Top 10 Free Courses to Learn Ethical Hacking and Pen Testing in 2025

Hello guys, if you want to learn Ethical Hacking and looking for free resources like online training courses and tutorials then you have come to the right place. Earlier, we have shared the best Cyber Security Courses, and today, we are doing share best free Ethical hacking courses for you.

Most of us have even a little bit of knowledge about the subject or industry that would be ideal if you start a career in that field but the problem for most people is finding the right course or program that help you master these skills and become professional in the field and click on this article likely shows that you are interested in ethical hacking.

Ethical hacking sometimes is known as penetration testing is a process followed by a hacker to exploit a vulnerability inside a system and that system could be computers such as Windows, Linux, macOS, or maybe websites.

The guy doing this stuff is known as white hat hackers since he helps organizations to find their weaknesses and try to close them, unlike black hat hackers who are trying to exploit those vulnerabilities for illegal things.

If you are trying to be a white-hat hacker and start a career in this field then you have to see those free courses that I’ve compiled for you in this article. Most of them are practical and show you how to use real hacking tools to exploit vulnerabilities.

And, If you don’t mind spending few bucks to learn a valuable skill like Ethical Hacking then I highly recommend you to join Learn Ethical Hacking From Scratch course on Udemy.

This is one of the best courses to learn Ethical Hacking from scratch and more than 400+ people have already joined this awesome course. It’s also one of the Udemy best-selling courses on Ethical hacking with more than 123,000 reviews and on average 4.6 ratings.

And, if you need an alternative Complete Ethical Hacking Bootcamp by Andrei Negaoie and ZTM Academy is also not bad

10 Best Free Ethical Hacking and Pen Testing courses for Beginners in 2025

Without wasting any more of your time, here is a list of the best free online courses to learn about Ethical Hacking in 2025. The list contains free online courses from Udemy, Coursera, Pluralsight, and edX.

1. Learn Ethical Hacking Beginner to Advanced (Free Udemy Course)

If you are really interested to start learning how ethical hacking and things work before jumping to practical lessons then you need to see this free online course. This course contains less than two hours and it will give you all the basics you need to start your journey.

You will start with an introduction about the security fundamentals such as what are threats, different types of hackers, and risk assessment. Then moving to malware and how hackers infect systems with these malicious files and their different types like trojans, worms, and backdoors.

You will also see the tools used by hackers to gather information before trying to exploit the target.

Here is the link to join this course — Learn Ethical Hacking Beginner to Advanced

2. Hacking Databases - Information Gathering (Free Course)

SQL injection is probably the most commonly used technique to exploit the website’s databases and it uses malicious statements and inserts them into the web application database to dump data.

This course is an introduction to how to use the techniques to exploit websites using SQL injection tools.

You will start by learning the database attack techniques and how these tools work and then start hacking a demo website using the SQLMAP tool which is the most famous tool used to exploit this vulnerability.

Also, you will see how to exploit some website’s databases without using any tools just inserting some queries into the website database.

Here is the link to join this course — Hacking Databases - Information Gathering

3. Security Analyst Fundamentals [Free Coursera Course]

Another interesting course to learn ethical hacking created by IBM company and will give you the foundation on how security works and how hackers exploit vulnerabilities. The course has almost 2.3k enrollment with a 4.8 rating score which is pretty good.

There are 3 courses in this Specialization, which you can audit for FREE:

1. Penetration Testing, Incident Response and Forensics
2. Cyber Threat Intelligence
3. Cybersecurity Capstone: Breach Response Case Studies

You will learn about the different phases that attackers should follow before exploiting any target like gathering information and important documents collect.

Next, you will see how to defend yourself against some kinds of attacks such as networking defensive attacks, and how to use network monitoring tools to find unauthorized access to your local network.

Finally, you will see some case studies about how some breaches happen and how hackers could exploit them.

Here is the link to join this course — Security Analyst Fundamentals

But why when to take a Specialization’s courses for free for audit then you won’t get any certificate. If you are joining this course to get Coursera certificate then you need to either enroll into the specialization or take a subscription plan like Coursera Plus which provides unlimited access to more than 7000+ Coursera courses, projects, and professional certificates.

4. Penetration Testing — Discovering Vulnerabilities [edX course]

One of the most essential phases that hackers require to follow is discovering vulnerabilities after gathering needed information about the target. This course is for intermediate student who wants to discover and scan systems, websites for their potential vulnerabilities and weaknesses.

This edX course starts by teaching the differences of penetration testing methodologies such as data collection, vulnerability assessment, the actual exploit, and the reporter of the result.

Then move to the reconnaissance and enumeration of information of the target system and later using some tools to scan those systems of opening ports and weaknesses and finally, create a report with the discovered vulns and their risks what’s known as risk assessment.

Here is the link to join this course — Penetration Testing — Discovering Vulnerabilities

5. Ethical Hacking Full Course — Learn Ethical Hacking in 10 Hours

This is another comprehensive, free online course to learn about Ethical Hacking from Edureka, a leading online learning portal that provides instructor-led online live classroom training.

This Edureka video on “Ethical Hacking Full Course” will help you learn Ethical Hacking and Cyber Security concepts from scratch. You will learn about different kinds of Cyber attacks and ethical hacking tools used to prevent such attacks.

