learning | Paris, France | From about $8 per user per month; enterprise pricing on request | EU (France) |
| #5 | Lecturio | Leipzig, Germany | Individual subscriptions from about €20 per month; institutional licensing on request | EU (Germany) |
| #6 | GoodHabitz | Eindhoven, Netherlands | Per-employee annual licensing, quoted on request | EU (Netherlands) |
| #7 | Masterplan.com | Essen, Germany | Per-employee licensing, quoted on request | EU (Germany) |
How each alternative compares to Udemy
- Which law reaches it. EU (Greece and Cyprus). Udemy is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. EU.
- Source code. Closed source, as Udemy is.
- Independently checked. GDPR.
Best for: Instructors whose Udemy income mostly comes from buyers they brought themselves
LearnWorlds Ltd runs out of Limassol and Athens on EU hosting, and what it sells is the one thing a marketplace can never hand over: the relationship with the buyer. Your site, your branding, your pricing, your email list. When someone buys, you know who they are and you can tell them what you make next.
Against Udemy the arithmetic is blunt. A platform-sourced Udemy sale pays you 37 per cent; a LearnWorlds sale pays you the price minus payment processing and a subscription from about $29 a month. If a meaningful share of your Udemy revenue already comes through your own coupon links at 97 per cent, you have been paying a marketplace to run a checkout for an audience you supplied.
The corresponding truth is that LearnWorlds brings no buyers at all. Udemy's 63 per cent is the price of an audience, and on your own platform that becomes your job: the marketing, the traffic, the launch. Its interactive video — questions embedded at the point in the timeline where the concept appears — is a genuine pedagogical advantage over a passive Udemy lecture, but it does not sell the course for you.
What LearnWorlds does better than Udemy
- You keep the customer, the email address and the right to sell to them again, none of which Udemy permits
- You set the price, where Udemy discounts your course on its own schedule
- Interactive video with in-timeline questions, against Udemy's passive lecture format
- Memberships, subscriptions, funnels, certificates and SCORM support in one platform
- Greek and Cypriot company with EU hosting, so the student records stay under the GDPR
Where LearnWorlds is a step down from Udemy
- It brings no audience whatsoever, which is precisely what Udemy's 63 per cent buys
- A monthly subscription from about $29 that you pay whether or not you sell anything
- Lower tiers charge transaction fees that only the higher tiers remove
- Setting it up properly takes real time, where publishing on Udemy takes an afternoon
Standout against Udemy. It is the only option here where leaving one day costs you nothing, because the list of buyers was yours the whole time.
- Which law reaches it. EU (France). Udemy is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. EU.
- Source code. Closed source, as Udemy is.
- Independently checked. GDPR, state-recognised RNCP qualifications.
Best for: Career changers in France who need a qualification an employer will accept
OpenClassrooms SAS is in Paris and awards state-recognised RNCP qualifications, which is a different category of object from anything Udemy issues. A Udemy certificate says you watched the videos. An RNCP title is registered in the French national framework and an employer reads it as a credential.
The method is also the opposite of a marketplace. Weekly one-to-one mentoring with a working professional, project-based assessment, and a portfolio of finished work at the end instead of a score. Delivering that is expensive, hence roughly €300 a month — and very often nothing at all to the learner, since an employer or the CPF settles it.
The limits are honest and narrow. Recognition is specific to the French system, so the qualification travels less well outside it than a university degree would. The catalogue is small and mostly technical. And there is nothing here for someone who wants to spend an evening learning a single tool, which is the case Udemy serves best.
What OpenClassrooms does better than Udemy
- State-recognised RNCP qualifications, where Udemy issues completion certificates with no standing
- Weekly one-to-one mentoring by a working professional, which no marketplace provides at any price
- Project-based assessment producing a portfolio rather than a progress bar
- Frequently funded through CPF or an employer, so the learner may pay nothing
- French company under the GDPR, with career support built around the programme
Where OpenClassrooms is a step down from Udemy
- Recognition is anchored in the French system and travels less well elsewhere
- A narrow, mostly technical catalogue against Udemy's enormous range
- Around €300 a month unfunded, which is two years of Udemy purchases per month
- Structured programmes with commitments, not something to dip into for an hour
Standout against Udemy. It is the only option here where the thing you finish with is registered by a state rather than issued by a website.
