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You can learn Elixir for free by combining the official getting-started guide, Elixir School’s topic-based lessons, and hands-on practice with Exercism. Begin with the language itself; add Phoenix and LiveView once you can read and write basic Elixir comfortably.

How to learn Elixir for free

A useful sequence moves from explanations to practice, then to a framework if web development is your goal. Each resource below fills a different role, so you can use them together rather than trying to choose a single universally best tutorial.

  1. Learn the fundamentals: Work through the official Elixir Getting Started introduction for syntax, modules, data structures, and IEx, the interactive Elixir shell. That guide lists Elixir 1.18.0+ and Erlang/OTP 27+ as requirements. The official Elixir documentation index currently lists Elixir v1.20.4 as stable and supports Erlang/OTP 27, 28, and 29; check the guide and documentation for the requirements that apply to your setup.
  2. Build a broader foundation: Follow relevant lessons in Elixir School, a community-driven collection of peer-reviewed material organized by subject and difficulty. Use it to reinforce fundamentals and explore topics you encounter as you progress.
  3. Practice by solving problems: Work through the Exercism Elixir track. Exercism recommends its syllabus and exercises for beginners; the track page accessed October 1, 2026, listed 168 exercises grouped into 58 Elixir Concepts. The platform offers automated analysis and volunteer mentoring, and describes itself as “100% free, forever.”
  4. Choose a direction: If you want to build web applications, move on to the Phoenix documentation and, for realtime interfaces, the Phoenix LiveView documentation. You do not need to begin with a framework to learn the language.

Which free Elixir tutorial should you choose?

Match the resource to how you learn and what you want to build. The official project’s learning page also lists video and training resources beyond the main sequence.

Resource Format and feedback Best fit
Official Getting Started Reference-style guided text; self-paced First exposure to core syntax, IEx, modules, and data structures
Elixir School Community lessons by topic and difficulty Structured follow-up and a way to explore individual topics
Exercism Elixir Exercises, automated analysis, and volunteer mentoring Learning through solving problems and receiving feedback
ElixirStreams Short video tips listed by the official Elixir project Learners who prefer short video explanations; current availability is not established here
Groxio Guided training; the official learning page describes a progression from fundamentals through REST, GraphQL, Phoenix, OTP, testing, Ecto, architecture, and scaling Learners seeking a longer course sequence; check current course availability and terms
TechSchool Open-source platform listed by the official project as offering free Elixir videos and related sites Video learners; check current availability

No authoritative source cited here ranks these tutorials by learner success or completion rate. Choose based on format, feedback, scope, and whether the examples and version requirements fit your Elixir setup.

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When should you start Phoenix or LiveView?

Start a web framework when your goal is web development, but give yourself enough core-language practice to understand the code you are reading. Phoenix is the application framework path; LiveView is for building realtime interfaces with Elixir.

The LiveView documentation describes LiveViews as processes that receive events, update state, and render changes to HTML templates. That state uses functional, immutable Elixir data structures. If those ideas are still unfamiliar, return to the fundamentals and exercises before taking on framework-specific concepts.

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Can a book complement the free tutorials?

Yes. The official Elixir learning page describes Programming Elixir by Dave Thomas as a tutorial book that begins with language and functional-programming basics and continues into the Erlang VM, OTP, concurrency, fault tolerance, distributed systems, releases, and troubleshooting. It is a paid companion, not a requirement for the free path.

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