It's not that complicated. "Courses" are canned, one-way training material (comparison: books, lectures) that usually cost nothing. "Labs" are interactive exercises that require spinning up resources for each user (comparison: science labs with chemicals and beakers) so they usually cost something.
Yes, as a Qwiklabs user, you know this. But it is quite hard to decipher if you haven’t used the platform before. I agree with the GP that the current wording poses an unnecessary cognitive burden and should be more clear. Nothing wrong with e.g. “Mainly yes, but you’ll have to spend a few bucks on the hands-on labs”
Even after reading these comments I still don't know if the course is free or not. Either they charge for the labs, or the labs are free but require access to GCP resources. I still don't know which.
Fair point. The non-interactive parts are free. There are very few labs which require the purchase of credits.
The labs are plug & play with all required resources provided (and deleted afterwards), so you don’t need an own GCP account.
