Free RBT Training and Free ABA Resources: What's Actually Free

“Free” is the most-abused word in ABA training. Free courses that carry no CEUs, “free” CEU posts from 2020 that quietly expired, free-to-attend-pay-to-certify webinars — the free-CEUs guide documents all of it. This page is the wider map: what’s actually free for practices and practitioners, every claim read on the provider’s own site, with the catch stated.

The headline: free 40-hour RBT training

The Autism Partnership Foundation — a nonprofit — offers its 40-hour RBT training free, listed as exactly that on its own site (confirmed 13 August 2026), with reported reach of over 530,000 learners. For a practice, that’s the answer to a real budget line: technician onboarding at any scale without a per-seat training cost. For an individual, it’s the first requirement of RBT certification with the price removed.

The honest boundaries: the 40-hour training is one step, not the credential. The competency assessment (conducted by a qualified assessor), the background check, the BACB application fee, and the exam fee are separate — free training doesn’t make certification free, it makes the largest time-component of it free. And practices using any 40-hour training should verify it currently meets the BACB’s training outline; the requirements change on the BACB’s schedule, not the provider’s.

Behavior University also documents RBT training among its offerings — paid, with its free CEU webinars being the genuinely-free layer of its catalog.

Free CEUs: the short version

The full guide tracks every verified source with dates; the compressed map:

Actually free	The catch
Behavior University live webinars (incl. ethics & supervision)	Seats capped; past webinars convert to paid products
Full Spectrum ABA app (~28 courses)	Signup required; some credits are 0.5
Behavior Analyst CE (2 CEU-bearing courses, one = 3 supervision credits)	Same page lists free courses with NO CEUs — read carefully
APF free courses (4, learning-type)	Ethics/supervision versions are $13
CASP CEU Center (100+ CEUs incl. 8-hour supervision training)	Members’ employees only

The scarce credits are ethics and supervision — plan those seven first. And the legitimacy check that almost nobody makes possible: the credit only counts from a BACB-authorized ACE provider, and of ~15 providers we examined, exactly one published its ACE number on its own site. When in doubt, check the BACB’s provider listing, not the marketing page.

Free data and reference — the layer nobody budgets for

A working practice leans on reference material that’s free because it’s public — or because someone compiled it and kept it free:

• What Medicaid actually pays — per-code ABA rates for every state, from official fee schedules, with effective dates. The negotiation and market-planning number vendors and consultants charge for, free.
• The workforce numbers — BCBA and RBT supply by state, ratios, growth; BACB data compiled and readable.
• The software pricing census — which vendors publish rates (nine, as of 13 August 2026) and the contract clauses that matter when they don’t.
• The BACB’s own documents — the ethics code, handbooks, and supervision requirements: primary sources, free, and more current than any summary of them (including ours — we date everything for exactly that reason).
• State fee schedules and payer manuals — free, authoritative, and the basis for every billing decision; linked per state from the rates dataset.

What we deliberately don’t count

Free trials. A 30-day trial of paid software is a sales process, not a resource — useful (we note trials on profiles where vendors publish them), but it belongs in a buying decision, not a list of free things. Free-with-your-email lead magnets from vendors get the same treatment: sometimes worth it, never “free” in the sense this page means. “Free” webinars where the certificate costs money — that’s the cheap-not-free category, and the CEU guide prices it honestly ($9–$21 gets you far).

Every claim above traces to the provider’s own site as dated here or in the linked guides (free-CEU sources last swept 6 August 2026; APF’s free 40-hour training confirmed 13 August 2026). Something expired or went paid? Tell us and we correct on the record: [email protected].