- Which law reaches it. United Kingdom (adequacy decision, outside the EEA). Udemy is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. UK/EU.
- Source code. Closed source, as Udemy is.
- Independently checked. GDPR, accredited microcredentials.
Best for: Learners who want academic credit rather than a platform certificate
FutureLearn Ltd is based in London and works the way Udemy structurally cannot: courses are produced by universities and institutions rather than by whoever signed up to publish. That single difference answers the complaint that runs under most Udemy searches, which is that the rating tells you about satisfaction and nothing about accuracy.
Three distinct products sit under one roof: courses you can audit for nothing, accredited microcredentials that convert into academic credit, and complete degrees priced like degrees. The middle one is the interesting case against Udemy: a credential with weight, at a price far below a degree, from an institution whose name means something to an admissions office or a hiring manager.
Two caveats belong here plainly. FutureLearn is a UK company, so since Brexit it sits outside the EEA under an adequacy decision rather than under EU establishment, which matters for some procurement rules and not at all for an individual learner. And its catalogue is much smaller than Udemy's, with free audit access increasingly time-limited.
What FutureLearn does better than Udemy
- Courses produced by universities and institutions, not by open instructor enrolment
- Accredited microcredentials carrying real academic credit, which Udemy has no equivalent of
- Full online degrees available on the same platform as short courses
- Cohort-based discussion, so you learn alongside people rather than alone with a video
- Many courses free to audit, which is a genuinely lower barrier than a discounted purchase
Where FutureLearn is a step down from Udemy
- UK company outside the EEA, relying on an adequacy decision rather than EU establishment
- A far smaller catalogue than Udemy, with much narrower coverage of niche tools
- Free audit access is increasingly time-limited rather than open-ended
- Degrees are priced at university rates, which is a different order of spending entirely
Standout against Udemy. It is the only option here offering credit that an academic institution will actually count, which no marketplace certificate has ever done.
- Which law reaches it. EU (France). Udemy is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. EU.
- Source code. Closed source, as Udemy is.
- Independently checked. GDPR.
Best for: Employers whose training problem is internal expertise, not missing content
360Learning SAS is in Paris and starts from around $8 per user per month, and it inverts the assumption Udemy Business is built on. Instead of licensing a catalogue somebody else wrote, your own subject experts author the courses, with the platform handling authoring, review, distribution and analytics.
That matters because the training most organisations actually need cannot be bought. How your claims process works, why your product behaves the way it does in the field, what your regulator expects of your specific licence — none of that is in any catalogue, and buying a bigger catalogue does not bring it closer. Udemy Business is excellent at generic skills and silent on everything specific to you.
The cost is that somebody has to write it. Collaborative authoring makes that easier than a traditional LMS does, but it does not make it free, and organisations that buy 360Learning expecting a library are disappointed for exactly the reason they should be. It is also a platform rather than content, so for broad soft skills you may still want one of the libraries below.
What 360Learning does better than Udemy
- Your own experts author the material, so the training covers your processes rather than generic ones
- Collaborative authoring and review built in, where Udemy Business offers a catalogue and nothing to write with
- Analytics on what your workforce actually needs rather than on what it happened to watch
- French company with EU hosting, so the record of who took which course stays under the GDPR
- From about $8 per user per month, priced as a platform rather than as a content licence
Where 360Learning is a step down from Udemy
- It ships with no content at all, where Udemy Business ships with thousands of courses
- Somebody internal has to write and maintain the courses, which is real ongoing work
- Poor fit for broad soft-skills training, where a ready-made library is genuinely better
- Adoption depends on subject experts participating, which is a management problem rather than a software one
Standout against Udemy. It is the only tool here that assumes the most valuable training in your organisation is already in your people's heads rather than on somebody's shelf.
- Which law reaches it. EU (Germany). Udemy is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. EU.
- Source code. Closed source, as Udemy is.
- Independently checked. GDPR.
