SWAYAM Portal: Free Courses, Login, Exams and Credit Transfer

The SWAYAM portal (swayam.gov.in) is the Ministry of Education’s free online-course platform, where anyone can study courses taught at levels from Class 9 to postgraduate, prepared by institutions such as the IITs, IIM Bangalore, IGNOU and NCERT. People come to it for three things: signing up and enrolling in a course, registering for the proctored exam that earns a certificate and transferring those credits to a college degree.

The confusion worth settling first is that “free” covers the whole journey. It doesn’t. Learning on SWAYAM costs nothing, but a certificate needs an in-person, proctored exam with a fee, and self-paced courses give no certificate at all. The second confusion is about credits: a SWAYAM certificate counts towards your degree only if your own university has adopted SWAYAM courses under the UGC rules.

SWAYAM portal at a glance

SWAYAM stands for Study Webs of Active-learning for Young Aspiring Minds. It was launched on 9 July 2017 in the presence of President Pranab Mukherjee, along with the SWAYAM Prabha DTH channels.

Who makes SWAYAM courses: the National Coordinators

Every course on the SWAYAM portal comes from a National Coordinator, an institution assigned one sector. This matters in practice, because the coordinator, not the portal, sets the exam fee, the pass rules and the refund policy for its courses. The About page lists ten:

The FAQ page still names nine coordinators, leaving out INI. Trust the About page and the support menu, which both list ten. The NCERT and NIOS courses are the school end of the platform, for Classes 9 to 12, which links SWAYAM to the wider system of school education as well as to colleges.

NPTEL (National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning) is the coordinator most people mean when they search “NPTEL SWAYAM portal”. It began in 2003 as a project of seven IITs and IISc Bangalore, and since 2013 has run 4, 8 or 12 week online certification courses. It publishes its own timelines and guidelines on nptel.ac.in, and its exam fee is Rs 1,000 per course.

SWAYAM portal registration and login, step by step

SWAYAM uses a single sign-in for the whole platform. You need only your name and an email ID.

1. Open swayam.gov.in and click Login/Sign up at the top right.
2. On the sign-in page, choose your Google or Microsoft account, or use SWAYAM Account with an email and password.
3. If you have no account, click Sign Up and enter your name and email.
4. Look for a verification email from [email protected] and confirm your account.
5. Sign in again; the same login works for every course and every coordinator.

For a forgotten password, click Forgot your password? on the sign-in page; a reset link goes to your registered email. If you signed up with Google or Microsoft, there’s no SWAYAM password to reset, so sign in through that button again.

How to find and enroll in a SWAYAM course

Use All Courses to browse by category, such as Engineering and Technology, Humanities and Arts, Law or Management and Commerce, or type a keyword in the search. Each course page shows the syllabus, the credits, the duration, the exam date and any recommended background.

Two kinds of course look alike but behave differently:

• Credit courses follow a semester. You cannot enroll after the course has started, weekly assignments carry marks and a certificate is possible.
• Self-paced (non-credit) courses have no deadline, but the FAQ is plain that no certificate is issued for them.

You can enroll in several courses at once. Lectures need an internet connection, though you can download material where the teacher allows it, and doubts go to the Q&A forum on the course page, which every enrolled learner can see.

The SWAYAM exam and certificate

The certificate route has four steps: join the course, submit the weekly assignments, register and pay for the exam, then sit the in-person proctored exam at a centre. The end-term exams are run by the National Testing Agency (NTA) and by NPTEL for its own courses. Here’s what the FAQ fixes about the exam form and the exam itself:

• Exam form. Fill one application, using the same email as your SWAYAM account. You can add several courses if their papers fall on different dates.
• Uploads. A photograph in JPG between 10 KB and 200 KB and a signature in JPG between 4 KB and 30 KB; category or PwD certificates between 50 KB and 300 KB if they apply.
• Payment. Net banking, debit or credit card, UPI or wallet. If the confirmation page doesn’t appear, the payment is treated as cancelled and refunded, and you must pay again.
• City. You pick three exam cities; the city cannot be changed once the admit card is out.
• On the day. Carry a printed admit card and an original photo ID. The exam is computer-based, with no negative marking.

