Automate Basics

Learn AI for
real work.

Automate Basics offers practical, step-by-step courses for using AI at work, from everyday tasks to agents and automation. Start free and only pay if you pass and want the certificate.

Choose my courseStart with AI Essentials

No card. No subscription.

The lesson player: the ChatGPT course open on its first lesson, The account, and the setting to change first

What the courses teach you to drive

  • ChatGPT
  • Claude
  • Gemini
  • Microsoft Copilot
  • NotebookLM
  • Claude Projects
  • Custom GPTs
  • Claude Skills
  • Excel
  • Google Sheets
  • Outlook
  • Teams
  • Zapier
  • Make
  • Power Automate
  • n8n

No tool, vendor or platform named in our course content has paid for inclusion, placement or ranking. Where an affiliate or commercial relationship exists it is disclosed on the page it appears.

Find your starting point

Start with the outcome you need.

Do not choose from a wall of course names. Pick the change you want in your work; we will show the right level and the evidence you will build while learning it.

Recommended · Level 1 · AIE-100

13 lessons · 2h 30m

AI Essentials

What these tools are, which one to open, what to type, and how to tell when it is lying to you. No experience assumed.

Evidence you build on your own work

  • A reusable prompt built and improved on a piece of your real work
  • A verification record that labels important claims verified, unverified or wrong
  • A personal safe-use rule for confidential and high-consequence tasks
AI literacyPrompt designCritical evaluationResponsible AI
Start this level freeSee outcomes and syllabus

The course and assessment are free. The certificate is optional and only offered after a pass.

Compare the complete four-level pathBrowse the focused course library

Course library

Need one tool first?

Use these short courses when you have one immediate gap. They sit beside the four-level path; they do not replace it. No exam, nothing to pay, and designed for one focused outcome.

All 12 courses

Proof, when you need it

Go further, and get something you can prove.

Four certifications take a non-technical professional from using AI carefully, through applied work and supervised agents, to systems that run without them. Learning and exams are free; the certificate starts at $49 and is offered only after a pass.

69%

growth in jobs requiring AI skills

PwC Global AI Jobs Barometer 2026

50%

of AI users name quality control as a more important human skill

Microsoft 2026 Work Trend Index

15×

year-over-year growth in active Microsoft 365 agents

Microsoft 2026 Work Trend Index

Labour-market figures above are published by the third parties named and describe the market as those publishers measured it. They are not results produced by Automate Basics, not a description of our learners, and not a prediction of any individual's outcome. Automate Basics does not guarantee employment, promotion, salary change or any other career or financial outcome. Every figure, with its source.

Start here · AIE-100

AI Essentials

What these tools are, which one to open, what to type, and how to tell when it is lying to you. No experience assumed.

Start freeRead the syllabus
Lessons
13
Live applications
2
Exam
10 questions
Content time
2h 30m
Compare all four

How a certification runs

Four steps, the same in every track. The whole syllabus is open before you decide, as is the first lesson of every course; a free account opens the rest, and nothing here is behind a payment.

1

Learn

Short, dense lessons written for someone with a job. No jargon, no filler, and no theory you will never use.

2

Apply it live

Live applications: briefs you complete against your own real work, marked on a published rubric. Not toy exercises.

3

Sit the assessment

A graded exam on the competencies the course taught, free to sit and free to retake as often as you like. You need 80% of the paper, and every answer is explained either way.

4

Get the credential

The one step that costs anything, and you are only asked once you have passed. A certificate with your name, your score, and an ID anyone can verify.

Live applications are self-assessed against a published rubric, and what you write in one stays in your browser: your account records that a brief was done, never its contents. Certificates say the applications are self-assessed, and so does the verification page. We would rather the credential state precisely what it means than imply more than it does.

What Automate Basics is

Automate Basics is an online training platform for people who use AI at work rather than build it: non-technical professionals, not engineers.

12 written courses cover the tools themselves, ChatGPT, Claude, Google Gemini and Microsoft Copilot, and how to apply them to a job search, a small business, study and teaching. Every lesson is free and always will be: the first lesson of any course needs no account, and a free account opens the rest. It is not a trial and it never becomes a subscription. The 8 short courses have no exam and nothing to buy at all. 4 longer certifications add a graded assessment, free to sit, and a certificate that anyone can verify.

An account is free, and it is asked for three times: to read past the first lesson of a course, to sit an assessment, and to issue a certificate. You can create one with an email address, or sign in with Google. We use it to identify you and to put the right name on your certificate, nothing else. How we handle your data is set out in our privacy policy.

