Data analytics is a rapidly growing field with a median entry-level salary of $95,6161. Getting hired as a data analyst can lead to a fulfilling career and also may offer opportunities to work remotely. For many people becoming a data analyst is one of the best ways to break into the tech field and open a path to even higher paying positions. Also, data analysts roles are frequently viewed as foundational positions towards becoming a data scientist and data engineer.

Here are the top 5 data analytics courses if you’re looking to become a data analyst. 

 * Based  on review of LinkedIn Profiles

Analytics Mentor

What do you get?

The Analytics Mentor — Become a Data Analyst course package is a comprehensive 12-course, on-demand training program. The core content topics are similar to what other courses cover, but there are a lot of ‘bonuses’ that you’ll find with Analytics Mentor.

With this course package, not only do you get the beginner-level SQL beginner training, but also advanced SQL training and additional training to learn best practices. What it doesn’t cover is some of the data science courses like R that other training programs offer.

However, the course package includes many bonus courses for creating your resume, preparing for interviews, details on how to succeed on the job, and multiple real-world case studies courses. All of these courses seem to be very well designed and are well-aligned with what you’ll need for most data analytics positions.

As a bonus plus plus, Analytics Mentor has a free Discord group where Brandon (the creator) appears to be quite active. He personally answers questions and frequently provides free guidance on careers, resumes, and interviews for his students.

Who’s teaching you?

Hands down, you’re being taught in a way that is unlike other courses.

This course was created and is taught by Brandon Southern, who is one of most experienced data analysts and leaders in the industry. Brandon has a Bachelor’s in Management Information Systems (MIS) as well as a Master’s in Business Administration (MBA). He currently works in the industry as a Sr. Director of Corporate Analytics and has 25 years of hands-on experience in the technology and analytics fields.

Even more impressive is that he’s been a leader at Amazon, eBay, VMware, and more, and has been a hiring manager for 15 years. He has interviewed over 1,000 people in his career, so he knows what it takes to get hired and succeed on the job. Also, he has other impressive experience, saving eBay $20m/year in fraud mitigation and he prevented GameStop from losing over $100m in revenue. He definitely has the experience and results to back up what he’s teaching.

What does it cost?

Analytics Mentor charges $99.99 for lifetime access. They don’t use a “pay-to-play” subscription model, which is something that is different from the other courses on this list. While it’s $99.99 up front for lifetime access, it’s not far off from the $49.99 monthly fee that many of the other courses are charging. When comparing against the other courses, which suggest 3–6 months to complete, the $99.99 price ends up being about half to one-third less than some of the other courses.

Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate

What do you get?

The Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate course offers 8 beginner-level courses in their training program. This course package covers Excel, SQL, and data visualizations, as you might expect. But it also includes a course that covers the R programming language, and touches on other statistical analysis. While this is a bit of a bonus, the R language is primarily used by data scientists and isn’t frequently used by data analysts. It also seems to offer less SQL training in favor of some of the data science training.

Who’s teaching you?

The instructors of this course are unknown. There’s no indication of the instructor’s experience or if the instructors have any experience working as a data analyst or have experience hiring data analysts.

What does it cost?

This course is based on a month-to-month subscription model and costs $49.99 each month. Google’s course website suggests that this course will take approximately 3–6 months to complete, bringing your estimated total cost between $149.97 and $299.94. Unfortunately, with the month-to-month subscription, if it takes you longer to complete or you ever want to revisit the content later on, it’s going to cost you more money.

IBM Data Analyst Professional Certificate

What do you get?

The IBM Data Analyst Professional Certificate course offers 11 courses in their training program. This course covers Excel, SQL, and data visualizations, as you might expect. What’s more unique about this course is that it has a heavy focus on Python, which is great if you want to eventually get into data science. However, while the course provides a lot of Python training, it seems to have limited training on SQL, which is the foundation for data positions.

Who’s teaching you?

The instructors of this course are unknown. There’s no indication of the instructor’s experience or if the instructors have any experience working as a data analyst or have experience hiring data analysts.

What does it cost?

This course is based on a month-to-month subscription model and costs $49.99 each month. IBM’s course website suggests that this course will take approximately 3–6 months to complete, bringing your estimated total cost between $149.97 and $299.94. Unfortunately, with the month-to-month subscription, if it takes you longer to complete or you ever want to revisit the content later on, it’s going to cost you more money.

DataCamp

What do you get?

The Datacamp Associate Data Analyst in SQL course offers 8 beginner-level courses in their training program. This course has a heavy focus on SQL and Datacamp also offers many other individual courses across various tools in the analytics field. While they have more content than any of the other course providers, we found the quality of content to be lower than the other four providers that we reviewed.

Who’s teaching you?

The course has 14 instructors, who appear to be employed at educational institutions or companies. Reviewing their list of instructors, they do not appear to work in analytics fields, but in data science fields. While there may be some benefits to having instructors from those fields, data analytics roles are quite different from data science roles in corporate environments. It is unclear if any of these instructors are people leaders or if they have experience hiring or promoting data analysts on the job.

What does it cost?

This course, along with any other courses that are offered are based on a month-to-month subscription model. The cost for monthly access to this course and any others is $43 per month. If you’re spending the same amount of time studying on Datacamp as you would with the other course providers, your estimated cost is between $129 and $258. Unfortunately, with the month-to-month subscription, if it takes you longer to complete or you ever want to revisit the content later on, it’s going to cost you more money.

LinkedIn Learning: Become a Data Analyst

What do you get?

The LinkedIn Learning: Become a Data Analyst course offers 13, beginner-level courses in their training program. This course package is broad and covers Excel, SQL, Tableau, PowerBI, R, and Python. While it covers a bit of everything, it doesn’t contain a lot of in-depth learning on the core skills such as SQL, which is the foundation for analytics positions. It’s also a core skill for becoming a data engineer or data scientist. However, what’s nice about this course is that you get access to many other courses on LinkedIn’s Learning platform.

Who’s teaching you?

There are 8 instructors who are teaching the courses in this package. However, looking at their LinkedIn profiles, none of the instructors appear to have ever worked as a data analyst, nor do they appear to have experience hiring and promoting data analysts. Also, almost all of these individuals appear to be general instructors, as opposed to data industry professionals.

What does it cost?

This course is based on a month-to-month subscription model and costs $39.99 each month. If you’re spending the same amount of time studying on LinkedIn Learning as you would with the other course providers, this training is estimated to bring your total cost between $119.97 and $239.94. Unfortunately, with the month-to-month subscription, if it takes you longer to complete or you ever want to revisit the content later on, it’s going to cost you more money.

¹ Median salary and job opening data are sourced from Lightcast™ Job Postings Report.