The First Billion Minutes: The Numbers Behind the Tiny Nonprofit That‘s Teaching the World to Code
In just four short years, the freeCodeCamp community has achieved an incredible milestone: one billion minutes spent learning to code on the platform. That‘s over 19,000 years worth of coding education, provided 100% free of charge to anyone, anywhere in the world, who wants to learn.
To understand the magnitude of this achievement, consider that if freeCodeCamp were a person, they could have started learning web development in the Paleolithic Era, built their first JavaScript app in ancient Sumer right as writing was invented, attended Grace Hopper‘s pioneering computer science lectures in the 1940s, and still have several lifetimes left to get really good at React before the present day.
But freeCodeCamp is no mythical immortal coder. It‘s a scrappy four-year-old nonprofit run by a small team of dedicated staff and volunteers operating on a shoestring budget. So how did they reach a billion minutes of usage so quickly? Let‘s dive into the numbers behind freeCodeCamp‘s unprecedented growth and impact.
By the Numbers: freeCodeCamp‘s First Billion Minutes
freeCodeCamp‘s journey to a billion minutes started in 2014 with a simple idea from founder Quincy Larson: create a free online curriculum anyone could follow to go from zero programming knowledge to employable web developer. He wanted to make coding education accessible to all, regardless of background or ability to pay.
The first version of the freeCodeCamp curriculum went live in 2015, offering an interactive step-by-step path through the fundamentals of web development. It starts with basic HTML and CSS, gradually layers in JavaScript and related tools like jQuery and Bootstrap, and culminates in advanced data structures, algorithms, and full stack development with Node.js and databases.
Over the years, the curriculum has expanded to over 1,800 hours worth of coding lessons and challenges covering an impressive array of in-demand technical skills. It‘s all 100% free and accessible through the browser—no downloads, tuition, or prior experience required.
Fueled by word of mouth from enthusiastic campers and high placement in search results, usage of the curriculum took off:
| Year | Total Minutes | Equivalent Years |
|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 37,000,000 | 70 |
| 2016 | 190,000,000 | 360 |
| 2017 | 316,000,000 | 600 |
| 2018 | 493,000,000 | 937 |
By December 2018, the total crossed 1 billion minutes and a new milestone was set.
But the curriculum is just one part of the freeCodeCamp ecosystem. Also in 2015, the team launched a publication on Medium to share tutorials and articles on programming, technology, and career advice. It quickly grew into the most popular tech publication on the platform with over half a million followers.
Meanwhile, the freeCodeCamp community forum went live as a place for campers to connect, ask questions, and share projects. Today it sees over 5 million monthly pageviews and hosts a supportive worldwide community.
In 2017, the freeCodeCamp Guide debuted as a crowdsourced collection of technical articles covering thousands of programming topics in a straightforward wiki format. It now features over 5,000 articles edited by thousands of contributors.
2018 brought explosive growth to the freeCodeCamp YouTube channel, which now offers hundreds of full-length coding courses, project tutorials, and live workshops. Total watch time shot up to 493 million minutes, making it the biggest source of traffic to the curriculum.
The Power of Free, Open Source Education
How has freeCodeCamp managed to create such an immense library of free learning resources and deliver nearly 2,000 years worth of coding education in just four years?
The answer lies in their unique model built on free, open-source content, crowdsourced contributions, and a vibrant volunteer community.
From day one, the freeCodeCamp curriculum has been fully open source and available on GitHub. This has allowed experienced developers from around the world to add features, fix bugs, and help shape the direction of the project, growing it far beyond what the core team could do alone.
This spirit of collaboration and knowledge sharing permeates the entire organization. The Medium publication, forum, and YouTube channel all rely heavily on volunteer contributors to create tutorials, articles, and videos. Even the core curriculum benefits from thousands of user-submitted improvements.
The culture of contribution has allowed freeCodeCamp to stay incredibly nimble and iterate quickly. And with no investors or shareholders to answer to, they can focus 100% of their efforts on their core mission of making coding education accessible.
Where traditional coding bootcamps measure success in terms of job placement rates and starting salaries, freeCodeCamp‘s success metrics center on maximizing access:
- Number of unique people reached
- Total minutes of learning delivered
- Geographic and socioeconomic diversity of learners
- Quantity and quality of free educational content
By keeping costs low and tapping the passion and expertise of the developer community, freeCodeCamp has achieved massive scale on a total operating budget of around $1 million since inception. Every dollar donated to the nonprofit goes directly toward creating more learning resources and expanding access worldwide.
The Economic Power of Coding Education
Learning to code is about a lot more than ones and zeros. For many freeCodeCamp students, it‘s been a direct path to life-changing careers and new opportunities.
Take Shawn Wang, who was working as a poker dealer in 2015 when he began learning to code using freeCodeCamp. Within a year he had landed his first developer job, and soon after that he received multiple offers from top tech companies. He was able to leverage his new skills into a $250,000 starting salary.
Stories like Shawn‘s are not uncommon among freeCodeCamp alumni. The curriculum is designed with employability in mind, focusing on practical projects and in-demand technical skills that align with real job requirements. Dedicated sections on interview prep, resume writing, and open source contributions help students make the leap from learning to earning.
The economic impact is clear. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual pay for web developers in the United States is $69,430, nearly double the overall median wage of $38,640. Add in faster-than-average job growth of 13% and it‘s no surprise that web development regularly tops "best jobs" lists.
Learning to code can be an economic game-changer, especially for those from disadvantaged backgrounds and areas with limited access to education and opportunity. By providing free, high-quality coding education to anyone with an internet connection, freeCodeCamp opens up new paths to upward mobility that simply didn‘t exist before.
Looking Ahead: The Next Billion Minutes
With one billion minutes down, freeCodeCamp is just getting started on its mission to teach the world to code for free. The next major push is to expand access to coding education for underserved populations at home and abroad.
Currently, the curriculum and most of the learning resources are only available in English. This puts them out of reach for billions of potential learners around the globe. To address this, freeCodeCamp is undertaking an ambitious initiative to translate and localize its resources for the most widely spoken languages worldwide, starting with:
- Arabic
- Chinese
- Portuguese
- Russian
- Spanish
Native speakers and translators from the community are leading the effort to not just translate the content, but adapt it to the cultural context and technical terminology used in each language. The goal is to create genuine learning experiences for international audiences, not just one-size-fits-all translations.
The team is also working on new features like a dedicated classroom mode that will allow teachers to use the freeCodeCamp curriculum and platform in more formal educational settings. And for the thousands of local study groups and meetups that have sprung up around the world, new tools are in the works to help organizers bring learners together and collaborate more effectively.
Of course, all of this requires resources to pull off. freeCodeCamp‘s operating budget is still a fraction of what most nonprofits and educational institutions spend in a single year. The majority of their funding comes from thousands of individual donors contributing $5 or $10 per month.
To keep the momentum going and bring free coding education to even more people worldwide, freeCodeCamp has set an ambitious goal of reaching 10,000 monthly supporters. It‘s an achievable target if every person whose life has been touched by freeCodeCamp—whether by learning to code themselves or benefitting from the contributions of alumni to the tech ecosystem—pitches in to help.
With the support of the global freeCodeCamp community, the next billion minutes of free coding education are sure to be even more impactful than the last. As the skills taught by freeCodeCamp become increasingly essential to full participation in the digital economy, their model is paving the way for a future where anyone, anywhere can get the knowledge they need to build a better life through code.