Two rules catch people every semester. There is no retest if you miss your exam date, and there is no rechecking or revaluation of marks. The fee and refund rules sit in each coordinator’s timelines, so read those before you pay.

SWAYAM credit transfer under the UGC Regulations, 2021

Credit transfer is governed by the UGC (Credit Framework for Online Learning Courses through SWAYAM) Regulations, 2021. Under them, an institution can let a student take up to 40% of the total courses in a programme in a semester through SWAYAM, and the credits go on the student’s transcript.

The catch is adoption. Credits count only if your university has amended its own ordinances to adopt SWAYAM courses, set up a SWAYAM Advisory Committee and appointed a Nodal Officer. The UGC’s steps document then fixes the marks:

Since a decision of the 24th SWAYAM Board meeting on 5 March 2024, a university that has adopted the 2021 Regulations may hold the end-term exam itself, alongside its own semester exams. Its students must have completed the course and submitted at least 75% of the assignments, and those who fail or miss it get re-exams in the next two semesters. The marks are mapped to the student’s APAAR ID and appear in the Academic Bank of Credits account, which is how the NEP 2020 idea of carrying credits across institutions works in practice.

So before you count on SWAYAM credits, ask your college two questions: has the university adopted SWAYAM courses, and which courses are on its approved list this semester?

SWAYAM Plus: the industry-course platform

SWAYAM Plus is a separate platform launched by Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on 27 February 2024 and run through IIT Madras. Where SWAYAM carries university-style courses, SWAYAM Plus carries job-focused courses made with industry partners, some free and some paid, with academic credit where the course is aligned to the national credit framework.

Its site reports 500-plus courses from 77 industry partners in 12 Indian languages. It also warns learners to register only through swayamplus.education.gov.in, because phishing emails imitate it.

Common problems and their fixes

• Course already started. Scheduled courses close enrolment at the start date. Watch for the next run, since not every course is offered every semester.
• No certificate for a completed course. Check whether it was self-paced; only credit courses with a passed exam give one.
• Credits refused by the college. The university may not have adopted the 2021 Regulations, or the course isn’t on its approved list. Ask the university’s SWAYAM Nodal Officer.
• Exam payment debited, no confirmation. Treat it as failed, pay again and keep proof of both transactions for the refund.
• Missed the exam date. No retest is held; register again in a later semester when the course runs.
• Score looks wrong. Revaluation isn’t allowed, so raise a query with the coordinator only for a clear error, such as a missing assignment score.

Where to get help

The SWAYAM Helpline / Support link at the foot of every page of the SWAYAM portal asks you to choose the National Coordinator first, because each one handles its own learners. Two contacts published on the coordinator pages:

• NPTEL: [email protected]; 044-22575905 or 044-22575908 and 9363218521, Monday to Friday, 9 AM to 6 PM.
• UGC courses: [email protected]; 011-23604165.

Questions about credit transfer belong with your own university’s Nodal Officer, not the portal.

SWAYAM portal in 2026

On 5 October 2026 the home page carried the approved list of SWAYAM courses for the July 2026 semester, results for the January 2026 semester and a notice of exam dates for the July 2026 semester courses. Read the course page and the coordinator’s timeline for the exact date of your paper.

The bigger shift is on the university side: with campus-run exams and marks flowing into APAAR, SWAYAM is meant to sit inside a degree rather than beside it, the education side of the push towards public digital services described in this note on Digital India, a direction set out in the national education policy. For the wider picture of online learning in India, see this note on digital education in India and the overview of the higher education sector. It is wise to treat the free lectures as the easy part and plan the exam and the credit paperwork from the first week.

Frequently Asked Questions

PDF