The 5 Best React Courses for Beginners (2023 Updated)
In this guide, we feature the best React courses for beginners, identifying the ones tailored to novice learners.
We’ve assessed each course based on content depth, instructional quality, practical application, and more. Ultimately, we offer an optimal guide to help beginners choose an ideal React course.
Our approach ensures transparency and will empower you with valuable insights to make informed learning decisions by the end of the article.
Let’s dive in.
Overview
- Best Comprehensive: Complete React Developer in 2023 (Zero to mastery)
- Best Short Course: The Beginner's Guide to React (Egghead)
- Best Hands-On: Learn React (Scrimba)
- Best Instructor-led: Modern React with Redux (Udemy)
- Best Paid: Pure React (Dave Ceddia)
How We Choose the Courses
- Structured Curriculum: A well-organized curriculum is paramount for beginners. Each course we chose features a logically sequenced curriculum that starts with foundational concepts and progressively advances to more complex topics, ensuring a smooth learning journey.
- Instructor Experience and Teaching Style: We chose courses taught by seasoned React experts who present complex ideas in an easy-to-understand manner.
- Content Quality and Depth: Chosen courses boast in-depth content with simple explanations supported by real-world examples. Beginners can delve into React's core concepts and gain practical skills.
- Course Content and Relevance: While many courses in this guide may not be entirely up-to-date, most cover React v16, a foundational version crucial for anyone learning React. Despite not being the latest, this version remains a standard, equipping learners with essential skills. Each course emphasizes key React features and industry-aligned practices, providing valuable knowledge applicable to the present programming environment.
- Value for time and money: Every selected course provides substantial value, whether free or paid. Paid options offer more resources, while free courses deliver fundamental knowledge without compromising quality.
- Hands-On Projects: Some courses we added to this guide include practical projects that allow you to apply theoretical concepts in tangible scenarios. This hands-on approach cultivates proficiency and confidence in real-world React development.
Complete React Developer in 2023 (Zero to mastery)
The Complete React Developer is a popular React course taught by senior engineers Andrei Neagoie and Yihua Zhang. It's proactive, focuses on the latest React (v18), and is ideal for beyond-basics learners. This course is available on the Zero to Mastery Academy platform.
Andrei has taunted this course as the best comprehensive React course you’ll find online, and with good reasons. Let’s look at the course topics:
- Using Firebase to build full-stack applications
- How to lead React projects by making the right architecture decisions
- Building enterprise-level React applications
- The latest features in React, including Hooks, Context API, Suspense, React Lazy, and more
- How to convert apps to progressive web apps
- Using the latest JavaScript versions to write clean code
- Testing your React applications with Jest
- And more
Why We Chose This Course
Andrei and Yihua have divided the course into clear and concise modules, each building on the previous one. They also provide plenty of explanations and examples to help you understand the concepts. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. The course includes several hands-on exercises and projects that allow you to practice building real-world examples of React apps.
- Up-to-date content, including React v18
- Taught by industry experts with actual real-world experience working for top companies
- Build scalable apps with a solid architecture (Normally, employers want to see this when hiring an entry-level React developer).
- Paid: Content is locked behind a paywall
| Last Update | August 2023 |
| Instructors | Andrei Neagoie and Yihua Zhang |
| Duration | (42.5 hours of video) Learners who put in 2-3 hours daily can expect to complete the course within 1-2 months. |
| Pricing |
The course has three pricing tiers, including:
|
| Certification | Yes |
| Overall Score | 4.7 / 5 |
The Beginner's Guide to React (Egghead)
This short and fun React course is suited to beginners who want to learn React following an easy-to-understand curriculum structure. The instructor—Kent C. Dodds—designed the course to teach you everything you need to build React web apps correctly. The course builds your understanding of React and core JavaScript concepts.
Besides learning which problems React solves and how it solves them under the hood, here are the course topics:
- Understanding JSX and its translation to regular JavaScript.
- Using React components to simplify and reuse code sections.
- Learning the fundamental concept of managing component states.
- Exploring React hooks for efficient state management.
- Creation of custom hooks for tailored functionality.
- Building Interactive Forms and Making Requests.
- And more
Why We Chose This Course
It’s concise while offering an excellent overview of React. It’s best suited to beginners who want to understand React core concepts better. Even better, it’s free.
- While short, this course teaches most of React’s advanced concepts, such as JSX, useState, and React Hooks, which are critical when learning to work with React.
- Free
- The last update was three years ago, so it is missing important React updates that have happened since then.
| Last Update | 2020 |
| Instructors | Kent C. Dodds |
| Duration | 2-3 hours |
| Pricing | Free |
| Certification | None |
| Overall Score | 4.5 / 5 |
Learn React (Scrimba)
Our third pick for the best React courses for beginners is Scrimba’s React course.
