Free DataTalks.Club Courses: ML, Data Engineering, MLOps, LLM & AI Dev Tools Zoomcamps

Learning data skills often involves a tradeoff: either pay for an expensive bootcamp or rely on free tutorials that seldom cover how real systems are built.

DataTalks.Club takes a different approach. We run free, fully developed courses, called zoomcamps, designed around building production-grade projects from the ground up. Instead of isolated lessons, you work through complete workflows using the same tools and processes practitioners use every day.

We currently have six free courses:

• Machine Learning Zoomcamp on end-to-end ML engineering, from training models to packaging, testing, and deployment
• Data Engineering Zoomcamp on data engineering, covering aspects like pipelines, warehouses, orchestration, and analytics infrastructure
• MLOps Zoomcamp on MLOps or ML operations that involve monitoring, automation, and operationalizing ML models and systems in production
• LLM Zoomcamp on building AI applications with large language models (LLMs), combining them with RAG and using them to build AI agents
• AI Dev Tools Zoomcamp on using AI tools like AI chatbots, IDE integrations, and AI agents to accelerate the processes that involve working with code
• Stock Market Analytics Zoomcamp on stock market trading, Python programming in Colab, analytics, and data visualisation.

Across all zoomcamps you work with practical tooling like Python, Docker, cloud services, modern frameworks, and deliver portfolio-ready projects.

You can join live cohorts with weekly deadlines, scored homework, peer-reviewed projects, and a certificate, or learn independently at any time. All materials remain freely available, supported by an active global community of thousands of learners.

In the next sections, you’ll find detailed overviews of each course, including prerequisites, structure, tools, and projects.

DataTalks.Club Free Courses Table

Here’s a table that summarizes the key information about each course. Use it to overview all courses and navigate to the course you’re interested in.

Course	Level	Prerequisites	Key Topics	Tools/Tech Stack	What You'll Build
Machine Learning Zoomcamp	Beginner to Intermediate	1+ year programming experience, command line basics	Regression, classification, trees, neural nets, deployment	Python, NumPy, Pandas, Scikit-Learn, TensorFlow, PyTorch, FastAPI, Docker, Kubernetes	Production ML models deployed as web services with Docker & cloud
Data Engineering Zoomcamp	Intermediate	Coding skills, command line, basic SQL	Pipelines, warehouses, orchestration, batch & streaming	Docker, Postgres, BigQuery, dbt, Apache Spark, Apache Kafka	Scalable data pipelines processing batch & streaming data
MLOps Zoomcamp	Intermediate to Advanced	1+ year programming, ML exposure, Python, Docker	Experiment tracking, pipelines, deployment, monitoring	MLFlow, FastAPI, AWS, Mage, Evidently AI	Automated ML deployment system with monitoring & alerts
LLM Zoomcamp	Intermediate	Python, command line, Docker (no ML required)	LLMs, RAG, vector search, evaluation, production deployment	OpenAI API, LangChain, Hugging Face, Ollama, Qdrant, Elasticsearch	AI chatbot that answers questions from your knowledge base
AI Dev Tools Zoomcamp	Beginner to Intermediate	Basic programming (Python/JavaScript), no AI required	AI assistants, agents, MCP, automation, DevOps integration	GitHub Copilot, Cursor, MCP, Django, FastAPI, n8n, React	AI-powered development toolkit with assistants & agents
Stock Markets Analytics Zoomcamp	Beginner to Intermediate	Basic Python, analytical mindset, interest in finance	Financial data, modeling, trading strategies, automation	Python, Pandas, NumPy, financial APIs, trading frameworks	Trading system that generates predictions & executes trades

How DataTalks.Club Zoomcamps Work

Before diving into the individual courses, it’s helpful to understand how the overall learning experience at DataTalks.Club is organized: what the core components are, how zoomcamps are structured, and what you can expect as a learner.

All zoomcamps follow the same core pattern:

• Pre-recorded lectures on YouTube you can watch anytime
• Open-source materials on GitHub, including code, notes, and homework
• Two learning formats: fully self-paced or joining a live cohort
• A final project you can include in your portfolio

Each course is divided into modules. Every module covers one topic, adds a hands-on task, and gradually prepares you for the final project.

The learning materials are identical across formats, but the experience differs:

• In self-paced mode, you start anytime and progress at your own speed.
• In a live cohort, you follow a weekly schedule with deadlines, peer-reviewed projects, and the option to earn a certificate.

