LinkedIn Learning

What LinkedIn Learning actually is

That's the headline. The rest of this article is the honest fine print: what LinkedIn Learning actually is, what it costs if you pay LinkedIn directly (the answer got weirder recently), which courses are worth a first-year founder's evenings, and the uncomfortable truth about self-paced learning, which is that most people quietly stop. There's a free fix for that too.

Quick disclosure on how this article was made: our team did the research and verified each step and price, and we used AI to help organize what needed to be covered. Every opinion and recommendation here comes from us.

LinkedIn Learning is a library of on-demand video courses. It started life as Lynda.com, a pioneer of online training that LinkedIn bought and rebranded, and today LinkedIn's own Premium Career page advertises "over 25,000 courses taught by industry experts."

A course is typically one to three hours of short videos, five minutes here, eight minutes there, with exercise files you can download. Topics run across business, software, technology, and creative skills: spreadsheets, accounting basics, online advertising, management, photography, sales calls, public speaking. You can watch a whole course front to back or jump into the one ten-minute video that answers today's question. Finish a course and you get a certificate of completion. More on what that's actually worth further down.

People genuinely like the product. Across the review platforms we checked in September 2026, LinkedIn Learning averages about 4.5 out of 5: 4.4 on G2 (722 reviews), 4.6 on Capterra (174 reviews), 4.05 on TrustRadius (211 reviews, converted from 8.1/10), and 4.8 on both the Apple App Store (~78,000 ratings) and Google Play (~183,000 ratings). Reviewers' gripes tend to be about paying for it, not about the courses. Which brings us to the price.

What it costs if you just buy it

This part surprised us. LinkedIn no longer sells LinkedIn Learning by itself. Per LinkedIn's own help documentation: "LinkedIn Learning does not offer one-off, a la carte purchases of individual courses, nor does it offer individual LinkedIn Learning subscriptions."

Instead, an individual buys LinkedIn Premium, and Learning comes bundled with it. The cheapest tier that includes it, Premium Career, runs US$39.99 per month, or US$239.88 per year if you pay annually, which works out to $19.99 a month, per LinkedIn's Premium Career pricing page, checked September 2026. You also get Premium's networking features bundled in, whether you wanted them or not.

There's a one-month free trial, and it comes with the standard subscription-industry catch, stated plainly in LinkedIn's help docs: "If you have signed up for the one-month free trial, your billed subscription will begin automatically at the end of the trial period." Translation: it charges you the moment you forget about it. Set a calendar reminder for day 25, or better yet, don't start the trial at all. If you live in Chicago, you don't need it.

The free way: your library card

Chicago Public Library carries a LinkedIn Learning subscription for its cardholders, announced for adult cardholders and funded by the Chicago Public Library Foundation. It's listed as a live resource on CPL's site as of September 2, 2026. The whole process:

1. Get a library card if you don't have one. It's free. Per CPL's library card page, you need a "current, valid ID with name, photo and Chicago address," and, heads up, as of May 1, 2025, CPL no longer issues eCards online, so you'll visit a branch in person. Any branch works, and there's probably one closer to you than you think. 2. Go to the CPL sign-in portal: linkedin.com/learning-login/go/chipublib. That `/go/chipublib` at the end is what routes you through the library's subscription instead of a paywall. 3. Enter your library card number and PIN. That's the login. If you've forgotten your PIN, any branch or the CPL website can help you reset it. 4. On your phone, download the LinkedIn Learning app, and per CPL's instructions, "enter chipublib in all lowercase letters and click Continue. Then log in with your library card and PIN."

Two things worth noticing about that process. First, you're signing in with your library card, not a LinkedIn account, so you don't need a LinkedIn profile, and your course-watching isn't tied to your public professional identity. Second, there's no credit card anywhere in the flow, which means there's nothing to auto-bill you later. Nothing to cancel, nothing to forget on day 25.

If you're outside the city: CPL's card requires ID with a Chicago address, so this exact path is for Chicago residents. But library systems buy their own subscriptions to services like this, so before you pay LinkedIn anything, search your own library's website for "LinkedIn Learning." Five minutes of checking can save you $240 a year.

