React Native — The Practical Guide

Maximilian Schwarzmüller has been teaching React Native on Udemy for years, and this is the course most people mean when they say 'the Academind one'. Listings put it around 28.5 hours of video across roughly 290 lectures, with a 4.7 average from tens of thousands of ratings and enrolment well into six figures. Udemy blocked our direct fetch, so those figures come from course-aggregator listings rather than the page itself — treat them as approximate and check the current page before buying.

What separates it from the free video tutorials is that it doesn't stop at the fun part. Most React Native content ends once you've styled a screen. This one keeps going into authentication, HTTP, native device APIs, push notifications, ejecting from Expo, and actually shipping to the stores.

What the curriculum covers

The section list runs through an expense-tracker project, handling user input, sending HTTP requests, user authentication, native device features including camera and location, building React Native apps without Expo, publishing, and push notifications. There are bonus JavaScript and React refresher sections bolted on the front for people arriving without that background.

Max's teaching style is methodical to the point of slowness — he explains why before he types, and he types everything. If you like 1.5x playback you'll live there.

About the pricing, since it matters here

This is a paid Udemy course and there is no free path to it. Udemy has no audit tier — that's a Coursera and edX thing. What you get for free is a handful of preview lectures marked on the curriculum page, and nothing else. The list price is high and essentially never charged; Udemy runs near-permanent discounts, so the honest advice is to wait for a sale rather than pay sticker.

The 'lifetime access' language also deserves a footnote: Udemy's own support pages tie it to your account remaining in good standing and to Udemy continuing to license the course. It's durable, not guaranteed.

Who it's for — and who should skip it

Worth the money if you're past tutorials and stuck on the unglamorous half — auth flows, storage, permissions, the app store submission dance. Also worth it if you learn better from one voice over 28 hours than from stitching ten YouTube videos together.

Skip it if you want the current bleeding edge. A course this long is expensive to re-record, and React Native moves; sections on Expo workflows and navigation age faster than the fundamentals around them. Check the last-updated date before you buy. Skip it too if you're brand new to React — the refresher sections are a summary, not a substitute.

Our take

The most complete single React Native course on the market, and the one we'd point a working developer to. But it's paid, it can't be audited, and parts of a 28-hour recording will always be behind the framework. Buy it on sale, check the update log, and don't expect it to cover the newest architecture the week it lands.