What if I told you that one man’s frustration with an elevator breakdown led to the creation of the fastest-growing and most-beloved programming languages today? Seventeen years ago, Graydon Hoare’s ordinary evening turned pivotal when an out-of-order elevator at his apartment building forced him to trek up 21 stories. A Mozilla software engineer, Hoare’s frustration wasn’t just with the climb, but with the fact that the tools of his trade couldn’t even make an elevator that works without cras

Subscriber growth and revenue are accelerating even as revenue per user declines. Udemy built its empire on a simple idea: anyone could create a course, and anyone could buy one. That marketplace model made Udemy famous and made millionaires out of its top instructors. Now the company is deliberately killing it. In Q3 2025 earnings call, Udemy’s CFO admitted they are “intentionally reducing” single course sales to push users toward subscriptions. The logic is straightforward: Udemy keeps 82.5%

Swayam is India’s national online course platform, designed to support the country’s National Education Policy, which entails improving access to quality education in India. At Class Central, we’ve been paying attention to Swayam since the very beginning. It launched in beta in 2016, and has now reached over 56 million enrollments with over 5.2 million certificates issued. It’s been growing rather fast. Swayam offers courses in a wide variety of disciplines, including from prestigious institut

In this analysis, Udemy and Coursera go head-to-head: revenue, growth, losses — here are all the numbers.