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Learn Python

Scrimba's free beginner Python course, taught by Olof Paulson across roughly 5.6 hours. It mixes short tutorials with interactive coding challenges to teach the language from the ground up.

Quick answer​

Learn Python is Scrimba's free, beginner-level Python course: about 5.6 hours across 74 lessons, taught by Olof Paulson. It alternates between tutorials and interactive challenges, so you write Python rather than just watch it. It assumes no prior programming and is the main Python course on Scrimba, a platform that is otherwise built around JavaScript and the web.

Is it worth your time?​

It is free, it assumes nothing, and the format suits beginners well: you do not just watch syntax, you type it and run it. Python is also the language most often recommended for a first programming experience, thanks to readable syntax and a huge range of uses. For someone starting out, 5.6 free hours of guided, interactive practice is a strong way in.

The honest caveat is platform fit. Scrimba is overwhelmingly a JavaScript and web-development platform, and its Python catalog is still narrow by comparison. That said, the offering is stronger than it used to be: Scrimba now publishes official Python documentation that pairs with the course, adds adaptive depth, build-along projects, and a debugging section, and is being actively expanded. For genuinely deep Python specialization (data science, backend frameworks like Django, automation at scale) you will still move to a Python-first resource, but as a free on-ramp this is more self-contained than before.

The companion docs​

Alongside the interactive course, Scrimba has launched a free Python documentation site that reads as a textbook to the course's hands-on lessons. Two things make it worth knowing about:

  • A Level switcher (Beginner, Intermediate, Deep Dive) that changes how deep each explanation goes. Beginners get plain explanations and analogies; the deeper levels add internals and edge cases. The practical upshot: you can revisit a chapter at greater depth as you improve instead of outgrowing the material. The Classes chapter, for instance, goes well past basic objects into inheritance, method resolution order, super(), and @property, further than the 5.6-hour course alone takes you.
  • Build-along projects with short briefs, laddered across three difficulty tiers (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced), from a Mad Libs warm-up up to an advanced Inventory Manager, built in the browser. There is also a "Bughouse" debugging section and a Python playground.

The docs are already localized into six languages (Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, and Korean) and flagged as growing ("more coming soon"), so treat this as an offering on the way up rather than a finished one.

What you'll learn​

You learn Python from first principles, through a back-and-forth of explanation and hands-on challenge. The curriculum runs from the basics up through object-oriented programming:

  • Variables, numbers, and strings
  • Input and output
  • Control flow (conditionals and loops)
  • Lists, tuples, sets, and dictionaries
  • Functions, lambdas, and comprehensions
  • Classes and object-oriented programming
  • Files and exceptions, and modules

The companion docs cover the same topics in text, and the Level switcher lets you read any of them at greater depth (up to internals and edge cases) as you grow. The interactive challenges are the differentiator: rather than passively following along, you are repeatedly asked to write small pieces of code, which is how the syntax and patterns actually stick. By the end you can read and write straightforward Python programs and have a few small projects to point to.

Who it's for, and who should skip it​

It fits complete beginners who want a gentle, interactive introduction to programming through Python, and people on the beginners track curious whether coding suits them. The free price and low prerequisites make it easy to try.

Skip it if you already program in another language and want a fast, dense Python reference, since the pacing is deliberately gentle. Skip it too if your goal is deep Python specialization, because Scrimba's strength and catalog depth lie in JavaScript and web development, not Python.

Prerequisites​

None. The course is built for complete beginners and assumes no prior programming. A browser and willingness to type code are enough.

Where it fits​

This course is not part of a named career path, since Scrimba's paths center on web development. It works best as a standalone first taste of programming, or as a companion read alongside the Best Python Courses for Beginners guide if you are deciding where to start.

Free or Pro​

The course itself is free, with no subscription required to start or finish it. Scrimba Pro is a separate decision that unlocks the structured career paths (which are JavaScript and web focused), the coding challenges, the private Discord, and certificates. For this Python course alone you never have to pay. See current plans if you later want the path structure around the web courses.

Strengths and limits​

What it does well: it is free, it assumes nothing, and its mix of tutorials and interactive challenges keeps beginners writing code rather than just watching. Python is an excellent first language and this is a friendly on-ramp.

Where it is limited: Scrimba is a JavaScript and web platform first, so its Python catalog is still narrow. The new official docs, projects, and adaptive depth make it a stronger and more self-contained free starting point than it was, but it is not yet a deep specialization, and serious Python work (data science, Django, large-scale automation) will eventually take you elsewhere.

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