UK Study Online aims to help prospective students make informed choices about online study and navigate their return to education.
UK Study Online is a specialist course discovery and guidance platform built exclusively for online learners at UK universities. We help prospective students find accredited online courses, understand their options, and make confident decisions about returning to education.
We only list courses from regulated, accredited UK higher education providers. We are 100% dedicated to online study.
The team behind UK Study Online has spent over 15 years working in UK higher education, specialising in online and distance learning. During that time, we’ve directly helped thousands of students enrol onto online undergraduate and postgraduate courses at UK universities.
Through years of working closely with universities and their students, we noticed a consistent problem: the information available to online learners is scattered, incomplete, and overwhelmingly written for 18-year-olds starting full-time campus degrees straight from college.
That isn’t who most online students are. The majority are working professionals, career changers, and mature learners with families, jobs, and real commitments. They need clear, practical guidance that respects their time and circumstances.
We created UK Study Online to fill that gap: a single destination where online learners can find courses, compare options, and access honest advice from people who understand how online higher education actually works.
We bring together online undergraduate, postgraduate, and short courses from UK universities in one place, so you can search, compare, and find the right programme without trawling through dozens of individual university websites. Every course listed on our platform is from a regulated UK education provider.
Our Guides and Resources cover the full journey from initial research through to graduation, including how to evaluate and compare courses, understanding qualification types and accreditation, entry requirements for mature and non-traditional applicants, how to write a strong application, funding and student finance options, and practical tips for managing study alongside work and family life.
We write our guides based on direct experience of how online courses work in practice, not theory. Our team has worked across student recruitment, enrolment, and course delivery at multiple UK universities, and we use that knowledge to give you the kind of advice that’s genuinely useful rather than generic.
We believe in transparency. UK Study Online is free for students to use. Universities can advertise on our platform, and this advertising revenue funds the UK Study Online Scholarships, which directly support online learners.
Our advice and editorial content is completely independent of any advertising relationships. We feature and recommend universities and courses based on their quality, accreditation, and suitability for online learners, regardless of whether they advertise with us. We will always tell you about factors like accreditation and course quality that matter to your decision, even when it might steer you away from an advertising partner.
Everything we do is informed by hands-on experience in UK higher education. Our team has worked across leading UK education groups, international student recruitment, edtech, and online learning delivery. This gives us a deeper understanding of how online courses actually work than you’ll find on most university comparison sites.
Unlike general university guides, we work exclusively with online and distance learning programmes. We understand the specific differences between online course formats, what makes a good online learning platform, and how to evaluate whether a course will genuinely work for someone studying around a job.
Use these links to view the full rankings (Opens in a new window)
ARTU Ranking (Out of 45 UK universities included in their table)
QS World University Rankings- QS Quacquarelli Symonds rankings data– (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)