FutureLearn Unlimited

Learners who pay for FutureLearn Unlimited can access multiple short courses for either an annual or monthly subscription. It incentivises and encourages learners to take more courses with FutureLearn, offers increased value to learners for their loyalty, and enables us to increase the amount of revenue we share with our partners.

Contact your Partnership Manager for full information on Unlimited and revenue share. 

For a one-off annual payment a learner gets:

• access to all upgradable open courses
• access to tests
• a digital certificate when eligible (90% completion, plus an overall score at least 70% on scored courses)
• access for as long as the course exists on FutureLearn for all course runs where they have qualified for a certificate within the period their Unlimited payment covers. To earn the certificate a learner must have completed 90% of course content and achieved at least 70% in summative assessments, where relevant.

When a learner’s payment period ends, their access to course content and upgrade benefits such as tests will expire, unless they have already earned a course certificate. Their access will revert to that of a free learner on the platform. 

Excluded from Unlimited

• Paid for (premium) courses – these are courses that learners have to pay for, and they’re designed for smaller, more specialist cohorts and typically offered at higher price points than our upgrade courses
• Degrees – open taster courses of degrees are included but they do not give any access to any of the paid-for content that is for degree cohorts only.
• Microcredentials
• ExpertTracks
• Private (invite only) courses

Why FutureLearn Unlimited?

In October 2018 we surveyed over 3,000 learners from a range of countries (inc. UK, US, Europe, Egypt, India & Nigeria) to find out about learner’s aspirations and what they value most from our short courses.

This survey highlighted that learners intend to do multiple courses each year:

• Over 70% of respondents said that they think they will start three or more short online courses in the next year
• 47% of these said they would start three to five courses.

The gap between learner aspirations and reality provides an opportunity for us to encourage those who are currently making one or two purchases to purchase a higher value product and to deliver value to those learners who are already making multiple purchases.

Learners value access to course content and are familiar with subscription services

FutureLearn get a steady stream of learner suggestions specifically asking for a subscription offer when we run research, user testing and via our community team.

“Could I suggest you rethink your ‘free access’ fees to a one off yearly $100 – $200  or something like that? I can’t justify spending that sort of money on all the courses I’m interested in.“

Due to high demand for smaller monthly payments from learners on a lower income, a monthly subscription option was introduced in April 2022.

Terminology on this page that you aren’t familiar with? Check out our glossary. 

Contact FutureLearn