Best for: Medical and professional study where the curriculum has to be complete
Lecturio GmbH has been running from Leipzig since 2008, charging individuals about €20 a month and quoting institutions on request. Its depth is in medical and professional curricula, with spaced repetition and question banks built around exams rather than around watching.
The contrast with Udemy is about completeness rather than quality. Udemy will sell you an excellent course on one topic from one instructor, and another on the adjacent topic from someone else, with no guarantee that the two agree or that the gap between them is covered. A curriculum is the opposite proposition: the whole subject, in order, designed so nothing is missing.
It is narrow by construction, which is the point and also the limitation. There is no marketing, no design, no programming and nothing you would browse for on an evening. If you are not studying one of the subjects it covers, it is simply not for you.
What Lecturio does better than Udemy
- A complete curriculum rather than a set of unrelated courses that may not agree with each other
- Spaced repetition and question banks designed for passing examinations, not for finishing videos
- Content maintained by the company itself, where Udemy relies on whichever instructor uploaded it
- German company under the GDPR, with institutional licensing for universities and hospitals
- From about €20 a month for individuals, which is a subscription rather than a shelf of purchases
Where Lecturio is a step down from Udemy
- Covers only medical and professional subjects, so most Udemy buyers are outside its scope
- Nothing for software tools, design, business or the general interest catalogue Udemy is known for
- A subscription rather than one-off purchases, so it costs money in months you do not study
- Far smaller than Udemy by any measure other than depth in its own field
Standout against Udemy. It is the only option here where the product is a curriculum rather than a catalogue, which is the difference between studying a subject and collecting courses about it.
- Which law reaches it. EU (Netherlands). Udemy is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. EU.
- Source code. Closed source, as Udemy is.
- Independently checked. GDPR.
Best for: Multilingual workforces where training budgets die in the sign-off queue
GoodHabitz BV operates from Eindhoven and licenses per employee for unlimited access, across seventeen languages that are properly localised rather than machine-translated with the examples left in English.
The pricing shape is the argument against Udemy Business. When access is unlimited and already paid for, nobody has to ask a manager whether a course is worth it, and the request that never gets made is the training that never happens. Anyone who has watched a learning budget go unspent recognises that failure mode immediately.
The catalogue is soft skills and personal effectiveness rather than technical depth — communication, leadership, time management, digital basics. It will not teach your engineers Kubernetes and it does not claim to. For the broad middle of an organisation, which is where Udemy Business licences are usually bought and rarely used, that is the right shape.
What GoodHabitz does better than Udemy
- Unlimited access licensed per employee, so no one has to seek approval for an individual course
- Seventeen properly localised languages, against a mostly English marketplace catalogue
- Content produced and maintained by one company to a consistent standard
- Dutch company under the GDPR, so the record of who studied what stays in the EU
- Built for engagement in a workforce rather than for browsing by an individual buyer
Where GoodHabitz is a step down from Udemy
- Soft skills and personal effectiveness only; no technical or engineering depth
- Per-employee annual licensing quoted on request, so no published price to compare
- A far smaller catalogue than Udemy Business by any count
- You cannot add your own company-specific material the way 360Learning allows
Standout against Udemy. It is the only one here whose pricing model is designed to stop anyone having to justify a single course, which is where most corporate learning budgets quietly fail.
- Which law reaches it. EU (Germany). Udemy is run from the United States, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. Germany.
- Source code. Closed source, as Udemy is.
- Independently checked. GDPR.
Best for: German and Austrian companies where English-first training does not land
Masterplan.com GmbH is in Essen, hosts in Germany, and licenses per employee on request. It is the most narrowly aimed tool on this page: corporate learning produced for German-speaking organisations rather than translated into them.
That sounds like a small distinction until you have watched an English-language course about workplace communication fail in a Bavarian factory. Examples, regulation references and register all matter, and a catalogue written in German for German employers gets those right by default in a way Udemy Business's subtitles do not.
Outside that context there is less reason to choose it. The catalogue is smaller than GoodHabitz's, the price is quoted rather than published, and for an international workforce you would be buying a product optimised for a market you are not in. It ranks last here because it is the most specific answer, not because it is the weakest.
