Feature
Do you ever use AI, but have to ask the tool something multiple times (and in multiple ways) to get the answer you want? If so, prompt engineering can help.
Mastering prompt engineering is a way to make AI technology and tools more effective for both developers and users. Here, we look at some of the top prompt engineering certifications and courses available, both free and paid.
Table of Contents
- What Is Prompt Engineering & Why Is It Important?
- Prompt Engineering FAQs
- 14 Free & Premium Prompt Engineering Certifications
What Is Prompt Engineering & Why Is It Important?
Prompt engineering is any type of process that contributes to creating a well-crafted prompt that generates high-quality and useful outputs from AI systems. This process can include brainstorming, iteration and programming methods, as well as various techniques for creating prompts.
People often talk about prompt engineering when it comes to working with AI-powered chatbots, such as ChatGPT or Grok, along with AI assistants like Microsoft Copilot or AI Assistant for Acrobat.
Prompt engineering is important because it directly impacts AI outputs. A good prompt affects output quality, speed, cost and risk. Putting together the right prompt can also reduce hallucinations, which is when AI generates incorrect information and presents it as fact. Putting together the right right prompt is ideal for tasks that require long inputs (like transcription), multi-step workflows, ambiguous tasks (analysis, summarization) and tasks in high-stakes industries like finance and medicine.
Related Article: What Is Prompt Engineering?
Prompt Engineering FAQs
Some widely used techniques include:
- Zero-shot prompting: Asking the AI to perform a task without examples.
- Few-shot prompting: Providing examples to teach the AI how to respond.
- Chain-of-thought prompting: Encouraging step-by-step reasoning for complex problems.
- Role prompting: Assigning the AI a role (e.g., “act as a lawyer”) for more tailored responses.
- Instruction tuning: Using precise and direct instructions to minimize ambiguity.
An effective AI prompt is clear, specific and structured. It should define the task, provide context and sometimes include examples or constraints. For instance, instead of asking “Explain AI,” you might say “Explain how AI is used in healthcare, focusing on patient data analysis and diagnosis support, in under 200 words.”
Yes, to a degree. By carefully structuring prompts, users can steer AI away from harmful or biased outputs. For example, prompts can require balanced perspectives, include disclaimers or frame responses around verified data. However, prompt engineering is not a complete solution; underlying model training and governance remain critical.
Yes, partially. Some tools now use algorithms to auto-generate, test and refine prompts at scale. However, human oversight is still needed for creativity, ethical considerations and domain-specific expertise that automation cannot fully replicate.
Yes. While models are improving at following natural instructions, prompt engineering remains critical for enterprise use cases where accuracy, compliance and efficiency matter. As AI systems grow more powerful, prompt engineering is evolving into a discipline that blends human creativity with technical optimization.
14 Free & Premium Prompt Engineering Certifications
Let's take a look at the top free and premium prompt engineering certifications available.
1. Google Prompting Essentials
Certifying Organization: Google
Skills Learned:
How to give clear and specific instructions to generative AI, known as prompting, how to prompt effectively, how to use AI to craft email messages, brainstorm, build tables and trackers, summarize documents, identify patterns in data, create data visualizations, rehearse presentations, transform ideas into actionable steps, role-play conversations, get feedback, evaluate outputs for bias and errors and iterate to get more helpful results. Throughout the course, you’ll build a library of reusable prompts to use in the future. The prompt engineering course includes both hands-on exercises and real-world examples.
Requirements: None
Duration: 4 hours
Test: None
Cost: $49 per month
2. Certified Prompt Engineer
Certifying Organization: Blockchain Council
Skills Learned:
This program covers an introduction to prompt engineering, the importance of prompt engineering, applications of prompt engineering, definition and type of prompts, components of a prompt, understanding prompt context, problems and challenges with prompts, eliciting desired response, clarity and specificity in prompts, dealing with ambiguity, handling sensitive topics and content safeguards, importance of context in prompt design, prompt strategies for better output, prompt templates, text summarization, information extraction, question answering, text classification, code generation, reasoning, analyzing and evaluating prompt performance, working with OpenAI API, dealing with bias, mitigating inappropriate or unwanted responses, engineering prompts for multilingual and multicultural contexts and building iterative and interactive prompt chains.