Rahul Arora

Founder, Automate Basics

Who is teaching this

I spent years in a corporate job watching AI land on everyone's desk, including mine, with no idea how to use it properly. Not badly. Properly. Nobody could tell me the difference.

So I left, and spent eight to ten hours a day learning it. Not prompt tricks. How the thing actually behaves, where it fails, and what it takes to get real work out of it.

Now I build and ship custom AI products. These four certifications are the path I needed and could not find: written for the person I was, not for an engineer.

No logos, no ratings

Check us rather than trust us.

We have no learners to quote yet and no accreditation to point at. So here are four things you can verify yourself in about a minute.

  • Read it before you decide

    Nothing is behind a payment. The whole syllabus is open with no account, including its 2 live-application rubrics, as is the first lesson of every course; a free account opens the rest.

    Open the syllabus

  • Anyone can check your certificate

    Each credential has an ID a recruiter can verify without an account and without contacting us.

    Try the verifier

  • Every number has a source

    Each figure on this site is published with its publisher, its method and the date we last checked it.

    See the sources

  • And what it is not

    Not accredited by a qualifications body. No promise of a job or a raise. The live applications are self-assessed. We say so on the certificate itself.

    Read the limits

Read something first

A fair sample of how the courses are written. Free, and no signup.

All articles
Research3 min

The AI skills gap, in numbers

Adoption is near-universal. Training isn't, and the gap is widening rather than closing. What the research actually says.

11 August 2026

Automation4 min

Silent failure is the real enemy

An automation that crashes is an annoyance. One that quietly does the wrong thing for six weeks is the actual danger.

8 August 2026

Free to learn. Pay once for the proof.

The lessons are how you decide whether this is any good, so they are free, and so is sitting the assessment, so you find out whether you can pass before any money is mentioned. The certificate is a single payment, from $49 for the entry certification to $149 for the advanced one.

One payment, not a subscription

Google AI Essentials on Coursera is $49 every month. Ours is $349 once, for all four certifications — and then never again.

costs more from month 8$588$349, oncemonth 12

Google AI Essentials on Coursera

$49 every month

Coursera's published US and Canada list price, after a 7-day free trial. Prices vary by country. Source.

Automate Basics

$49 once, and it is finished

See what is free and what is paid

All four for $349, saving $77

The questions
worth asking.

I have never used any of this. Where do I start?
Start with AI Essentials. It assumes no experience and teaches the mental model, tool choice, prompting, verification and safe use that every later level relies on. If you only need one product first, use the ChatGPT or Claude course in the library.
What costs money and what does not?
Every lesson in every course is free to read and always will be. The first lesson of any course needs no account; after that a free account opens the rest, which costs nothing, is not a trial and never becomes a subscription. The 8 short courses have no exam and no certificate, so there is nothing to pay for at all. On the 4 certifications the graded assessment is free to sit as well. You are only asked to pay once you have passed, and what you buy is the certificate: $49 for the entry one, $149 for the advanced one, or $349 for all four. They differ because the courses do, in hours, in the length of the paper and in what the certificate says you can do. No subscription. For comparison, Google AI Essentials on Coursera is $49 every month. Coursera's published US and Canada list price, after a 7-day free trial. Prices vary by country.
Do I need to be technical? Does any of it involve coding?
No, and the courses assume you are not. There is no code anywhere in the catalogue, including the automation track, which uses connector tools you operate from a browser.
What is the difference between a course and a certification?
A library course is free, focused on one tool or role, and ends when the lessons do. A certification is part of the four-level path, includes live applications against your own work, ends in a graded exam, and can issue a verifiable certificate. AI Essentials runs 2h 30m, AI at Work runs 4h 35m, AI Agents & Delegation runs 5h, AI Automation runs 6h 30m.
Is the certificate recognised?
It is issued by Automate Basics and it is independently verifiable, so anyone can check a credential ID without an account. It is not accredited by a national qualifications body and we do not claim it is. What it evidences is printed on the certificate and published on the verification page: the competencies assessed and the score achieved.
Will this get me a job or a raise?
We do not make that claim, and you should be sceptical of anyone in this field who does. What we can tell you is what the assessment covers, and what independent research says about the labour market, clearly labelled as theirs rather than ours, with every source published.

What changed,
and what to do about it.

One email, most weeks, for people who use AI at work rather than build it. No hype, no tool of the day.

One email, most weeks. What actually changed and what to do about it. Unsubscribe in one click.

Start with the first level
and build from there.

AI Essentials assumes no experience and gives every later level a shared foundation. No card, nothing to cancel, and the first lesson needs no signup.

Start level one freeBrowse all 12 courses
  • Free to learn
  • No subscription
  • Verifiable certificate