Code Bootcamps & Full Curricula

A "bootcamp" used to mean 3-6 months in-person for $15-25k. Post-2022 the market has thinned dramatically — App Academy, Hack Reactor, Kenzie, Lambda School (rebranded BloomTech, then mostly shuttered) and many others have shrunk or closed. The free curricula (freeCodeCamp, Odin) consistently produce hires on par with paid bootcamps. For day-to-day practice see Coding Practice Platforms.

Free, complete curricula (the best deal in 2026)

• ★ ★ freeCodeCamp — see coding practice; full curriculum from HTML through ML.
• ★ The Odin Project — Ruby + JS full-stack; project-heavy.
• ★ CS50 + follow-ons — the canonical intro CS sequence from Harvard.
• ★ fullstackopen.com (University of Helsinki) — modern full-stack JS / TS course; open and free.
• ★ MIT Missing Semester — the sysadmin / dev-tool literacy course every CS curriculum should ship and almost none do. Free, ~10 lectures.

Paid bootcamps still operating (smaller market in 2026)

• App Academy — long-running; ISA / income-share variants; hybrid online + in-person; reduced scale post-2023.
• Hack Reactor (Galvanize) — long-running; absorbed into Galvanize / Stride.
• Codesmith — JS / open-source-heavy; New York / LA / remote.
• Le Wagon — global presence; full-stack; many EU cities.
• Ironhack — global; full-stack + UX + data.
• Springboard — paid; data / UX / cyber tracks; mentor-paired; remote-only.
• General Assembly — paid; longest-running; many cities; absorbed into Adecco.
• Tech Elevator, Coding Dojo — US regional.
• Flatiron School — long-running; data / SE / cyber; remote + in-person.

Sunset / heavily reduced

• Lambda School / BloomTech — sunset 2024 after CFPB action and accreditation issues.
• Kenzie Academy — closed 2023.
• Make School — closed 2021 (folded into Dominican University).
• Bloc.io — folded into Thinkful.
• Thinkful — much-reduced post-Chegg ownership.

University-affiliated online programmes

• Georgia Tech OMSCS / OMSA — paid (~$8k total); online masters in CS / analytics; the best-value graduate CS programme in the US.
• UT Austin MSCS / MSDS Online — paid (~$10k); similar shape.
• University of London / Goldsmiths CS BSc on Coursera — paid; full undergraduate degree online.
• Open University — paid; long-running UK distance learning; CS / data tracks.
• CU Boulder MSCS on Coursera — paid; open-enrolment.

Self-paced paid platforms

• Scrimba, Educative, Codecademy Pro, Boot.dev — see coding practice.
• Pluralsight — paid + free trial; broad library; subscription.
• LinkedIn Learning — paid (with library card free at many libraries); broad.
• Coursera / edX — paid + free audit; verified certificates; specialisation paths.
• Udemy — paid (with frequent $10 sales); huge catalogue; quality variable.
• Frontend Masters — paid; deep frontend / JS deep-dives; senior-engineer flavour.

Specialised tracks

• Fast.ai — free; practical deep learning; Jeremy Howard.
• DeepLearning.AI (Andrew Ng) — paid + free audit; the canonical ML / DL Coursera path.
• Andrej Karpathy "zero to hero" — free YouTube; build a transformer from scratch.
• NAND2Tetris — free; build a computer from logic gates up.
• Teach Yourself CS — free reading list curated by ex-Google engineers.
• ROADMAP.SH — free curated learning roadmaps for many tracks.
  • https://github.com/kamranahmedse/developer-roadmap

Pick this if…

• Default, free, ~6-12 month full-stack path: freeCodeCamp + The Odin Project.
• Best-value graduate CS: Georgia Tech OMSCS.
• Dev-tool / sysadmin literacy: MIT Missing Semester.
• Full-stack JS / TS modern: fullstackopen.com.
• Want structure + community + mentor support, paid: Codesmith, Le Wagon, App Academy.
• You can self-direct: the free options out-perform most paid bootcamps in 2026.