Requirements: None
Duration: 6 hours
Test: Final Exam
Cost: $399
3. AI+ Prompt Engineer Level 1
Certifying Organization: AI CERTs
Skills Learned:
This prompt engineering certification includes an introduction to AI, history of AI, machine learning (ML) basics, deep learning and neural networks, natural language processing (NLP), prompt engineering fundamentals, principles of effective prompting, giving directions, formatting responses, providing examples, evaluating response quality, dividing labor, fixing failing prompts, understanding AI tools and models, exploring GPT-4, emerging tools using GPT, specialized and advanced AI models, Google AI innovations, comparative analysis of AI tools, zero-shot and few-shot prompting, chain-of-thought prompting, ensuring self-consistency in AI responses, generate knowledge prompting, prompt chaining, tree of thoughts, retrieval augmented generation, graph prompting, image models, understanding image generation, style modifiers and quality boosters in image generation and prompt rewriting for image models.
Requirements: Basic knowledge of AI concepts and programming languages such as Python or R, along with a basic understanding of machine learning algorithms and techniques
Duration: 8 hours
Test: Final Exam (Certification requires passing score of 70%)
Cost: $195
4. The Complete Prompt Engineering for AI Bootcamp
Certifying Organization: Udemy
Skills Learned:
This program includes an introduction to prompt engineering, five principles of prompting, how AI works, standard text model practices, advanced text model techniques, LangChain, LangGraph, proven prompting techniques, prompting optimization and evaluation, AI text model projects, standard image model practices, advanced image model techniques, AI image model projects, ChatGPT, GPT-4, GPT-5, Veo3, Midjourney, Anthropic Claude, Stable Diffusion, DALL-E, GitHub Copilot, multimodal models such as vision prompting and automating product descriptions and UX landing page analyses with GPT-V, agent architectures such as prompt chaining and routing, other AI models such as Google Gemini and Meta LLaMA and AI tools such as Google NotebookLM and PromptLayer. Includes Python coding exercises as well as a pack of 705 ChatGPT prompts.
Requirements: Knowledge of Python
Duration: 24 hours
Test: None
Cost: $119.99
5. Prompt Engineering for ChatGPT
Certifying Organization: Vanderbilt University
Skills Learned:
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This ChatGPT-specific prompt engineering course includes an introduction to prompts, prompt patterns, few-shot prompting, chain-of-thought prompting, reason and act prompting, using large language models (LLMs) to grade each other, game play pattern, template pattern, meta language creation pattern, recipe pattern, alternative approaches pattern, ask for input pattern, combining patterns, outline expansion pattern, menu actions pattern, fact check list pattern, tail generation pattern, semantic filter pattern and creating a prompt-based application.
Requirements: Basic computer use
Duration: 20 hours
Test: None
Cost: $49 per month (with seven-day free trial)
Related Article: ChatGPT, Gemini or Grok? We Tested All 3 — Here’s What You Should Know
6. Prompt Engineering Foundation Professional Certification (CPEFPC)
Certifying Organization: Certiprof
Skills Learned:
This course covers the fundamentals of prompt engineering and its relevance in interacting with AI models, how to design prompts that improve the accuracy and relevance of AI-generated responses, best practices for formulating questions and commands in natural language models, using advanced prompting techniques to achieve specific outcomes in various professional scenarios, applying prompting strategies to improve automation processes in organizations and the challenges and limitations of prompt engineering when interacting with emerging technologies.
Requirements: None
Duration: N/A
Test: Final Exam
Cost: Free
7. Getting Started on Prompt Engineering With Generative AI
Certifying Organization: Pluralsight
Skills Learned:
An introduction to prompt engineering, creating effective prompts, evaluating prompt performance, zero-shot and few-shot prompting, chain-of-thought and least to most prompting, generated knowledge prompting, ethical considerations for AI, prompt strategies to address ethical concerns, best practices, trends and future directions.
Requirements: None
Duration: 1 hour
Test: None
Cost: Free
8. Understanding Prompt Engineering
Certifying Organization: Datacamp
Skills Learned:
This course includes the essentials of prompt engineering, including how to construct clear, specific and open-ended prompts, zero-shot, one-shot and few-shot learning along with evaluating ChatGPT's responses, ensuring accuracy and relevance. This course teaches learners how to tap into the full potential of ChatGPT to streamline your personal workflows.
Requirements: None
Duration: 1 Hour
Test: None
Cost: Free (with additional paid modules available)
9. Essentials of Prompt Engineering
Certifying Organization: AWS
Skills Learned:
You'll learn the fundamentals of creating effective prompts, including how to refine and optimize prompts for a range of use cases, techniques like zero-shot, few-shot and chain-of-thought prompting, how to identify risks associated with prompt engineering.
Requirements:None
Duration: 1hour
Test: None
Cost: $49 per month (with seven-day free trial)
10. Prompt Engineering for ChatGPT
Certifying Organization: Davidson College
Skills Learned:
In this prompting course, you'll learn how to communicate effectively with ChatGPT, including mastering prompt techniques to optimize ChatGPT's performance, using ChatGPT for content creation, data-driven decision-making and knowledge synthesis, overcoming common AI challenges, such as bias, inaccuracies and data limitations, how to use ChatGPT as a partner to brainstorm, plan and innovate, how to write precise prompts tailored to different use cases and applying advanced techniques like chain-of-thought, role prompting and knowledge integration.
Requirements: None
Duration: 5-20 hours
Test: Final Exam
Cost: $249 with certificate (or free to audit without certificate)
11. ChatGPT Masterclass: The Guide to AI & Prompt Engineering
Certifying Organization: Udemy
Skills Learned:
The class offers more than 100 lectures covering topics like prompt frameworks, output templates, prompt fine-tuning, content creation, generating research ideas, fact-checking and validating information, goal setting and tracking, streamlining workflows, automating repetitive tasks and much more. Multiple companies, including Nasdaq, Volkswagen and eventbrite, offer this course to employees as a way to build AI and prompt engineering knowledge and skills.
Requirements: None
Duration: 23 hours
Test: None
Cost: $139.99
12. Introduction to Prompt Engineering
Certifying Organization: IBM
Skills Learned:
The prompt engineering course covers a range of topics, including the concept and relevance of prompt engineering, applying best practices for creating prompts and exploring examples, practicing common prompt engineering techniques and approaches for writing effective prompts and commonly used tools to aid prompt engineering.
Requirements: None
Duration: 3-9 hours
Test: 2 Quizzes, 1 Final Project
Cost: $49 with certificate (or free to audit without certificate)
Related Article: Chain-of-Thought (CoT) Prompting Guide for Business Users
13. ChatGPT Prompt Engineering for Developers
Certifying Organization: DeepLearning.AI
Skills Learned:
This program covers various topics, including two key principles for writing effective prompts, how to systematically engineer good prompts, how LLMs work, best practices for prompt engineering, how LLM APIs can be used for summarizing, inferring, transforming text, developing new messages and learning to build a custom chatbot.
Requirements: None
Duration: 1 hour
Test: Final Assessment
Cost: $49 per month
14. Mastering Prompt Engineering: Generate Text & Images With AI
Certifying Organization: Skool of AI
Skills Learned:
The course covers several areas, such as understanding prompt engineering for AI, including text and image prompts, developing skills in crafting effective prompts for ChatGPT and Midjourney, mastering error handling and troubleshooting, creating and optimizing digital content and applying prompt engineering in educational settings to enhance teaching methods.
Requirements: None
Duration: 2 hours
Test: Final Project
Cost: $19.99
