I'm going to give you the honest, slightly painful version of this. Over the past 6 months I bought 12 Udemy courses — most on the PKR 800–1,500 sale prices Udemy runs every other week, a couple at full PKR 4,000+ price. Total spend: roughly PKR 18,000. Of those 12, I actively used 4, finished 2 cover-to-cover, and got real career-grade value out of exactly 1.
Here's what I bought, what was worth it, and how to not waste money on Udemy as a Pakistani learner.
The 12 courses
- Complete Web Developer Bootcamp 2025 (Angela Yu) — finished, useful
- The Complete JavaScript Course 2026 (Jonas Schmedtmann) — finished, transformative
- Python for Everybody — quit at section 3, too slow
- Advanced React (random instructor) — quit at section 2, outdated
- SEO 2026 Masterclass — useful for first 3 hours, padding after
- The Complete Figma Course — solid but I knew most already
- Data Analysis with Pandas — half watched, learned a few things
- AI Prompt Engineering Bootcamp — 80% obvious, 20% useful
- Excel Power Pivot & DAX — paid PKR 4,200, only watched 1 hour
- Tailwind CSS Mastery — useful for ~6 hours then padding
- Photoshop for Beginners — solid, helped me
- The Complete Communication Skills Course — total waste
The pattern: top 1% instructors are the only ones worth full price
The two transformative courses were both from the same kind of instructor: career educators who teach full-time, have polished production, ship updates, and answer Q&A within 24 hours. Angela Yu and Jonas Schmedtmann are the obvious examples. There are maybe 30–50 instructors at this level on the entire platform.
The dud courses were almost all from instructors who treat Udemy as a side income — recorded once in 2021, never updated, no Q&A response. The course outline looks identical to a top-tier course, but the execution is lazy. You can't tell from the marketing page.
How to spot a worth-buying course
Five signals I now check before paying:
- Last updated date in the course description. Anything older than 18 months is suspect for tech topics.
- Q&A response time — open the Q&A tab and look at the most recent question. If the instructor hasn't answered in 7 days, skip.
- Length per dollar. 30+ hours for PKR 4,000 is a red flag (means filler). 8–15 hours of dense, well-structured content is better.
- Real reviews, not just star ratings. Look for reviews that mention specific projects or skills. Star-only reviews are often gamed.
- Free preview lessons. Watch them. If the explanation is bad in the free preview, it's worse later.
Udemy Premium Plus vs single courses
Udemy launched Premium Plus, which gives you access to most of their best-selling instructor catalogue for a monthly fee. For a Pakistani learner who jumps between 2–4 topics a year, this is far better value than buying individual courses.
Direct Udemy Premium Plus pricing is around USD 30/month (~PKR 8,400). Through Sunday Product it's roughly PKR 1,800/month. At that price, even 3 courses a year worth completing pays for itself.
Where Udemy still loses
For structured, certificate-bearing learning that LinkedIn or your employer respects, Udemy doesn't compete with Coursera or LinkedIn Learning. The Udemy completion certificate exists but doesn't carry weight. If you need a Google Cloud cert, IBM cert, or university-affiliated programme, use Coursera.
For creative skills (design, video editing, photography), Skillshare's instructor pool is better. Skillshare also has shorter, more digestible classes.
The Pakistani learner playbook
If you're a freelancer or student in Pakistan who wants to actually learn, not just collect courses:
- Subscribe to Udemy Premium Plus through a reseller. Cheaper per month than individual courses if you'd buy more than 2 a year.
- Pick 1 course at a time. Finish it before starting another.
- Stick to top-tier instructors. Angela Yu, Jonas Schmedtmann, Stephane Maarek, Brad Traversy, Maximilian Schwarzmüller — these are the safe picks for tech.
- Treat Q&A as part of the value. Engaging in the Q&A tab is where the real learning happens.
- For credentials that matter on a CV, supplement with Coursera Plus or LinkedIn Learning.
The 1 course that paid for everything else
Jonas Schmedtmann's JavaScript course (#2 in my list). It rebuilt how I think about JS — closures, prototypes, async patterns, performance. After finishing it, I was able to take on freelance React work that paid roughly 6× what the entire 12-course spend cost. Worth it.
That's the lesson, really: the Udemy hit rate is brutal, but a single great course can return 100× the cost. The strategy is being ruthless about which courses you actually start, and finishing the ones you start.
Bottom line
Udemy is great if you self-curate. Subscribe to Udemy Premium Plus, pick top-instructor courses only, and treat the rest of the catalogue as ignorable. If you need credentials, layer in Coursera Plus. For creative skills, Skillshare. For everything else — message on WhatsApp and we'll suggest based on what you're trying to learn.
