LearnTreehouse vs. Pluralsight: Complete Guide

When it comes to learning a tech development skill, Treehouse and Pluralsight are popular MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) platforms. These e-learning platforms provide coding and design courses to cater to beginner, intermediate and advanced developers.

Now that you know what these two platforms are, which one should you choose  –  Treehouse vs. Pluralsight?

Keep reading to know the differences between Treehouse and Pluralsight to decide which platform is best for you.

Treehouse vs. Pluralsight – Key Differences

While Treehouse and Pluralsight are both popular platforms for beginner coders, certain features differentiate them. 

Here’s a summary of the key differences :

• Treehouse programs are a guided curriculum of courses with a learning progression while Pluralsight is a collection of standalone courses with no streamlined study progression
• Treehouse courses are taught by professional instructors and industry experts while Pluralsight courses are created by individual experts
• All Treehouse students benefit from access to a moderated forum, and Techdegree students additionally can access an exclusive Slack community for further guidance. Pluralsight students have access to a Q&A chat box.
• Treehouse pricing varies between $25, $49, and $199 per month depending on the learning material while Pluralsight costs $19 and $29 per month for the standard and premium packages respectively

Related article: Treehouse vs. Codecademy

Course Comparison

Treehouse and Pluralsight are both credible learning platforms that offer various career-focused development skills and courses to prepare you for your dream tech roles. 

Here are the curriculums that each of these online platforms offers:

Treehouse Curriculum

Treehouse is an online learning platform that focuses on coding skills. It teaches you how to code using different resources regardless of your skill level.

These resources include:

• Techdegrees
• Tracks
• Library, and
• Community resources.

Treehouse Techdegrees are intensive bootcamp programs providing the training and certifications developers need to become proficient. They are interactive and in-depth programs. 

Treehouse Techdegrees have the structure and learning progression necessary to:

• Teach you the expertise you need
• Help you build a job-ready portfolio
• Prepare you for your dream job without the need for a formal college degree

Treehouse offers these five intensive Techdegrees for developers:

1. Front-End Development: This is Treehouse online bootcamp certification program to learn how to build responsive and attractive user interfaces for websites and software apps. The program will make you skilled at using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for the development of the client-side. 
2. Full Stack JavaScript: This Treehouse Techdegree teaches and certifies you on full-stack development using JavaScript. You’ll learn how to develop responsive websites and applications with functional front-end and back-end from scratch. 
3. UX Design: This is a Treehouse bootcamp program to teach and certify you in user research and designing websites and apps with seamless user experiences. 
4. Python Development: In this Treehouse Techdegree program, you’ll learn how to build software applications using the Python programming language.
5. Data Analysis: This Treehouse Techdegree will teach you to analyze and interpret large data sets from Python code, spreadsheets, and databases.

Treehouse Tracks are structured, self-guided collections of coding courses that provide more affordability and flexibility than Techdegrees. 

While these aren’t as thorough as the Techdegrees, they contain lectures, workshops, and assessments you need to become skilled in your preferred expertise.

With Treehouse, you will also learn the soft skills, career training, and interview preparation tips you need to land and excel in your dream tech job.

Pluralsight Curriculum

Pluralsight is an online learning platform for developers with over 7,000 coding courses developed by different industry experts individually. It has several courses classified into nine subject categories. 

These subjects are: 

1. Architecture & Construction: In this subject category, you’ll find several courses that will teach you how to use coding and software tools to design and explore new architectural forms.
2. Business Professional: Here, you will find courses related to the business side of becoming a developer. These courses include soft skill acquisition, team building, and business management training.
3. Creative professional: You’ll find courses relating to the creative side of tech development such as creative software, design theories, personality control, team interaction, and project management. 
4. Manufacturing & design: This contains different courses on product design and development processes.
5. Data professional: There are several courses here that will teach you how to manage, analyze, and interpret large data sets.
6. IT ops: The IT ops subject category has various courses on IT operations and administrative processes for hardware and software.
7. Information & cyber security: This is a subject category filled with different courses that will teach you how to protect systems, programs, networks, and sensitive data from cyberattacks.
8. Software development: Here, you’ll find courses on software engineering, testing, and development tools for designing, developing, testing, debugging, and maintaining software applications.
9. Web development: This category has various courses to teach you how to develop functional websites and applications from scratch. 