The courses that actually help a first-year founder

Twenty-five thousand courses sounds like a feature. When you have four free hours a week, it's a hazard. You can spend a month "learning entrepreneurship" and end it with no customers and a certificate. So here's a filter, in the order a first-year business actually needs things:

• Bookkeeping and accounting basics. Before you touch software, learn what a profit-and-loss statement is and why "revenue" and "money you can spend" are different numbers. Two or three hours of accounting-fundamentals video will make every future conversation, with a bookkeeper, with the IRS, with yourself in April, noticeably less scary.

• Spreadsheets: Excel or Google Sheets. Your first customer list, quote tracker, and budget will live in a spreadsheet, and the difference between fumbling and fluent is about four hours of video. This is the highest-return course category on the platform for someone at your stage, and it's not close.

• Online advertising: Google Ads and social ads. Not so you can become a media buyer. So you can spend your first $300 on ads without lighting it on fire, or at least understand what an agency is doing with your money. Search the catalog for the specific platform you plan to use.

• Hiring and management. Skip until your first hire is actually on the horizon. Then it's urgent. One decent course on interviewing and delegation beats learning it live on a person you're paying.

What to skip: the 40-hour technical deep-dives (you're a founder, not retraining as a developer) and anything with "mindset" in the title. Watching videos about hustle is the most comfortable possible way to avoid working.

One boundary worth stating: courses teach skills, but they don't do the foundational to-do list for you. No video files your LLC, opens your business bank account, or gets your business an address that isn't your apartment. That last one is what a virtual office is for. Watch the bookkeeping course after the boring legitimacy work is moving, not instead of it.

An advisory note from the Lobi Space team

Management here has spent twenty-plus years in business, sat through many seminars, including the free SCORE Chicago ones, and been in hundreds of meetings with mentors. Two things we'd pass along.

First, don't pick your courses the way people usually pick software, off a neighbor's or a colleague's recommendation. What worked for their business isn't automatically what yours needs, because not every business is designed to be the same.

Second, courses are great, and we mean that. But the road map comes first. Write down every process your business needs in order to succeed, find the ones you don't yet know how to do, and let that list choose the courses. Learning without a plan is how a month disappears.

The honest part: self-paced means most people stop

What nobody selling online courses says out loud: self-paced is a synonym for optional. There's no instructor, no cohort, no class time, and no one who notices when you stop. That flexibility is exactly why LinkedIn Learning fits founder life, since a 20-minute video between client calls beats a class you can't attend. It's also why the typical pattern is three enthusiastic evenings followed by silence.

If you know deadlines are what keep you moving, borrow some, also for free. A SCORE Chicago mentor is a real human, costs nothing, and will actually ask what you learned since last month's meeting. "Finish the bookkeeping course before I see Barbara on the 15th" is a deadline; "I'll get to it" is not. The pairing is better than either half alone: LinkedIn Learning provides the instruction, the mentor provides the accountability, and neither one costs you a dollar.

Two tactics that help even without a mentor: put specific courses on your calendar like appointments (Tuesday 7 to 8pm, not "sometime this week"), and pick courses attached to a task you must do anyway this month, like a quote spreadsheet you owe a customer or an ad campaign you're launching. Learning bolted to a real deliverable finishes; learning in the abstract doesn't.

What the certificates are worth (honestly: not much)

Finish a course and you get a certificate of completion; CPL's own announcement highlights it. The honest appraisal: it's not an accredited credential. It doesn't make you a bookkeeper, and nobody serious will hire or license you on the strength of one. Most of its value is private. It's a finish line that keeps you going, and a small signal of initiative on a resume, where "took a spreadsheet course" matters less than the spreadsheet skills showing up in the interview.

One library-specific note: since you sign in with a card and PIN rather than a LinkedIn account, don't expect your certificates to attach themselves to a LinkedIn profile automatically. Plan on downloading them. And as a customer? A certificate has never once won a job for a cleaning company or a hot sauce brand. Your work does that. Take courses for the skills, treat the certificate as a receipt.