Machine Learning Zoomcamp

Level	Beginner to Intermediate
Duration	4-month live cohort (September-December) or self-paced anytime
Cost	Free
Certificate	Yes, after completing projects and peer reviews
Prerequisites	1+ year programming experience, command line basics
Key topics covered	Regression, classification, trees, neural nets, deployment
Tools/tech stack	Python, NumPy, Pandas, Scikit-Learn, TensorFlow, PyTorch, FastAPI, Docker, Kubernetes
Who it's for	Beginners with programming experience, aspiring ML engineers, career switchers, and software engineers who want practical, end-to-end ML experience
Projects	Production ML models deployed as web services with Docker & cloud
Outcomes	Hands-on experience with the full ML lifecycle and two portfolio-ready projects demonstrating your ability to build, deploy, and operate production ML systems
Next start date	New cohort starts every September

Machine Learning Zoomcamp is a free machine learning course that teaches you to build and deploy machine learning models in production environments. It bridges the gap between training models in notebooks and running them in real-world applications.

You’ll work with industry-standard tools including Scikit-Learn, TensorFlow, and PyTorch, and complete two portfolio-ready projects that demonstrate your ability to build, deploy, and operate production ML systems.

↑ Back to the courses table

Data Engineering Zoomcamp

Level	Intermediate
Duration	9-week live cohort (January-March) or self-paced anytime
Cost	Free
Certificate	Yes, after completing a project and peer reviews
Prerequisites	Coding skills, command line, basic SQL
Key topics covered	Pipelines, warehouses, orchestration, batch & streaming
Tools/tech stack	Docker, Postgres, BigQuery, dbt, Apache Spark, Apache Kafka
Who it's for	People preparing for junior data engineer roles (including beginners and career switchers), plus experienced professionals who want to refresh their skills and expand their network
Projects	A portfolio-ready project demonstrating your ability to build, deploy, and operate end-to-end data systems
Outcomes	Hands-on experience with production-grade data pipelines
Next start date	New cohort starts every January

Data Engineering Zoomcamp is a free data engineering course that teaches you how to build production-grade data pipelines from start to finish. It follows a clear progression: infrastructure setup, workflow orchestration, data warehousing, analytics engineering, batch processing, streaming, and a final project.

Throughout the 9-week program, you’ll master essential tools like Docker for containerization, PostgreSQL and BigQuery for data warehousing, dbt for analytics engineering, Apache Spark for batch processing, and Apache Kafka for stream processing. The course culminates in a capstone project where you build an end-to-end data pipeline that demonstrates your ability to design, implement, and operate scalable data systems used in production environments.

↑ Back to the courses table

MLOps Zoomcamp

Level	Intermediate to Advanced
Duration	3-month live cohort or self-paced anytime
Cost	Free
Certificate	Yes, after completing a project and peer reviews
Prerequisites	1+ year programming, ML exposure, Python, Docker
Key topics covered	Experiment tracking, pipelines, deployment, monitoring
Tools/tech stack	MLFlow, FastAPI, AWS, Mage, Evidently AI
Who it's for	Data scientists, ML engineers, and software developers who are interested in understanding MLOps, the process of putting machine learning code in production
Projects	Automated ML deployment system with monitoring & alerts
Outcomes	Hands-on experience with the full MLOps lifecycle and a portfolio-ready project demonstrating your ability to build, deploy, and monitor production ML systems
Next start date	We don't plan to run a new cohort in 2026. You can register to stay updated if this changes

MLOps Zoomcamp is a free MLOps course that covers the entire MLOps lifecycle: from experiment tracking and model management to deployment and monitoring. Designed for data scientists and ML engineers, the course teaches you how to operationalize machine learning models at scale.

You’ll learn to use MLflow for experiment tracking, build automated training pipelines with Mage, deploy models using FastAPI and AWS services, and set up comprehensive monitoring with Evidently AI. The course emphasizes best practices for testing, CI/CD integration, and maintaining ML systems in production, preparing you to build and manage reliable ML infrastructure.

