The Best Python Tutorial for Beginners (Top 10 List)

Table of Contents

• The 10 Best Python Tutorials for Beginners

An immersive data science bootcamp is the best way to make a full career change, but Python tutorials can be a great place to start your journey. Have you ever wondered, “What is Python used for?” Well, we’ve rounded up the best online Python courses, from tutorials to learn Python 3 to Python projects for beginners. Some of the best Python courses aren’t free, though, so we’ve included a few paid Python programming tutorial options that cover Python more in-depth. 

Whether you’re a hands-on learner who likes to work on a project-based Python tutorial or you’re someone who learns best by reading, there’s something here for everyone. There are even Python tutorials that you can do from your phone! Try analyzing your Netflix data or building a weather app if you’re up for a hands-on challenge. 

The 10 Best Python Tutorials for Beginners

1. Udemy's The Modern Python 3 Bootcamp
2. Udacity's Introduction to Python
3. Udemy's Build a Weather App
4. edX's Visualizing Data with Python
5. Pluralsight's Flask: Getting Started
6. Real Python's Making a Twitter Bot in Python
7. Dataquest's Analyze Your Netfix Data
8. edX's Programming for Everybody
9. Pluralsight's Web Scraping with Python
10. Udacity's Into to Data Structures

1. Udemy's The Modern Python 3 Bootcamp

The Modern Python 3 Bootcamp on Udemy is a beginner favorite, taught by Colt Steele – who’s taught over 750,000 developers throughout his career! This hybrid course features the usual Udemy lectures along with interactive exercises. 

With nearly 200 exercises and quizzes, this course aims to help you “really really understand object oriented programming in Python.” It also promises to teach you how to make HTTP requests to APIs, write your own decorators, work with lambdas, create an automated web crawler, write your own generators, build multi-file projects, and more. From the basics of Python’s syntax to working with data files, this class covers it all. 

Length: 30 hours
Instructors: Colt Steele
Price: $129.99
This class is for: Anyone who wants to learn Python or is curious about data science.
Reviews: With a 4.7 star rating, this course is popular among beginners. Here’s what students have to say about it: 

“A great introductory Python course that I can’t appreciate enough. I can’t stress how good of a teacher Colt really is. There is only one thing I can complain about: the exercises were sometimes a bit too challenging. But other than that, great course. Highly recommend!” -Lionel Robert | 5 stars

“A very good introductory Python course! Tons of exercises. Covers basic to intermediate level of concepts on Python programming. If you knew nothing about Python before, you can learn a lot by getting your hands dirty.” -S. Wang | 4.5 stars

“I’ve gone through this course material a couple times over the course of the past year while my coding has developed and I’ve found new knowledge each time. Well taught with awesome exercises to reinforce lessons. Highly recommend.” -Joe Agnese | 5 stars

2. Udacity's Introduction to Python Programming

A free introductory to Udacity’s Data Analyst Nanodegree Program, Introduction to Python teaches the fundamentals of Python. This course is focused more on how Python is applied in data rather than web development. It offers a student support community, a bonus perk for a free course! 

You’ll learn how to represent and store data using Python data types and variables, using conditionals and loops, complex data structures, and creating custom functions. If you want to harness the power of Python with lists, sets, dictionaries, and tuples to store collections of data, this course will get your feet wet. It even teaches you how to write scripts and handle errors. The last module will help you integrate third-party libraries, an essential for any data professional. 

Length/time: ~5 weeks
Instructors: Juno Lee
Price: Free!
This class is for: Python beginners who are interested in a data career. 

3. Udemy's Build a Weather App with Python and Django

Hands-on learners will love this course that teaches you how to Build a Weather App with Python and Django, which is taught by John Elder, the founder of Codemy. Learn how to create this app step by step with HTML, the Bootstrap CSS framework, Python, and the Django framework. Learn hands on as you build this app at your own pace. From installing Python to testing your new app, this course truly teaches it all. 

Length: ~2 hours
Instructors: John Elder 
Price: $49.99
This class is for: Complete beginners can take this course. While not required, some HTML and CSS experience is helpful! Perfect for those who want to dive into Python for web development.
Reviews: This course is highly rated for its engaging teacher, clear instructions, and quality audio and video. 

4. edX's Visualizing Data with Python

This self-paced EdX course, partnered with IBM, teaches you Visualizing Data with Python. It’s part of a professional program that allows you to use this course toward a certificate in Python for Data Science, IBM Data Science, or Data Analyst certificates. Leverage Python and IBM’s Watson Studio to visualize data and insights in an approachable and interactive way. 

Learn how to represent data with Matplotlib, Seaborn, and Folium – the most popular Python libraries for data professionals. You’ll use area plots, histograms, bar charts, pie charts, box plots, scatter plots, waffle charts, word clouds, regression plots, and bubble plots to visualize data. Plus, this course teaches you how to create maps to visualize geospatial data. 

