O'Reilly vs. Udemy vs. Pluralsight vs. Codecademy: Detailed Comparison & Verdict 2025?

Overview of O'Reilly, Udemy, Pluralsight and Codecademy

O'Reilly

O'Reilly is a publisher for the most highly-rated programming books for many languages. With this subscription to their site, you will get online access to all of their material. They hold online workshops with highly experienced professionals almost every day.

On this service, you can do live online workshops with chat and ask any questions you want to the instructor. This is really an amazing aspect of the service! Some of the instructors are so well known that they actually teach many corporate developers, so using O'Reilly will definitely help you develop professionally.

Udemy
Udemy is a platform that offers courses ranging from dog grooming to HTML code writing which really does have something for everyone. Founded in 2007 it has grown to one of the largest learning platforms around, available in over 60 languages and with learners from over 190 countries. It owns more than 185,000 courses now and has helped more than 49million learners.

What makes Udemy different from the other online learning platforms is that it supports instructors as much as it supports its learners.  Instructors are able to create entire courses and provide them online (after quality checking and other processes first). This allows people to share their knowledge and skills with others, without having to ever meet. Not only will you be able to partake in these courses, but you will also be given instructor feedback and in most cases be asked to provide a sample of your newly acquired skills.

Pluralsight

In 2004, Pluralsight began as a training firm that hired instructors to businesses or training events. However, it moved its focus to online video training for the technology industry in 2007.
Aaron Skonnard, Keith Brown, Fritz Onion, and Bill Williams are the company’s founders, and the headquarters are in Farmington, Utah.

Assessments, learning pathways, and courses in disciplines including software development, security, data, and more are available through Pluralsight developed by professionals.Thousands of video courses, manuals, pathways, exams, webinars, and more are available on the learning platform.Pluralsight’s material covers a wide range of topics in technology, including software development, cybersecurity, and more. The platform’s courses are generated by over 1,500 industry professionals and partners such as Google, Adobe, Microsoft, and Oracle.

Codecademy

Founded in August 2011 by Zach Sims and Ryan Bubinski, Codecademy is an online coding platform with both free and paid plans.It currently offers classes in 14 different programming languages (along with courses on various libraries and frameworks) and 10 different tech subjects.

Designed for beginners, most of Codecademy’s students have zero experience when they sign up. This makes the platform a good option for children and teens, as well as adult learners.What makes Codecademy different from many other online learning platforms is that Codecademy is a very hands-on, learn-by-doing platform. With a Codecademy Pro membership, you can also get access to personalized learning plans, quizzes, and real-world projects with step-by-step video walkthroughs.

O'Reilly vs. Udemy vs. Pluralsight vs. Codecademy: Detailed Comparison

Next, I will compare the four online learning platforms in terms of models, learning style, course content and price and fee in detail.

Model

O'Reilly takes a subscription model. After subscribing, you can access to the O'Reilly Learning Platform and its vast array of technical content, with more than 40,000 total learning artifacts, including online books and video courses from O'Reilly and other top publishers, recorded O'Reilly conference/Superstream videos, and learning paths.

Udemy is a market place where you buy a single course that gives you lifetime access to that course, and you can come back and learn anything you want. You also get access to included articles, quizzes, and practice questions and whatever downloadable available with the course.

Pluralsight runs on a subscription model.You need to pay a monthly fee to get access to their platform, and that provides you access to more than 5000+ courses on the latest and greatest technologies. You don't need to buy any course, just log in to Pluralsight and learn whatever you want to learn.

CodeCademy has got both free and paid courses and it has a free section and a Pro section, where you will find skill path and some really nice course material. CodeCademy Pro is also decently priced and have decent amount of learning tracks. The Pro membership give you access to all of them.

Learning Style

 O'Reilly provides knowledge mostly through books. You can immediately tell that it's a book publisher and it feels more like a library rather than a learning platform.

Codecademy is 100% interactive, where you will be doing things while reading or learning. You will have information and practice console on the same screen, which literally encourages you to learn by doing.

Like Codecademy, Udemy is interactive, you’ll not only watch video lectures, text lectures, and audio lectures in each cours, but also quizzes and but also do some quizzes.

While this is great, it's not always possible to do the exercise while learning online. The learning style offered by Pluralsight is watching online videos which is more suitable for people who want to best utilize their commute time to learn new technologies.

Course Content

The learning resources of O'Reilly are mainly online books, including thousands of products from major IT publishers like Pearson, Packt, Sun, Addison Wesley, Manning, and others are included. It is not only for programming or technical literature. There are several materials available on issues such as corporate transformation and soft skills. Furthermore, O’Reilly provides you with access to a vast library of information in a variety of media. An additional advantage is that you receive early access to many books before they hit shops or Amazon. In addition, it also has some learning video.