↑ Back to the courses table

LLM Zoomcamp

Level	Intermediate
Duration	10-week live cohort (June-August) or self-paced anytime
Cost	Free
Certificate	Yes, after completing a project and peer reviews
Prerequisites	Python, command line, Docker (no ML required)
Key topics covered	LLMs, RAG, vector search, evaluation, production deployment
Tools/tech stack	OpenAI API, LangChain, Hugging Face, Ollama, Qdrant, Elasticsearch
Who it's for	Python developers and software engineers who want to build AI-powered applications with large language models, from beginners to those looking to add LLM skills to their toolkit
Projects	AI chatbot that answers questions from your knowledge base
Outcomes	Hands-on experience building production-ready RAG applications and a portfolio-ready project demonstrating your ability to create AI systems that interact with custom knowledge bases
Next start date	New cohort starts every June

LLM Zoomcamp is a free course on building AI systems with large language models (LLMs). Over 10 weeks, you learn how to create an AI application that answers questions from your own knowledge base, from foundational concepts and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to evaluation, optimization, and production deployment.

The course covers both commercial APIs (OpenAI) and open-source models (Hugging Face, Ollama), teaches vector database integration with Qdrant and Elasticsearch, and shows you how to build production-ready RAG applications using LangChain. You’ll also learn modern agent patterns, evaluation techniques, and how to integrate LLMs with external tools and APIs for real-world applications.

↑ Back to the courses table

AI Dev Tools Zoomcamp

Level	Beginner to Intermediate
Duration	6-week live cohort or self-paced anytime
Cost	Free
Certificate	Yes, after completing a project and peer reviews
Prerequisites	Basic programming (Python/JavaScript), no AI required
Key topics covered	AI assistants, agents, MCP, automation, DevOps integration
Tools/tech stack	GitHub Copilot, Cursor, MCP, Django, FastAPI, n8n, React
Who it's for	Developers and engineers who want to explore how AI tools fit into their workflow, boost productivity with coding assistants, agents, and automation, and prefer project-based practice over theory-heavy tutorials
Projects	AI-powered development toolkit with assistants & agents
Outcomes	Hands-on experience building complete projects with AI tools and a portfolio demonstrating practical skills in applying AI to engineering work
Next start date	New cohort starts every November

AI Dev Tools Zoomcamp is a free course on using AI for developer workflows. Over six weeks, you’ll go from experimenting with AI coding assistants to creating your own agent that scaffolds real applications.

The course covers the AI tool landscape (ChatGPT, Copilot, Cursor), teaches you to build end-to-end projects with React/TypeScript and FastAPI backends, introduces the Model Context Protocol (MCP) for connecting AI to GitHub and databases, and shows you how to build custom coding agents with Django. You’ll also learn to apply AI across the development lifecycle—from automated testing and PR reviews to CI/CD integration and no-code automation with n8n.

↑ Back to the courses table

Analytics in Stock Markets Zoomcamp

Level	Beginner to Intermediate
Duration	8-week live cohort or self-paced anytime
Cost	Free
Certificate	Yes, after completing a project and peer reviews
Prerequisites	Basic Python, analytical mindset, interest in finance
Key topics covered	Financial data, modeling, trading strategies, automation
Tools/tech stack	Python, Pandas, NumPy, financial APIs, trading frameworks
Who it's for	Python developers and data enthusiasts interested in financial markets, trading strategies, and building automated trading systems
Projects	Trading system that generates predictions & executes trades
Outcomes	Hands-on experience with financial data analysis, trading strategy development, and building a semi-automatic trading system
Next start date	New cohort starts every April

Analytics in Stock Markets Zoomcamp is a free data science course that covers data-driven decision-making, using popular Python libraries to work with financial data from data types and cleaning to hypothesis testing and making predictions.

You’ll learn to work with financial APIs, analyze market data using Pandas and NumPy, develop and backtest trading strategies, and build predictive models for stock market movements. You’ll also build a semi-automatic trading system that systematically generates predictions and executes trades, giving you hands-on experience with financial data analysis, risk management, and algorithmic trading concepts.

↑ Back to the courses table

Which Course Should You Choose?

Choosing the right Zoomcamp depends on your background, career goals, and the kind of systems you want to build. All courses are project-based and free, but each one develops a different skill set.

