Scrimba launched in 2017 with a genuinely new format for online coding education. Instead of standard video, Scrimba uses interactive screencasts — learners can pause any lesson and edit the instructor’s code directly in the player. This “watch, then do” approach eliminates the constant tab-switching that plagues traditional video-based courses.
The platform focuses on front-end web development, with courses covering HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React, Vue, and related technologies. Scrimba’s flagship offering is the Frontend Developer Career Path, a structured program designed to take complete beginners to job-ready status. It includes hundreds of coding challenges, projects, and even mock interview preparation.
Scrimba was co-founded by Per Harald Borgen and Sindre Aarsaether in Norway. The team built their own proprietary player technology from scratch, which records the instructor’s keystrokes and screen state rather than traditional video frames. This makes the files tiny (a one-hour screencast might be just a few megabytes) and allows the interactive editing features.
The platform operates on a freemium model — some courses are free, while the full career paths and premium content require a Pro subscription. Scrimba has also built an active community with study groups, coding challenges, and a Discord server where learners help each other. It’s a smaller player in the EdTech space but has earned a loyal following for its unique and genuinely interactive approach to teaching code.
