Open the course 路 1 hour 5 minutes 路 beginner
What it is. The concepts course. It covers what agentic automation means, how an agent differs from a fixed rule-based robot, and where each one belongs. Doing it first means the next three stop feeling like unrelated software tutorials and start feeling like one skill.
What you walk away with. A UiPath diploma, unlocked when you complete the course. The page reads "Complete the course to unlock Get your diploma!".
The honest bit. This is a diploma, not a UiPath certification. UiPath's proctored certification exams are a separate paid thing. Describe it as "UiPath Academy diploma" and you are on solid ground. The courses themselves are genuinely free: UiPath's FAQ says "All UiPath Academy courses and learning plans are currently free of charge" (source).
Open the course 路 n8n education hub 路 3 to 5 hours 路 no coding needed to start
What it is. The first one where you build. You finish it holding a working AI agent that can look up customer records and answer questions about them, which is a genuinely demonstrable thing rather than a quiz score.
What you walk away with. A completion certificate and a verifiable badge. n8n's own wording: "Every course is free for everyone, and you earn a completion certificate and a verifiable badge for each one you finish."
The honest bit. n8n says plainly on the course page that Quickstart is not a certification, it is a badge plus a certificate of completion. The 3 to 5 hour figure is the course FAQ's own estimate, and it is the longest of the four, so give it a real afternoon. There are three more courses after it (N8N101, 102 and 103) at learn.n8n.io if you want to keep going.
Open the learning path 路 3.5 hours 路 new to Make
What it is. Six short courses plus an assessment, ending with your first scenario built and running. Make's visual canvas is the friendliest of the four to look at, which is why it is worth doing straight after n8n rather than instead of it: you see the same ideas in two different shapes and they stick.
What you walk away with. The Make Foundation badge, issued through Credly. The page describes it as a "Make Foundation badge to post on socials", so it is built to be shared.
The honest bit. This is a badge rather than a certificate, and Make Academy is free with no catch: their FAQ says "Yes, 100% free. No subscriptions, no surprises" (source). Free Make accounts do have a monthly operations limit, which is plenty for learning but worth knowing before you build anything real on it.
Open Workato Academy 路 3 hours, plus a free exam 路 enterprise flavoured
What it is. The most corporate of the four, and deliberately last. Workato is what larger companies actually run, so this is the one that reads best next to an operations or IT job title. It is video lessons, study materials, interactive labs and tests, then a separate exam.
What you walk away with. A completion certificate. The course and the Level 1 exam are both listed as free in the Academy catalog.
The honest bit. This is free but gated. You need a Workato workspace before you can access the courses at all. Workato's docs say "If you don't have a workspace, you can create a new workspace or request a free demo workspace" (source). Requesting the demo workspace is not instant, so start this one a few days before you plan to sit down with it.
These four are all free and all worth doing, but they are not the same kind of credential. Describing them accurately is a small thing that makes you look like you know what you are talking about.
LinkedIn's 2026 Jobs on the Rise list for the US has AI consultants and strategists near the top, described as people who "help organizations plan and implement AI technologies to improve operations and reach their goals" (source). The badges are not what gets you that work. The thing you built in n8n is.