Real Python is, in my honest opinion, one of the best things that has happened to people trying to learn Python properly, and while it is not an AI course in the narrow sense, the quality of its teaching makes it one of the most valuable foundations you can build before and during any serious machine learning study. What sets it apart is the care that goes into each tutorial, because these are not the thin, keyword stuffed articles that clog up search results, they are thorough, well edited pieces that take the time to explain why something works the way it does, walk through realistic examples, and anticipate the confusions a learner will actually hit. A great deal of this is free, and the free tutorials alone would make the site worth bookmarking, but the depth extends well into the territory that matters for AI, with strong material on NumPy, pandas, data visualisation, and practical machine learning workflows that bridges the gap between knowing Python syntax and using it to do real data work. The paid membership adds video courses, structured learning paths, quizzes, and a community, and it turns what could feel like a scattered collection of articles into something with genuine progression, which is worth it once you know you are committed to the journey.
The honest limitations are about scope rather than quality. This is fundamentally a Python resource, so the deeper theory of machine learning, the linear algebra, the calculus, the statistical foundations, has to come from a dedicated course elsewhere, and Real Python is best seen as the thing that makes you fluent enough in the language and its tooling to get the most out of those courses. The volume can also be daunting, and the format rewards people who are comfortable learning by reading and typing rather than passively watching. My recommendation is to treat Real Python as a long term companion rather than a single course, dipping into the free tutorials constantly, upgrading to the membership when you want the structured paths, and letting it quietly raise the ceiling on everything else you study.