Free CPE

Find the best places to get your credits

Written by CFI Team

Updated March 6, 2020

Best Places to Earn Free CPE Credits

This guide will help you earn free CPE credits online. If you’re a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) looking to earn your Continuing Professional Education credits at no cost, then you’ve come to the right place!

top places to get free CPE online

List of Top Places to Earn Free CPE Credits

Exploring this guide will help you quickly figure out where to go (based on your interests) and where to quickly find as many CPE credits as you can possibly get for free.

List of top 5 places to earn free CPE:

CFI
PwC
Deloitte
EY
AICPA

#1 CFI

Corporate Finance Institute® (CFI) offers 5 free courses that are approved by NASBA as verifiable CPE, and CFI is also a member of the National Registry of CPE Sponsors. These courses total 10.5 hours of free CPE, and you can take them entirely at your own pace.

Free courses include:

Excel Crash Course (3.0 hours)
Introduction to Corporate Finance (2.5 hours)
Fundamentals of Credit (1.5 hours)
Forms of Business Structure (1.0 hour)
Introduction to Derivatives (2.5 hours)

View a full list of all CPE credits offered by CFI online. They total over 115.5 hours of credits, from both free and paid courses.

#2 PwC

Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) has created a great library of resources to help you earn free CPE credits. There are numerous video-based webcasts and classes that can be taken on a wide range of interesting topics and categories.

They have three main categories on their website:

PDP Scheduled Public Seminars – check the events calendar to see when seminars are being held
PDP Webcasts – online seminars/courses
CFOdirect – contains both webcasts as well as on-demand CPE programs (focused on CFO related topics)

Learn more about PwC’s continuing professional education on their website.

#3 Deloitte

Deloitte has generated a very useful landing page with a long list of webinars that are potentially eligible for free CPE credits. Deloitte refers to these webcasts as Dbriefs and has a long list of upcoming ones.

Examples of topics include:

Special Editions
China Issues
Financial Executives
HR Executives
Tax Executives
Industries
Private Companies

Learn about PwC’s CPE offering on their website.

#4 EY

Ernst and Young (EY) has built out a significant database of webcasts that are potentially eligible for free CPE credits. These webcasts can be found on their website at:

Webcast topics include:

Service Lines – accounting, tax, and transactions
Industries – auto, banking, consumer, insurance, media, mining, oil and gas, etc.
Other Topics – Affordable Care Act, CFO agenda, emerging markets, and others

View EY’s webcasts and learn more on their website.

#5 AICPA

The American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) has a platform with more 350+ self-study classes to stay current and enhance your technical skills. AICPA’s courses were developed by experts across the United States and cover a wide range of subjects. If you’re looking for another source of high quality continuing professional education.

While most of their courses need to be purchased, there is actually a way to get some free CPE. On the left navigation of this CPE page, click on the link that says “Test New Self-Study Courses” and you can earn some credits for free!

More Free CPE Resources

Continuing professional education is an important requirement for ensuring current professional skills. Accountants are a trusted advisory resource for individuals, businesses, institutions, and governments, and being up-to-date on the most recent best-practices is important.

In addition to the above 4 sources of free CPE, it is highly recommended you check with NASBA directly for other sources and options to meet your credit requirements.

Additional Information

Thank you for reading CFI’s guide to free CPE courses. CFI is the official global provider of the Financial Modeling & Valuation Analyst (FMVA)™ certification, designed to transform anyone into a world-class financial analyst. To continue advancing your career, these additional resources will be helpful: