Before writing this, I attempted to find documentation about this topic and also tried the AI Help, but it was unable to answer my questions.
Is the 10 free challenge limit per course or per account?
Is this a hard limit, or does it reset periodically?
Personal Experience
While I understand the necessity of a limit for free accounts, it caught me by surprise. I wasn’t aware of it until a modal informed me that I’d hit the limit for free challenges. Assuming I had overlooked this information, I explored the site further but couldn’t find any mentions outside of the initial modal. I was somewhat disappointed to realize I’d used my 10 free challenges on a beginner-level course. I chose an easy course on a familiar topic to get a feel for the platform before diving into more complex subjects I need to study and practice.
Suggestions
A confirmation prompt and notification about the limit the first time I clicked “Submit” within a challenge would have been helpful. Additionally, a counter or indicator visible from the main course interface would assist new users in making informed decisions about their platform usage from the start. Lastly, I was surprised not to find information about the free challenge limit in the Documentation. It would be beneficial to see more detailed information added to the docs as Scrimba continues to grow.
Sidenote/General Feedback
I’m blown away by how well-done the entire platform is. Truly stellar work and a great source of motivation and inspiration to keep learning. Web dev goals I was also pleasantly surprised to find myself laughing throughout the first course I explored. That’s a first for me regarding programming learning platforms. Per is a hilarious and effective instructor.
I’m eager to see the new features and courses you’ll introduce in the future. Thank you to the Scrimba Team for creating such an engaging and effective learning environment.
Thanks for the constructive feedback @kielmarj! All points agreed on and we’re in progress to implement the improvements now both on platform and in our documentation.
Sorry forgot to clarify… it’s 10 exercises total on free accounts. It’s credits bases so if you utilise 10 free credits (interact with the challenge) this gets used up. Once you reached your quote it won’t refresh.
That’s currently how it works but might change in the future. We’ll supply information on the website somewhere so if there are changes, it will be noted there.
I thought this was really poorly done. If I had known there was a limit I wouldn’t have done the beginning ones. When it talked about the benefits of Scrimba Pro, it sounded worthwhile but I thought I would go through this class and see what I thought first. It said nothing about limited challenges. But then I got to the 11th challenge and it gave that to me. It puts a really poor taste in my mouth like a bait and switch that makes me want to just say forget it to this platform.
Sorry about that, Alan. The implementation really needs to be improved to make it more clearer. The sudden notice of your limit hitting the threshold is too jarring without context. We’ve added improvement notes into our onboarding upgrade (we need a proper onboarding flow and also information on these free limits).
If you’re interested in still learning with us, I can extend your access so you can utilise our platform more to see how it fits. Just post your account link here and I’ll get it sorted.
Sounds like this has been a problem for a while. The website and even the home page are very misleading. You guys have a good product, but it feels like you’re trying to pull a fast one on people.
Hi @ZUrlocker Apologies for this. This was actually a critical bug that prevented students from continuing with our free lessons. Normally, when a student reaches the limit of their free challenge credits, they see an upgrade modal. At that point, they should be able to click the “Skip” button to keep watching lessons (just without access to the interactive challenges).
However, a recent bug broke this flow—the upgrade modal couldn’t be dismissed. As a result, students were blocked from continuing their lessons entirely.
A fix has been pushed out so free lessons can now be continued without the need to subscriber and the upgrade modal can be skipped. We still need to improve our UX and tweak things but the critical issue of not being able to skip has now been resolved.
I know this thread has been marked solved but I would like to add some feedback and don’t feel that an entirely new thread is necessary. I am completely new to coding and started the “free” beginner Javascript course. I was taken by surprise when I ran into the modal prompting me to upgrade to pro as I hadn’t seen any information when starting the course that the challenges were limited and not just part of the course. I do understand that Scrimba would like to convert as many users as possible to the subscription model however, as a brand new coder I don’t feel like what I have seen and dabbled with so far is worth the almost immediate ask. My suggestion would be to allow participation/logging of challenges through one beginner course for new users.
For reference, I was about 30 minutes into a 14 hour course and had completed 6 challenges before being prompted to upgrade to pro. It does feel like a bait and switch. Even allowing challenges through the first chunk of lessons makes more sense. How are you going to convert new to coding users without that extra help? To me at this point I do not have enough data to say that scrimba would be a value add enough to purchase pro and will be looking at other alternatives. I do think the quality of the lessons was good and maybe with more experience under my belt I would be willing to come back and pay for more advanced lessons but as of now I am really turned off.
Sorry aboubt this. We’ve been iterating on this feature quite a bit, so I just want to double-check whether what you experienced matches what we actually intended.
You should still be able to watch all the lessons in the free courses. The upgrade prompt is only meant to appear for challenges, not to lock the entire course.
Here’s how it’s supposed to work:
Free users get a limited number of challenge credits.
Once those are used up, you’ll see a prompt to upgrade if you want to keep doing challenges.
However, you should still be able to close the prompt and continue watching lessons freely - you’d just need to complete the challenges off-platform if you don’t upgrade.
Could you confirm if that’s what’s happening on your end? If it’s actually blocking access to the lessons entirely, that’s not the intended behaviour, and we’ll need to investigate further.
We did have a similar issue earlier that’s since been fixed, so I just want to make sure this isn’t resurfacing.
Intended behavior…? I am also new to this, and here’s some crude feedback that new users are probably having but don’t have the energy to come here and say it. Sorry for that.
First you created a course following a playful methodology that allows for doing challenges, receiving tips, and experimenting. Then you proclaimed it as a free experience.
Then you limit the number of challenges for the free experience, removing the capacity to do the challenges, receive tips, and experiment with the support of the platform, thus creating a problem.
Then you prompt us to upgrade to continue following the methodology, addressing the issue created by you. And if it’s not to your liking, the suggestion is to go to another place.
Don’t call it a free course if free users won’t be able to utilize the proper features of your methodology to learn. Maybe make it fully available until the halfway point of the course, allowing all the features or something, and block the entirety of the course afterwards.
I know it’s more beneficial this way for most people, but the prompt saying that I have to upgrade to regain something that I lost out of my control makes me want to back down instead of give in, and you really should be careful with that. It’s not about clearing up misunderstandings; it’s the idea that’s wrong. If you want me to take the challenges somewhere, I shall, but don’t expect me to return.
Thanks for the feedback @dunia01. We definitely need to reevaluate this, and a discussion has already been opened about making all challenges completely free while paywalling other content instead. As you mentioned, the current setup creates friction in the experience — especially since challenges are part of our core product.
Another option we’re exploring is reassessing what we classify as “free” content. We could move certain materials to Pro, while making a smaller selection of free courses fully accessible with no upsell or ties to Pro content.
But as noted above, it’s technically still free to view in its entirety (assuming it’s working as intended and you’re not being fully locked out). However, access may be somewhat limited. We also have some of our Pro courses available on YouTube too , which is technically free even though it’s Pro content. Though certain features remain exclusive to Pro users as that’s our selling point. But in terms of actually ‘viewing’ free courses, this shouldn’t be limited.
I was also pleasantly surprised to find myself laughing throughout the first course I explored. That’s a first for me regarding programming learning platforms. Per is a hilarious and effective instructor. 
Thank you!