Udemy has more than 80,000 courses on almost anything you want to learn about Tech and Programming including programming languages like Java, C, C++, C#, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, Kotlin, Scala, Swift, PHP to frameworks like React, Angular, Vuejs, Nodejs, and tools like Docker, Kubernetes, Jenkins, Maven, Gradle and much more. But but there are many courses which are low quality and just created to earn quick bucks rather than focused on teaching and providing an excellent experience to learners. Of course,  Udemy also have some excellent courses，like Angular Complete Guide by Max and his other courses on React, Colt_Steele’s courses on Web Development and Algorithms, Ryan Kroonenburg’s Cloud courses and Kirill Eremenko Machine Learning and AI courses etc.

Pluralsight has more than 5000+ courses to learn almost anything from programming languages like Java, C++, Go, Swift, Python, JavaScript, Ruby, Kotlin, Scala, Groovy, C, C#, frameworks like Django, Flask, Spring, Spring Boot, Rails, .NET, and skills like SQL, Database, Data Science, Machine Learning, Linux and much more. You can literally find a course to learn almost anything you want, including SVN and Git and some ancient and modern tools as well like Docker, Jenkins, Maven, Kubernetes, Gradle, WebPack, NPM, etc. Another thing is that Pluralsight courses are mostly taught by experts in their area, which means you learn right from the authority.

While Codecademy doesn't have that many courses or skill path, it has a cleverly designed curriculum for most of the essential skills like Web Development, Programming and Computer Science, Machine Learning and Data Science, and much more.Their courses on Programming languages like Learn Java, Learn C++, Learn Python 3, and Learn Golang are also impressive.

Price and Fee
The Individual bundle of O'Reilly Media's Online Learning platform costs $39 per month or $399 per year. The Team tier is similarly $399 per year. Discounts on O’Reilly Conferences, Direct Billing Options, End User Usage Reporting, and the Ability to Reassign Licenses are all included in the Teams tier’s yearly fee.

Udemy is relatively unique in the MOOC field, in that there is not a subscription service for Udemy. You have to pay per course. The cost of Udemy courses vary greatly, typically hover around the $100-200 price point at full price. But here’s a secret: almost all of the Udemy courses are on sale at some point or another. And the sale prices are huge. Sometimes you can save up to 90%. In addition, there are also many free courses.

In order to watch Pluralsight courses, you need to buy membership or subscription. They have both monthly and yearly subscriptions, which cost around $29 monthly and $299 yearly (14% saving). This is called Pluralsight personal plan. It also has a Pluralsight premium membership, which costs around $499 yearly but also provides access to interactive courses, quizzes, assessments, and projects. In addition, Pluralsight premium membership also provide course completion certificates for you.

CodeCademy offer both free and paid courses.  Paid courses need you become Codecademy Pro member.The Codecademy Pro membership will cost you around $15.99 per month (billed as $191.88 yearly), which gives you $48 of saving, and that's also there most popular option. They also have a 6-month plan, which costs around $17.99 per month, and a monthly plan, which costs approximately $19.99 per month but billed 6-monthly and monthly accordingly. Their paid plan provides access to exclusive quizzes, projects, and customized learning paths, and community support because you get a chance to connect with other Pro members to collaborate, share resources, and more.

O'Reilly vs. Udemy vs. Pluralsight vs. Codecademy: Verdict

There is no doubt that O'Reilly, Udemy, Pluralsight and Codecademy are all good platform for learning code and programming skills. Which one should you choose boils down to what kind of model you like.

O’Reilly is an online courses/platforms linked to Book Publishers which offers a large selection of videos, books, live online training courses, and interactive learning experiences. You will find many classic books in the field published by O’Reilly, John Wiley & Sons, APress, and partner publishers. If you want to get the latest cutting edge technical books at first time, choose O’Reilly.

Udemy is going to be a good option if you prefer to pay for each course individually and have access for life. But Udemy is an online courses/platforms with Content from Community, as you can imagine, the quality can vary on platforms with this structure. For this reason, reading feedback from previous students, as well as evaluating the instructor’s profile, are important before investing time and/or money the courses.

Pluralsight offers premium online training in areas like IT, data, technology, cyber security, and more. It is a tutorial-style applied courses/platforms which deliver content by video and students are given instructions to replicate what they learned.  If you want access to a diverse online training platform, join Pluralsight Premium Plan.

Codecademy offer text-based courses which follows a guided course approach, in which brief textual content and instructions are presented and for each learned topic.  Learners must replicate what they have learned in an interactive terminal/IDE in order to continue (similar to O’Reilly’s interactive content). If you prefer interactive learning, join CodeCademy Pro.

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