Here is a list of topics covered in this course:

1. Cyber Security and Cryptography
2. Cyber Threats
3. History of Ethical Hacking
4. Fundamentals of Networking
5. Ethical Hacking Using Kali Linux
6. Penetration Testing
7. XSS (Cross-Site Scripting), SQL Injection, DDOS
8. Ethical Hacker Roadmap and Interview Questions

There are a lot of demos on several tools in this Ethical Hacking Tutorial for Beginners video. You will also learn how to become an Ethical Hacker. You can watch this free Ethical hacking course right here or on YouTube.

And, if you prefer live, online classroom training then you can also join their Cybersecurity Certification training online.

6. Foundations of Hacking and Pentesting Android Apps [Free ]

Android apps are also can be infected by malicious code and exploit your phone taking many permissions such as recording your voice, tracking your movement, and many more. This course will show you how to choose an android app and see the vulnerabilities that can be exploited.

Start by setup the android studio which is the application that is used to create android apps then you will start the forensics by learning how to decompile the source code of an app.

Then you will start exploring the possible vulnerabilities such as insecure login vulnerabilities, insecure data storage, and more. You will also learn about using software called Drozer which is a tool used for vulnerability assessment in the android platform.

Here is the link to join this course — Foundations of Hacking and Pentesting Android Apps

7. Nmap Crash Course For Ethical Hackers (Free Course on Udemy)

This is another free course from Udemy which will teach you how to use Nmap and Metasploit framework for Ethical Hacking. Created by MMZ Academy, this is an amazing course to learn about Ethical hacking.

If you don’t know, Nmap (“Network Mapper”) is a free and open-source utility for network discovery and security auditing.

Many systems and network administrators also find it useful for tasks such as network inventory, managing service upgrade schedules, and monitoring host or service uptime.

Here are things you will learn in this course:

1. Understand architecture, scanning flow, and components of Nmap Scanner.
2. Learn to launch basics to advance Scans with Nmap Scanner.
3. Learn to Integrate Nmap with Metasploit Framework.
4. Practically understand the working, components, and commands in Metasploit Framework

Overall, an amazing course. Very clear, detailed, and complete and I highly recommend this free course to beginners. There is also the second part of this course which is also free.

Here is the link to join this course — Nmap Crash Course For Ethical Hackers

8. Ethical Hacking for Beginners in Hindi

This is another free Udemy course to learn about Ethical Hacking and Penetration Testing online and start your career as an Ethical Hacker and this is for Indian folks who want to learn Ethical Hacking in Hindi but if you understand Hindi then it doesn't matter where you are you can learn Ethical Hacking from this course.

This course starts from the absolute beginning with a minimum requirement of having hands-on Computing Systems, rest of the course will guide you through all that is required to make you Proficient in this domain.

Here are things you will learn in this course:

1. Ethical Hacking from very basics to advanced level.
2. learn web application security and will master securing websites and servers.

Here is the link to join this course — Ethical Hacking for Beginners in Hindi

9. Ethical Hacking — Basics (Kali 2025) [Free Udemy Course]

This is another 2-hour long free online course to learn Ethical Hacking with Kali Linux and it's completely free on Udemy. All you need is a free Udemy account to join this course.

If you don’t know, Kali is a penetration testing Linux distribution created by Offensive Security. It holds a repository of multiple tools for security-related engineers including hacking wireless networks, web applications, databases, Reverse engineering, password crackers, and much more!

Here are key skills you will learn in this free course:

1. An introduction to attacking networks and breaking passwords.
2. A clear understanding of what ethical hacking and penetration testing are.
3. Setting up Kali Linux
4. Overview of tools in Kali

As you can see, Kali is a versatile and powerful tool for anyone looking to do any cybersecurity-related work, and that’s what you will learn in this course.

Here is the link to join this free course — Ethical Hacking — Basics (Kali 2025)

10. Wireshark Crash Course For Ethical Hackers [Free Udemy Course]

This is another amazing free course from Udemy to learn how to use Wireshark for Threat Hunting and Ethical Hacking. Threat hunting is the practice of proactively searching for cyber threats that are lurking undetected in a network.

In this free Ethical Hacking course, you’ll learn to use the Wireshark tool for threat hunting in an enterprise network. While there are a number of great resources available about what hunting is and how it can assist you, the theory is very different than practical.

Here are things you will learn in this course:

1. how to Wireshark for detecting malicious files and suspicious network traffic.
2. how to detect Indicator of Compromise.
3. how to perform security forensics based on wireshark files.

This guide will also help you orient and plan by laying out some basic tips and instructions on how to direct your hunting activities. It will also give you direction on how to practically carry them out using a variety of hunting techniques.

Here is the link to join this course — Wireshark Crash Course For Ethical Hackers

That’s all about the 10 best free online courses to learn about Ethical Hacking in 2025. Finally, to be good at ethical hacking you need more than just taking an online course about a certain subject and call yourself an ethical hacker, you need also to practice as well as joining some forums and groups, asking people, or maybe pay someone to teach you more about this field.

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Thanks for reading this article so far. If you like these best free Ethical hacking online courses then please share them with your friends and colleagues. If you have any questions or feedback then please drop a note.

P. S. — If you are keen to learn Ethical Hacking and don’t mind spending a few bucks to learn a valuable skill like this then I highly recommend you to join Learn Ethical Hacking From Scratch online course on Udemy. More than 400+ people have learned Ethical Hacking using this course already.