What Masterplan.com does better than Udemy
- Produced for German-speaking workforces rather than subtitled into them
- German company with German hosting, so employee learning records never leave the country
- Per-employee licensing designed for corporate rollout rather than individual purchases
- Content maintained to one editorial standard, unlike an open marketplace catalogue
- Built around change management and adoption rather than around course sales
Where Masterplan.com is a step down from Udemy
- Strongest in German-speaking markets and much less compelling outside them
- A smaller catalogue than GoodHabitz and far smaller than Udemy Business
- Pricing quoted on request, so comparison requires a sales conversation
- No technical or professional depth, and no way to publish your own material
Standout against Udemy. It is the only option here that treats German as the first language of the material rather than the fourth, which is the whole reason a German employer would look past a larger catalogue.
What actually breaks when you switch
For instructors, the videos are the easy half. Re-uploading a course to another platform is mechanical, and most of these accept SCORM or plain video without complaint. What does not come with you is the audience: no student email addresses, no purchase history, no way to tell past buyers where you went. Assume you are starting the marketing from zero, because you are.
For companies leaving Udemy Business, the trap is completion records. If any of your training exists to satisfy a regulator, an auditor or an insurer, you need evidence of who completed what and when, and that evidence lives in the platform you are cancelling. Export it before the contract lapses and confirm the new system will accept it, because reconstructing three years of compliance completions is not a project anyone budgets for.
And expect the catalogue complaint in month two. Whatever you move to will be smaller than Udemy, and somebody will want a course on a niche tool that is simply not there. The answer is that you traded breadth for something — accreditation, ownership, jurisdiction or relevance — and it is worth being able to say which one before the question is asked.
What does the Coursera merger actually change for me?
Contractually, nothing immediate: courses still sell, Udemy Business licences still run, and the brand is still on the website. Structurally, quite a lot, because the entity setting the terms is no longer the entity you chose.
For instructors, the platform that decides discounting, search ranking and revenue share is now owned by the company whose own catalogue competes with yours, and the deal was announced with around $115 million of cost to be removed. Cost removal in a two-marketplace group usually means consolidation somewhere, and instructors are not consulted about which somewhere.
For Udemy Business buyers, the question at renewal is simply which product you are renewing into. Ask that before the contract auto-renews rather than after, because the answer may have changed since you signed.
Is it worth leaving Udemy as an instructor?
It depends entirely on whether Udemy is bringing you buyers or you are bringing them yourself, and most instructors have never separated the two.
Look at your revenue by source. Sales where you brought the buyer through your own link pay 97 per cent, and those are sales you could have made on your own platform at 100 per cent minus payment fees. Sales Udemy brought pay 37 per cent, and those are the ones you genuinely cannot replicate elsewhere — you are paying 63 per cent for an audience you do not have.
If most of your income is the first kind, you have been paying a marketplace to process payments for an audience you already own, and LearnWorlds pays for itself immediately. If most is the second kind, leaving means learning to market, and that is a year of work rather than a migration.
Which of these produces a qualification an employer recognises?
Two, in two different systems, and neither resembles a Udemy certificate of completion.
OpenClassrooms awards RNCP qualifications the French state recognises, with a mentor every week and assessment by project, and the bill is often picked up by an employer or by the CPF — which is the gap between about €300 a month and paying nothing. Recognition is specific to the French system and the subject range is narrow and mostly technical.
FutureLearn sells three separate things: courses run with universities and institutions, accredited microcredentials that convert into academic credit, and complete online degrees priced like degrees. It is a UK company, which since Brexit means adequacy rather than EU establishment — worth knowing if your procurement rules distinguish the two.
Everything else here, Udemy included, produces knowledge and at most a certificate saying you finished a video.
Should a company replace Udemy Business with a library or a builder?
Ask what you are actually short of. If your people need broadly applicable skills — communication, spreadsheets, management, languages — a library is the right shape, and GoodHabitz or Masterplan.com licence one per employee rather than per seat consumed.
If what your people need is how your company does things — your products, your processes, your regulatory obligations — no library on earth contains it, and buying one is a way of avoiding the work. 360Learning turns the model round and has your own specialists write the material, the only route that works when the knowledge in question is not for sale anywhere.