Length/time: 5 weeks (2-4 hours per week)
Instructors: Alex Aklson
Price: Free!
This class is for: Beginners who are interested in using Python for data visualizations.

5. Pluralsight's Flask: Getting Started

Develop a web application with the Flask framework in Flask: Getting Started hosted by online learning platform Pluralsight. With minimal code, you can get your hands wet with web development in Python using one of the most popular Python frameworks. 

Learn the basics of Flask, and how to create a Flask view function. Then, you’ll learn how to create HTML pages. Lastly, you’ll learn how to use web forms and handle user inputs. You’ll be able to write code for a Flask application by the end of this course. 

Length/time: ~2 hours
Instructors: Reindert-Jan Ekker
Price: 10 days free, then $29/mo
This class is for: Complete beginners can take this course, you don’t need to know any code beforehand. It’s great for anyone who wants to use Python for web development. 
Reviews: This course has a five-star rating with 89 reviews. 

6. Real Python's How to Make a Twitter Bot in Python With Tweepy

Learn How to Make a Twitter Bot in Python with Tweepy. Tweepy is a library that provides an easy way to use the Twitter API. Project tutorials are a great way to get solid practice with Python. You can try them once you’ve gotten your feet wet with basic Python fundamentals!

From installing Tweepy to deploying the bots you build with Docker and AWS, this tutorial takes you all the way through the development of this app. It would help to have an introduction to Python for this course, but most of the code is included in the Tweepy package so you won’t need to be proficient yet. 

Instructors: Miguel Garcia
Price: Free!
This guide is for: Beginners can follow this tutorial, but it would be helpful to at least have an introduction to Python and APIs before you start. 
Reviews: The comments section is active on this tutorial and the instructor responded to every comment that asked a question! 

“I love this article. It got me to start learning Python last year. Thank you for this concise tutorial.” -Uli 

“This guide was really helpful and clear. I’ve implemented the FollowFollowers bot and it worked like a charm.” -John

7. Dataquest's Beginner Python Tutorial: Analyze Your Personal Netflix Data

This is a fun one! Learn how to Analyze Your Netflix Data with Python. How many hours have you spent watching your favorite show for comfort or background noise? Let’s be real, I’ve heard the Gilmore Girls theme song at least 100 times. This tutorial will answer that! Learning through projects is such a great way to solidify new Python concepts. 

You’ll learn how to go from downloading your Netflix data to analyzing the data thoroughly with Python. The tutorial assists you with Jupyter Notebook and Pandas. We have a guide for getting started with Jupyter Notebook that’s the perfect primer for this project. 

Price: Free!
This class is for: Beginners can follow this tutorial, but it would be helpful to at least have an introduction to Python and the Pandas library before you start. 

8. edX's Programming for Everybody (Getting Started with Python)

Go from complete beginner to novice in Python Fundamentals in just 7 weeks with Programming for Everybody from University of Michigan. This incredibly accessible course is part of the Computer Science certificate program on EdX.

This free self-paced course teaches variables conditional execution, repeated execution, and how to use functions. You’ll do all of your work in a web browser so you don’t have to worry about downloading anything or having access to your own computer. You can even do your homework on your phone if you want to! 

Length/time: 7 weeks
Instructors: Charles Severance
Price: Free!
This course is for: This course is designed for complete beginners.

9. Pluralsight's Exploring Web Scraping with Python

This course for both data professionals and developers introduces Web Scraping with Python. Liberate data for your data science projects from download to crawling with the Beautiful Soup Python library. It even touches on SQL for web scraping.  

Learn foundational web scraping knowledge, how to use Beautiful Soup, build a spider in 20 lines of code with Scrapy, and use a robotic browser to move into advanced scraping. Finish it off with a basic understanding of SQL for web scraping. It even has transcripts so you have notes to look back at later. 

Length/time: ~2 hours
Price: 10-day Free Trial, then $29/mo
This course is for: This program is for students who are already familiar with Python and looking to change careers into a data profession. You must be proficient in English and have an intermediate skill level in Python and basic Algebra.
Reviews: 4.5 Stars out of 54 reviews

10. Udacity's Intro to Data Structures and Algorithms

This course by Grow with Google (GwG) covers an Introduction to Data Structures and Algorithms in Python. GwG is designed to help you ace your technical interview. This particular GwG course is self-paced and guides you through frequently asked technical interview questions. It’s part of Udacity’s Intro to Programming NanoDegree Program.

You’ll learn efficiency, list-based collections, searching and sorting, maps and hashing, trees, graphics, algorithms, and how to structure responses in a job interview. This free course also offers the unique opportunity to participate in mock interviews and get personalized recommendations for improvement. Plus, you’ll get practice problems and quizzes to test your new skills. 

Length: 4 weeks
Price: Free!
This program is for: Complete beginners, but it doesn’t hurt to be familiar with Python and what Python libraries are.

Once you’ve done these tutorials and decided that you love Python, you may be ready for an immersive data science bootcamp – here are our picks for this year's best data science bootcamps!