Free ASP.NET Core Web API Course

Yes, it is completely free. Every lesson, along with the source code, is free to read on this site. There are no paid tiers and nothing is locked behind a paywall. You can sign up to get the lessons by email, but you do not have to. You can start reading right away.

Some basic C# knowledge will help, but you do not need any prior experience with ASP.NET Core. The course starts from the fundamentals, like REST, middleware, and dependency injection, and then builds up to the more advanced topics one step at a time.

The course is written for .NET 10 and EF Core 10. The code uses modern C# and the current way of doing things in ASP.NET Core, like Minimal APIs and Scalar for API documentation.

It depends on how much time you can give it. There are no deadlines, so you can go through the lessons at your own pace. My suggestion is to go in order, and to actually write the code for each lesson instead of just reading it. That is where most of the learning happens.

No, I don't offer certificates at the moment. What I would suggest instead is to build the projects from the course and put them on your GitHub. When you are applying for jobs, working code that you can talk through is a lot more useful than a certificate.

Yes. The complete source code for the lessons is available on GitHub. You can clone the repository and follow along with each lesson.

ASP.NET Core Web API is Microsoft's framework for building HTTP APIs using C# and .NET. It is what sits behind a lot of web apps, mobile apps, and internal business systems. If you want to work as a backend or full-stack .NET developer, building Web APIs is something you will do almost every day, so it is one of the best skills to learn first.

Yes. .NET performs very well for web workloads, and .NET 10 gives you Minimal APIs, built-in OpenAPI support, native AOT for faster startup, and good support for Docker and the cloud. It is also a Long Term Support (LTS) release, so it is a safe version to build on. The course uses these .NET 10 features throughout.

I have not tried to copy any paid course. I wrote this one the way I would want to learn the topic myself. It goes further than a basic CRUD tutorial, and covers things like Clean Architecture, security, caching, Docker, and deployment. Every lesson is a written article with full source code, and I update the lessons when new .NET versions come out.

Yes. The topics in this course, like REST API design, EF Core, authentication, caching, CQRS, and Clean Architecture, come up a lot in .NET backend interviews. There is also a separate module just for interview prep, with questions on Web API, EF Core, C#, system design, SQL, and more.

Both are good choices, and the right one depends on your team and your project. ASP.NET Core gives you strong typing with C#, built-in dependency injection, and very good performance, which helps a lot on larger projects that need to be maintained for years. Node.js has a huge package ecosystem and works well for smaller, lightweight services. If you already know C#, or you want to work at companies that use .NET, ASP.NET Core is a great choice.

Yes. .NET is open source, it runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS, and it is used by many companies for their backend systems. With .NET 10, you get Minimal APIs for simple endpoints, built-in OpenAPI support, native AOT, and good tooling for Docker and the cloud. A lot of companies are also moving their older .NET Framework applications to modern .NET, so there is steady work for developers who know it well.

If you already know some C#, you can build your first working API within a few days. Getting comfortable with the full picture, which includes the database, authentication, architecture, and deployment, takes longer. The course follows that same order: REST basics and your first endpoint first, then EF Core, then security and architecture, and finally Docker and deployment.

Web API skills are the base for most .NET backend and full-stack developer roles. As you get more experienced, they also lead into cloud and architecture work. Most job descriptions for these roles ask for the same set of skills this course covers: REST APIs, Entity Framework Core, authentication, Clean Architecture, Docker, and CI/CD.

The course has 13 modules: (1) REST fundamentals, middleware, dependency injection, error handling, and logging with Serilog; (2) Entity Framework Core 10, including relationships, migrations, soft deletes, bulk operations, and compiled queries; (3) API patterns like the Options pattern, FluentValidation, CQRS, the Result pattern, API versioning, and SignalR; (4) Performance, including benchmarking, response compression, in-memory caching, Redis, output caching, and HybridCache; (5) HTTP clients with Refit and Polly; (6) Background jobs with hosted services, Hangfire, and Quartz.NET; (7) File handling, including uploads, downloads, AWS S3, and Azure Blob Storage; (8) Security, including JWT authentication, refresh tokens, role-based and policy-based authorization, OAuth 2.0, CORS, and rate limiting; (9) Architecture, including Clean Architecture, DDD, Vertical Slice Architecture, and Modular Monoliths; (10) Observability with health checks, OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, and the ELK stack; (11) Unit and integration testing with Testcontainers; (12) Deployment with Docker, GitHub Actions, and YARP; and (13) Interview preparation.

I did. I am Mukesh Murugan (@iammukeshm), a Microsoft MVP and Solutions Architect, and I have been building .NET systems for over 10 years. I write about .NET on codewithmukesh, and I send a weekly .NET newsletter to 9,735 developers. I also created fullstackhero, an open-source .NET starter kit built on Clean Architecture.

In my experience, the best way is to learn in a clear order and to build something as you go. Start with REST and HTTP basics, then learn Entity Framework Core for the database, then add authentication and authorization. After that, look at how to structure a bigger project with something like Clean Architecture, and finally learn how to ship it with Docker and CI/CD. This course follows exactly that order, and the source code for every lesson is on GitHub so you can build along.