Welcome to EcoFinLearn

Free Python & SQL lessons for finance and economics students, written by a Durham Business School lecturer. Runs in your browser.

Python runs in your browser · nothing to install · 2 minutes to your first program

runs live in SQL lesson 1

sql> SELECT ref_period, release_date, value...> FROM macro_indicators...> WHERE indicator_name = 'CPI_YoY'...> ORDER BY value DESC LIMIT 5;

ref_period  release_date  value
──────────  ────────────  ─────
2022-06     2022-07-13      9.1
2022-05     2022-06-10      8.6
2022-03     2022-04-12      8.5
2022-07     2022-08-10      8.5
2022-04     2022-05-11      8.3

5 rows · the highest US CPI inflation readings, year-over-year (%), with the day each was publishedsql>

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Python Foundations11 lessons · free Data Manipulation16 lessons · free Machine Learning9 lessons · free SQL Foundations8 lessons · free Advanced Finance SQL7 lessons · free IT Essentials13 lessons · free

Runs in your browser · no install · start any lesson free · All courses

Learn Python & SQL for quantitative finance - free, in your browser

EcoFinLearn teaches the coding every quant, analyst and economist actually uses - Python, pandas and scikit-learn, plus advanced SQL - on real market and macro data. Every lesson runs in your browser with no install and no setup, and each one has a hands-on exercise you complete yourself, checked instantly. It is free to learn, and each finished track gives you a free printable completion record. A certificate of completion with its own page that anyone can check (€4.99) is coming soon: card payments are not switched on yet. Built by Sitraka Forler, a lecturer at Durham Business School.

Six tracks, from your first line of code to a real backtest

Python Foundations - Variables, Control Flow & Functions
Data Manipulation - Pandas & Time-Series for Finance
Machine Learning - Scikit-learn for Asset Return Prediction
SQL Foundations - Relational Database Basics for Finance
Advanced Finance SQL - Window Functions, Macro Joins & Analytics
IT Essentials - From Laptop to Production

All courses - every track with its lesson count and study time

More than lessons

Daily Challenge - two fresh exercises a day, Simple and Advanced - streaks build the habit
Capstone Projects - CV-ready quant research work, step by step
Practice Mode - redo the lessons you needed hints for
Certificates - print a free completion record for each finished track

Free tools & references - no signup

Finance & data glossary - 90 terms (Sharpe ratio, CAPM, VaR, SQL window functions…) with the formula and the Python or SQL to compute it - 8 of them with interactive, animated explainers: put-call parity, Black-Scholes, the Sharpe ratio, Value at Risk, Okun's law, PPP, Cobb-Douglas and the Gordon growth model.
Careers guide - eleven entry-level finance, economics and data roles explained: what you do, the skills that get you hired, realistic entry pay in the UK, Europe, US and worldwide, and how graduates get in.
Frontier - big tech & AI labs - interview loops for Google and the AI labs, a system-design primer, ML system design, and honest 2026 pay.
Research library - a curated, citable reading list of seminal quantitative-finance papers.
Thesis data guide - how and where to source a clean, point-in-time dataset for a dissertation.
Quant Notes - short reads, each with one machine-verified snippet.
For teams & universities - the lessons stay free; a certificate of completion is €4.99 per track (not on sale yet), and universities can license the course.