Google Skills is Google’s learning platform for cloud and AI courses, hands-on labs and skill badges. It includes the former Google Cloud Skills Boost catalog.
A r/GCPCertification poster who passed the Professional Cloud Architect spent about six weeks on Google's learning path and its hands-on labs, which they found more advanced than the ACE path. They also used a paid third-party course alongside it.
Google's own learning path of 24 courses, labs and skill badges, from core infrastructure and networking to security, GKE, AI Hypercomputer, observability and Terraform. It ends with a study-guide course.
Great fit if you want the issuer's route with real console labs
Poor fit if you want case study walkthroughs from a single instructor; choose in28Minutes
Google's own learning path of 17 courses, labs and skill badges, from infrastructure basics through GKE, Cloud Run, databases, logging and Terraform. Labs run in real Google Cloud projects, and a study-guide course closes the path.
Great fit if you want the issuer's route with real console labs
Poor fit if you want one instructor walking you through every topic on video; choose in28Minutes
Google's own learning path for the exam. Five courses cover gen AI fundamentals, the gen AI landscape, apps for everyday work and agents, with activities using Gemini, NotebookLM and Google AI Studio.
Great fit if you want the issuer's free route through every exam section
Poor fit if you want exam-style questions built into the course; choose the Udemy course
Google's learning path of 13 courses with labs and skill badges. It covers data lakes and warehouses, batch and streaming pipelines, Dataflow, data mesh governance and Gemini in BigQuery, and includes a study-guide course.
Great fit if you want the issuer's route with real labs
Poor fit if you want every exam service covered; add Ankit Mistry's course
Google's own learning path with 17 activities of courses, labs and skill badges, covering BigQuery ML, production ML systems, MLOps with Agent Platform, generative AI and responsible AI. It includes a study-guide course.
Great fit if you want the issuer's route with real labs and current product names
Poor fit if you need ML fundamentals taught from scratch; learn those first
Yes. Google renamed Google Cloud Skills Boost to Google Skills in October 2025 and moved it from cloudskillsboost.google to skills.google. It is the same platform with a new name and domain.
There is a free Starter tier with 35 credits a month for limited labs, plus skill badges. Pro is $29/month for unlimited labs, with a 7-day trial for new subscribers.
They are real. Each lab starts a temporary Google Cloud environment for you to work in.
It is a good start. For associate and professional exams, plan for more lab time with Pro, or add a paid course and practice questions.
Last updated October 2026
