Free PLC Training Online in 2026: Every Real Option Compared
The word "free" is doing a lot of work
Search for free PLC training and you get three kinds of result: genuinely free material, samples of paid courses, and pages that exist to collect your phone number. This article sorts them, because the difference decides whether you finish.
Genuinely free, and worth your time
Siemens SCE learning documents. Siemens Cooperates with Education publishes free TIA Portal learning and training documents and web-based modules. They are excellent on Siemens specifically, written for institutions, and they assume you already have a plan. No assessment, no certificate.
Vendor simulators and trials. TIA Portal's 21-day trial includes S7-PLCSIM. RSLogix Micro Starter Lite and Connected Components Workbench are free. CODESYS is free. Factory I/O gives you a 30-day trial of 3D machines. None of these teach; all of them are where the learning happens.
Independent creators on YouTube. RealPars, Hegamurl, PLCskilltree, Instrumentation Tools, The Automation Craze and others publish thousands of lessons. The quality is often very high; the order and level are random, and nothing checks whether you understood.
The EDWartens free catalogue. The free courses take those creator lessons, credit them, and put a planned syllabus, written notes with worked examples, practice tasks, a five-question quiz per module and a twenty-question final around them. Learning is ₹0 in full; the optional certificate is the only paid item.
Free as a sample
PLC Academy, SolisPLC and similar sites publish good free articles and introductory videos. The structured course and the certificate are paid, and the free part is designed to make you want them. That is fair, but it is not a free course.
Coursera and edX let you audit some automation courses. The grading and certificate are paid, and PLC-specific hands-on content is thin compared with the sources above.
How to combine them
- Take one structured course on one platform, start to finish. For most freshers in India that is Siemens TIA Portal, because TIA Portal is the most requested PLC skill on Indian job posts.
- Use the SCE documents as the reference you read when a module leaves a question.
- Practise every module in the simulator. Reading a rung is not writing one.
- Build something that moves in Factory I/O. The Factory I/O projects course is nine machines.
- Add the HMI, then structure, then a second platform, in that order.
What "free" should include
A planned order, notes you can revise from, practice you actually do, and an assessment that tells you whether it landed. The free PLC training guide has the full comparison table with those four columns for every option.
Frequently asked questions
Is any free PLC training worth putting on a CV? A finished course with a verifiable certificate, yes. Watching videos, no, unless you can show the program you built.
Do I need a real PLC? Not to learn. Every EDWartens course runs in the vendor's trial software with a simulator.
Which platform first? Siemens TIA Portal, then Allen-Bradley Studio 5000. Together they cover most of the Indian market.