If not this, then what

YouTube is the free alternative, and for single questions it's often better: "how to build a dropdown in Google Sheets" gets you an answer in four minutes. What YouTube doesn't have is structure or sequence. There's no path from video one to competence, quality swings wildly, and the algorithm is actively pulling you somewhere else. Use YouTube for questions; use a course library for skills.

Coursera is the step up in seriousness: university-produced courses, many of which can be audited free (you pay only if you want the graded work and certificate), with more structure and rough deadlines. If you want one deep credential-shaped program rather than grab-and-go tutorials, it's the better fit. For a founder's realistic schedule, 20 spare minutes, a specific skill, this week, LinkedIn Learning through the library wins on friction alone. No cost, no trial clock, no LinkedIn account. Card and PIN and you're watching.

The short version

If you have a Chicago address: get a free CPL card at any branch (photo ID required, in person), sign in at linkedin.com/learning-login/go/chipublib with your card number and PIN, and skip LinkedIn's $39.99-a-month Premium entirely. Start with a spreadsheet course and a bookkeeping-basics course, and nothing else until those are done. If you already know you don't finish things alone, book a SCORE Chicago mentor the same week and give yourself a deadline. Pay LinkedIn the $239.88 annual rate only if you have no library option and you're demonstrably the type who finishes. The rest of our vetted-tools list lives in the resources directory.

And keep the order straight. Courses, workshops, mentors, software: all of it is great, and much of it is free if you look. But without a road map, a goal, and a plan, you're just shooting in the dark, chasing a dream instead of building a business. Make the plan first. Then the courses know what job they're doing.

Blunt questions, straight answers

Do I need a LinkedIn account to use the library version? No. You sign in with your library card number and PIN. CPL's instructions say exactly that, and no LinkedIn profile is involved. Your boss, your clients, and the LinkedIn algorithm have no idea you're taking a bookkeeping course at 11pm.

I live in Evanston, Cicero, or Oak Park. Can I use CPL's subscription? Not through a CPL card; CPL requires ID with a Chicago address. But suburban libraries buy their own database subscriptions too. Search your own library's website for "LinkedIn Learning" before concluding you have to pay.

Will LinkedIn charge me after the free trial? Yes, automatically. LinkedIn's help page says the billed subscription "will begin automatically at the end of the trial period." The library route has no card on file and nothing to cancel, which matters more than it sounds.

Is the library version a stripped-down demo? Nothing on CPL's page suggests a demo: it describes courses across "business, software, technology and design skills," in multiple languages, with certificates on completion, the same territory LinkedIn sells. We couldn't find an official side-by-side of library vs. paid course counts, so we won't invent one. The difference we can confirm is the sign-in: card and PIN instead of a LinkedIn account, so profile-connected extras aren't part of the experience. Start free; if you ever hit a wall that genuinely blocks you, the paid version will still be there.

Are the certificates worth putting on a resume? Worth a line, not a headline. They're completion receipts, not credentials: no accreditation, no license, no guarantee you retained anything. List one if it's relevant, then be ready to demonstrate the skill, because the demonstration is the part that gets hired.

What happens if CPL drops LinkedIn Learning someday? It could. Library digital resources are subscriptions the library pays for (this one's funded by the Chicago Public Library Foundation), and they do change over time. As of September 2, 2026, it's live and listed on CPL's resource page. If it ever disappears, check that same A-Z resource list for what replaced it before paying anyone.

Can't I just learn all of this free on YouTube? The information, yes. The sequence, mostly no. YouTube answers questions; a course takes you from zero to functional in an order someone designed. Since the library makes the course library free too, the real comparison isn't price. It's whether you want a path or a search box. Use both.

Why it made our list

• Short, practical courses on advertising, spreadsheets and management that you can finish between client calls.
• Much of it is free with a Chicago Public Library card, which makes the value per dollar effectively infinite.
• It is self-paced, so pair it with a mentor or a cohort if you know you need a deadline to finish things.