Most organisations need both and buy only the first, then wonder why completion rates are good and behaviour does not change.
Which one to pick
If you sell courses, LearnWorlds is the answer, and the test is your own revenue split: income you generated through your own links is income you are already earning without Udemy and paying a marketplace to process.
If you are learning and want the result to count, OpenClassrooms if you are inside the French system and FutureLearn if you want university-backed credit that travels. Lecturio if you are studying a profession where the curriculum has to be complete rather than interesting.
If you are replacing Udemy Business, split the question. Buy GoodHabitz or Masterplan.com for the broad skills a library can genuinely cover, and 360Learning for the things about your own organisation that no catalogue will ever contain.
And if what you actually want is a cheap self-published video course on a narrow topic tonight, stay on Udemy. Nothing here does that, the merger has not changed it, and pretending otherwise would be the least useful thing this page could do.
Frequently Asked Questions
It depends which side of the marketplace you are on. LearnWorlds if you sell courses and want to own the customer. OpenClassrooms or FutureLearn if you want a qualification that carries weight rather than a completion certificate. Lecturio if you are studying a profession properly. 360Learning, GoodHabitz or Masterplan.com if you are training a workforce. There is no single answer, because Udemy is three businesses sharing a logo.
Coursera. The all-stock combination was announced on 17 December 2025 and completed on 11 May 2026, with Udemy shareholders receiving 0.8 Coursera shares per Udemy share, and Udemy, Inc. becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of Coursera, Inc. The combined business was valued at around $2.5 billion and reaches roughly 290 million learners and 95,000 instructors, with about $115 million of annual cost targeted for removal.
Not the 50 per cent that gets repeated. On the marketplace an instructor keeps 97 per cent of a sale made through their own coupon or referral link, and 37 per cent when Udemy brings the buyer. On Udemy Business the instructor is paid from a pooled subscription fund according to minutes watched, and that pool's instructor share has been cut from 25 per cent to 20 in January 2024, 17.5 in January 2025 and 15 in January 2026.
No. Udemy holds the customer relationship, not you: there is no export of student email addresses, no way to contact past buyers outside the platform's messaging, and no mechanism for telling them where you have gone. Your course videos are your own and can be re-uploaded anywhere, but the audience attached to them stays behind. This is the single most expensive fact about leaving, and it is worth understanding before you start rather than after.
No, and this page will not invent one. Udemy's catalogue exists because instructor enrolment is open and anyone can publish, which produces both its range and its unevenness. Every European platform here is either a place to build your own course business, an accredited institution, or a curated corporate library. If what you want is a cheap self-published video course on a narrow topic tonight, Udemy is still the product that does that.
For a learner, usually yes, and for a reason: a €15 marketplace course and a €300-a-month mentored diploma path are not the same purchase. For an instructor the comparison inverts — LearnWorlds starts around $29 a month and you keep the revenue, against a marketplace taking 63 per cent of the sales it brings. For an employer, 360Learning starts around $8 per user per month, while GoodHabitz and Masterplan.com quote per employee annually.
Three things. It has a catalogue nothing in Europe approaches in breadth, because open instructor enrolment produces volume no curated platform can match. It brings an audience, which is what the 63 per cent on a platform-sourced sale actually buys. And it discounts aggressively enough that a learner can be persuaded to try a subject on impulse, which is a genuine pedagogical advantage even when it is also a marketing tactic.
It offers the usual apparatus — a data processing agreement, published subprocessors, and transfer mechanisms for moving data out of the EEA. What it cannot alter is that the group is American, so US law reaches the company holding the records regardless of where servers sit. For a marketplace selling video courses that is a low-stakes exposure. For an employer whose learning platform records which staff took a whistleblowing or a harassment course, it is a more considered decision.
For an instructor, the videos move in a weekend and the audience takes a year. Re-uploading a course to LearnWorlds is a mechanical task; rebuilding the flow of buyers that Udemy was supplying is a marketing project with no shortcut. For a company replacing Udemy Business, plan a quarter: choosing the library is quick, mapping it to the skills you actually need and migrating completion records for compliance purposes is what takes the time.
Who worked on this review
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