Best Gatsby.js Online Courses
Looking for Gatsby.js courses? These are the best options still available in 2026, plus alternatives since Gatsby is in maintenance mode.
Important: Gatsby is in maintenance mode. Netlify acquired Gatsby Inc. in February 2023, and most of the core team left shortly after. Development has slowed significantly, and many plugins in the ecosystem are no longer maintained. If you’re starting a new project, consider Astro, Next.js, or TanStack Start instead. The courses below are still useful if you’re maintaining an existing Gatsby site or want to understand the patterns Gatsby pioneered.
Gatsby is a React-based static site generator that uses GraphQL to pull data from various sources and generate fast, pre-rendered websites. It connects to headless CMS systems like WordPress, Contentful, or Sanity.
Gatsby is more complex than WordPress. You need to understand React, GraphQL, and the Node.js toolchain. A structured course saves time compared to cobbling together free tutorials, especially if you’re new to the React ecosystem.
Before diving in, make sure you have the basics set up: Install Node.js using NVM and Link GitHub with an SSH key.
Best Gatsby.js online courses
1. Gatsby.js 3 Tutorial and Projects Course
This is the most comprehensive Gatsby course on Udemy. Yanis Smilga (listed as Jānis Smilga in his bio) covers Gatsby from the basics through multiple projects. The course runs 22 hours across 240 lectures and 8 sections.
You’ll build a recipes site with Contentful, a blog, and a portfolio. It covers GraphQL queries, image optimization, styled components, and deploying to production. The instructor explains things clearly and at a pace that works for beginners.
The course was last updated in October 2024. The Gatsby version used is now outdated (v3), but the core concepts transfer. One recent reviewer noted: “Its true that Gatsby version that John used is completely outdated, but that the true challenge: as a web developer, you must read the docs, search on forums, ask around to update all the stuff by yourself and find the way to link items in order to make things work securely and with stability.”
4.5 rating with 1,748 reviews and 14,899 students enrolled.
2. Gatsby JS v5 & Headless WordPress
Tom Phillips teaches how to use WordPress as a headless CMS with Gatsby as the frontend. This is the practical setup many content teams use: WordPress for the editorial workflow, Gatsby for the fast static output.
The course was updated to Gatsby v5 in January 2023 and covers the WordPress Gutenberg block editor, Tailwind CSS styling, and custom Gutenberg blocks with ACF Pro. It runs 7 hours across 47 lectures and 7 sections. Tom Phillips has 255k+ learners across his 26 Udemy courses and focuses on React, Gatsby, and Next.js.
4.7 rating with 762 reviews and 4,868 students enrolled. Last updated March 2026.
3. Gatsby on LinkedIn Learning
If you have a LinkedIn Learning subscription, Morten Rand-Hendriksen has two Gatsby courses worth checking. He’s a senior staff instructor at LinkedIn and explains things clearly:
Learning Gatsby — About 3 hours covering Gatsby fundamentals: setup, routing, GraphQL data layer, plugins, and deployment. Good starting point if you already have access.
Building a Headless WordPress Site with Gatsby — About 2.5 hours focused on connecting WordPress to Gatsby. Covers WPGraphQL, custom post types, and Gatsby’s WordPress source plugin.
Both courses are included with a LinkedIn Learning subscription. No separate purchase needed.
What to learn instead (if starting fresh)
If you don’t have an existing Gatsby project to maintain, here’s what the community has moved to:
Astro — The closest replacement for Gatsby’s use case. Content-heavy sites, blogs, documentation. Ships near-zero JavaScript by default. Supports React, Vue, Svelte, and MDX. This is where most former Gatsby developers landed.
Next.js — Better for full applications with authentication, API routes, and server-side rendering. Steeper learning curve than Gatsby but far more capable.
TanStack Start — A newer option with first-class TypeScript support and fine-grained data loading. Worth watching if you want something leaner than Next.js.
Each of these solved the problems Gatsby solved (file-based routing, image optimization, MDX support, fast defaults) without the dead-ecosystem risk.
Tips for learning Gatsby in 2026
If you’re maintaining an existing Gatsby site or have a specific reason to learn it:
- Pin your Node.js version. Gatsby breaks on newer Node versions more often than other frameworks. Use nvm and test upgrades in a branch first.
- Audit your plugins. Many popular Gatsby plugins haven’t been updated in years. Check the last publish date on npm before installing anything.
- Consider migrating. Astro has a migration guide from Gatsby that’s well-documented. The longer you wait, the more brittle the dependency chain gets.
- Don’t start new projects on Gatsby. There’s no scenario in 2026 where Gatsby is the best choice for a new project.