If you’re new to the field and want a broad, practical entry point

Choose between Machine Learning Zoomcamp and Data Engineering Zoomcamp:

• Machine Learning Zoomcamp: you’ll learn hands-on ML engineering experience, from models to deployment
• Data Engineering Zoomcamp: you’ll learn to work with data pipelines, warehouses, batch/streaming, and infrastructure

If you’re already working with data or ML and want to advance your skills

Choose between MLOps Zoomcamp and LLM Zoomcamp:

• MLOps Zoomcamp: you’ll learn to productionize ML models and learn experiment tracking, orchestration, CI/CD, and monitoring
• LLM Zoomcamp: you’ll learn to build AI applications powered by large language models, using RAG, vector search, evaluation, and agents

If you’re a developer looking to add AI to your workflow

Choose AI Dev Tools Zoomcamp: you’ll learn to use AI coding assistants, integrate MCP, build agents, and automate development tasks

If you’re interested in financial data and trading systems

Choose Analytics in Stock Markets Zoomcamp: you’ll learn to analyze markets, test strategies, and build semi-automatic trading systems

If you’re unsure where to start

If you’re unsure where to start, use this heuristic:

• Want to work with models? → ML Zoomcamp
• Want to work with data pipelines? → DE Zoomcamp
• Want to operationalize models and run ML in production? → MLOps Zoomcamp
• Want to build with LLMs and AI tools? → LLM or AI Dev Tools Zoomcamp

You can also start with one course in self-paced mode and join a live cohort later. Many learners complete multiple Zoomcamps as they grow in their careers.

DTC Zoomcamps vs. Bootcamps

DataTalks.Club Zoomcamps offer a different model compared to traditional tech bootcamps. Both aim to teach practical, job-relevant skills, but the structure, cost, and learning approach vary significantly.

Category	Zoomcamps	Bootcamps
Cost	Completely free. No upsells, no paid tiers, no expiring access	Typically $2,000-$12,000+, sometimes with financing or income-share agreements
Format	• Pre-recorded lectures on YouTube • Open-source materials on GitHub • Self-paced or live cohort options • Weekly deadlines only in cohort mode	• Live classes, fixed schedules • Limited access to materials after graduation • Less flexibility for people working full-time
Curriculum	• Deep focus on building real, production-ready systems • Tools directly used in industry (Docker, dbt, Spark, FastAPI, Kubernetes, etc.) • Course content updated yearly by the community	• Often broader but shallower • Less emphasis on production infrastructure • Content quality varies widely by provider
Portfolio & Projects	• Capstone projects designed to simulate real engineering tasks • Peer review and community feedback • Projects remain fully yours and live on GitHub	• Projects usually smaller, more guided • Often not production-grade
Community	• Large, active Slack community (80k+) • Weekly discussions, Q&A bots, and peer support • Contributions from real practitioners	• Smaller cohort-based communities • Some vanish after graduation
Certificates	Free certificates available only after real project completion	Certificate included but not always backed by strong practical projects

What Students Say About the Zoomcamps

Machine Learning Zoomcamp was exhaustive, with comprehensive content that covered concepts in depth. You can learn everything from the simplest concepts to preparing and deploying an ML model for production. Additionally, the community behind this course is highly participative and collaborative. I would like to thank Alexey Grigorev for all the knowledge he shared with us and his team for providing the support we needed to solve each problem we faced.

— Alexander Daniel Rios, ML Zoomcamp course graduate (Source)

Machine Learning Zoomcamp has been an incredible journey, thanks to the expert guidance of Alexey Grigorev. I’m thankful for this programme, which provided challenging coursework that is taught in a very structured and lucid way. The assignments & hands-on projects instill a sense of delivery, besides equipping us with practical acumen to solve real-life problems.

— Siddhartha Gogoi, ML Zoomcamp course graduate (Source)

Thank you for what you do! The Data Engineering Zoomcamp gave me skills that helped me land my first tech job.

— Tim Claytor, Data Engineering Zoomcamp course graduate (Source)

Three months might seem like a long time, but the growth and learning during this period are truly remarkable. It was a great experience with a lot of learning, connecting with like-minded people from all around the world, and having fun. I must admit, this was really hard. But the feeling of accomplishment and learning made it all worthwhile. And I would do it again!

— Nevenka Lukic, Data Engineering Zoomcamp course graduate (Source)

Such a fun deep dive into data engineering, cloud automation, and orchestration. I learned so much along the way. Big shoutout to Alexey Grigorev and the DataTalksClub team for the opportunity and guidance throughout the 3 months of the free course.

— Assitan NIARE, Data Engineering Zoomcamp course graduate (Source)

If you’re serious about breaking into data engineering, start here. The repo’s structure, community, and hands-on focus make it unparalleled.

— Wady Osama, Data Engineering Zoomcamp course graduate (Source)

Frequently Asked Questions