Pluralsight courses are mostly standalone courses. And they are grouped into collections to form learning paths. 

It can be overwhelming to choose from 7,000+ courses, so people look to factors such as star ratings and skill level to make a learning decision.

Cost Comparison

You can access Treehouse and Pluralsight courses on paid monthly subscription plans. 

For Treehouse, there’s a range of subscription options depending on the learning resource you want. Treehouse courses cost $25 and $49 per month for courses and $199/month for the Techdegrees. Keep in mind Techdegree students work directly with Treehouse student success representatives throughout the program.

Pluralsight costs $19 (for the standard package) and $29 (for the premium package) on a monthly basis. Also, it’s noteworthy to know that both of these platforms also have special plans for teams.

Here are the lists of what comes with each platform degree subscription:

Treehouse Techdegree	Pluralsight
Curated curriculum of video courses	Collection of video courses
Treehouse programs have a learning progression for every course as it uses a project-based approach	There is no streamlined learning progression since the courses available are standalone
Coding programs are in the form of Techdegrees, Tracks, and Course libraries	Learning resources are in the form of standalone courses and learning paths
It offers live Slack support to Techdegree students	Courses have Q&A sections
Treehouse provides solid community support which for Techdegree students includes an exclusive Slack group	–
Treehouse has dedicated industry experts for its programs	Coding experts create coding courses and on Pluralsight individually
You can practice your skills and build your portfolio with real-world projects	There’s a lab section to practice your skills to become project-ready
Treehouse programs provide interactive quizzes and code assessments to complete before you become certified	You can receive a certificate once you complete a video course
In Treehouse programs, you get access to peer-to-peer reviews, allowing for collaborative learning.	It’s a learn-on-your-own model
You can download Treehouse video courses for offline learning	You can download Pluralsight courses for offline viewing

Treehouse offers a free 7-day trial for all their programs and you can easily cancel your subscription whenever you’d like. On the other hand, Pluralsight offers a 10-day free trial on all their plans.

Course Length Comparison

Since Treehouse and Pluralsight courses are self-paced, there’s no specified time to complete a program. The course duration depends on your availability and commitment.

But according to the learning patterns of our students at Treehouse, we came up with the best schedules for our Techdegrees:

Dedicating 3 hours daily to study means you can complete:

•  Front End Web Development Techdegree in four months
• Full Stack JavaScript Techdegree in five months
• UX Design Techdegree in three months
• Python Development Techdegree in two months
• Data Analysis Techdegree in four months.

For Pluralsight courses, the course duration is anywhere from 1 hour for some courses and over 70 hours for some learning paths.

Student Support Resources

The live Slack support provision is one of the factors that make Treehouse Techdegree worth it. Further, Techdegree students in need to additional assistance can interact one-on-one with Treehouse staff about any issues they might have. This is something Pluralsight lacks.

At Treehouse, we have an active community forum and Slack group designed to bring students and staff together for discussion, questioning, collaboration, and networking opportunities. 

On the other hand, Pluralsight provides a Q&A experience that allows students to ask questions from their course experts. However, the drawback of this approach is there could be many questions in the Q&A chatbox that’d make it hard to get satisfactory answers to your concerns.

About student resources on these platforms:

Treehouse keeps up with the latest tech development trends and reflects these updates in their learning materials since both the courses and course teachers are a part of the Treehouse program.

Since Pluralsight has several standalone courses, people have complained about going through outdated studying resources. 

Which is Right For You – Treehouse vs. Pluralsight?

Treehouse and Pluralsight are reliable online learning platforms with in-depth coding courses to teach you to become proficient at tech development.

While Treehouse follows an intensive and progressive approach to teaching a particular tech development skill, Pluralsight allows you to choose individual courses that teach your skill of interest. 

Ready to learn to code? Get started with Treehouse Techdegree for free today.