In this 11-hour course, you’ll learn modern React by solving 100+ coding challenges and building eight exciting projects. The course is divided into four modules, each picking from the previous one. To take this course, it’s imperative that you understand HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Next, let’s cover what you’ll learn:
- Exploring React's popularity and the reasons behind it.
- Explanation of JSX's role in enhancing React development.
- How to build static web pages, including: Essential concepts like component reusability, styling, and argument passing.
- In-depth learning about state management using hooks.
- Insight into state refactoring and related topics.
- The process of building and handling forms.
- Understanding the role of forms in user information submission
- And more
Why We Chose This Course
Like most of Scrimba’s courses, this course’s core strength lies in its interactive learning experience. Unlike other video tutorials, Scrimba allows you to pause the video and edit the code right in the player, making it easier to follow and code along with the instructor.
- Project-based learning
- In-built Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
- Structured curriculum
- Free
- Last update unknown
- No certificate
| Last Update | N/A |
| Instructors | Bob Ziroll |
| Duration | 11 hours |
| Pricing | Free |
| Certification | None |
| Overall Score | 4.5 / 5 |
Note: After completing this course, we recommend taking the next course in the series, Advanced React. This will allow you to build on your skills and learn more advanced concepts.
Modern React with Redux (Udemy)
With over 83,980 ratings on Udemy and 306,173 students enrolled, this paid course teaches you the fundamentals of building web apps using React and Redux. With lots of exercises and hands-on projects, this course will teach you the React skills you need to land a React web developer job.
So, what will you learn? The course starts by introducing you to React and its basic features like JSX, states, props, refs, and components. Next, you’ll learn other topics, including:
- Building interactive web applications using cutting-edge web technology.
- Essential programming expertise for securing a software engineering position.
- React and Redux core concepts.
- React's toolset, including NPM, Webpack, Babel, and ES6/ES2015 syntax.
- The ability to explain Redux functionality comprehensively.
- Creating reusable components.
- And more
Why We Chose This Course
This course has a 4.7 rating on Udemy. In addition, the instructor is a top senior engineer who has been mentoring engineers starting their careers in software development for many years.
- Teaches the design patterns top companies use to build popular React web apps
- The course covers a wide range of topics
- Upon finishing the course, you'll receive a certificate of completion
- While the course says it has a 2023 update, we discovered much of the content is still in React (v16)
- Paid: Content is locked behind a paywall
- Low audio in some videos
| Last Update | August 2023 |
| Instructors | Stephen Grider |
| Duration | 37.5 hours |
| Pricing | Paid (Priced at $11.99. Please note price varies as this is a discounted price) |
| Certification | Yes |
| Overall Score | 4.3 / 5 |
Pure React (Dave Ceddia)
The Pure React course takes a different approach to help you master React. Instead of covering many trendy React concepts, this course emphasizes the foundational ones that have remained unchanged since its initial release. This ensures your React skills remain up-to-date. Even better, you’ll build small but achievable React projects in a reasonable time frame.
Next, here’s a list of what you’ll learn:
- React fundamentals: Includes topics such as components, props, state, and event handling.
- Routing: You’ll learn how navigation works on different pages in a React application.
- Styling: Learn how to style React components using CSS and CSS-in-JS.
- Testing: Dave teaches you how to test React components using Jest and Enzyme.
- And more
Why We Chose This Course
We chose this course for its distinct attributes that make it a standout choice. Dave has thoughtfully extracted the most valuable content from his Pure React book and transformed it into a concise, self-paced video workshop collection. These workshops are designed to facilitate deeper and faster learning, built on the foundation of live audience testing and refinement. The course's meticulously planned lessons balance length and complexity, ensuring optimal learning and retention.
- Professionally edited videos that have been peer-reviewed by learning experts
- Lessons are built around small, achievable projects
- Includes an interview section that simulates real-life React interview scenarios
- 30-day money-back guarantee
- Paid: Paid package starts at $59
| Last Update | N/A |
| Instructors | Dave Ceddia |
| Duration | 23 hours |
| Pricing | Paid (Priced at $129. You can also choose to buy the Pure React book at $59) |
| Certification | N/A |
| Overall Score | 4.5 / 5 |
Conclusion
And there you have it.
Our review of the best beginner React courses comes to an end. But that's not all — we've also pinpointed some exceptional standouts we recommend trying out first.
The Complete React Developer in 2023 (w/ Redux, Hooks, GraphQL), Pure React (Dave Ceddia), and The Beginner's Guide to React (Egghead) stand out as thorough and commendable learning pathways. We found the depth of their lessons truly admirable and ideal for beginners.
As we conclude our review, remember that your entry into React marks the beginning of an exciting journey in web development and proficiency.
That said, we want to leave you with more resources to help you grow your career as a web developer and improve your learning experience.
- Are React Developers in Demand?
- How Long Does It Take to Become a React Developer?
- The 5 Best Web Development Courses for Beginners
Happy coding.