Hi @ShyamalaT,
As @Advika and @szymon_dybczak mentioned, the hands-on labs that accompany Databricks Academy courses do require either an Instructor-Led Training (ILT) enrollment or a Databricks Academy Labs subscription. Here is a quick summary of your options:
OPTION 1: INSTRUCTOR-LED TRAINING (ILT)
When you enroll in an instructor-led course, you get 7 days of lab access included. This is a good choice if you prefer structured, guided learning with an instructor. You can browse available ILT courses at:
https://www.databricks.com/learn/training
OPTION 2: DATABRICKS ACADEMY LABS SUBSCRIPTION
This is a yearly subscription that gives you access to multiple self-paced courses and their associated labs for one full year. You can find this option inside Databricks Academy under Subscription Plans:
https://customer-academy.databricks.com/learn
FREE ALTERNATIVES TO GET STARTED
If you are looking to explore Databricks without a paid subscription, there are several free options:
1. Databricks Free Edition: You can sign up for a free Databricks workspace with no credit card required. This gives you a real environment to practice in with sample datasets and notebooks:
https://signup.databricks.com/
2. Databricks Academy Free Courses: Many self-paced courses on Databricks Academy are free to take (the course content and videos are free, it is just the hands-on lab environments that require a subscription). You can still learn a great deal from these:
https://customer-academy.databricks.com/learn
3. Getting Started Tutorials: The Databricks documentation includes hands-on tutorials you can follow along in any Databricks workspace, including the free edition. These cover querying data, building ETL pipelines, machine learning, and more:
https://docs.databricks.com/en/getting-started/index.html
4. Free Customer Training: Databricks offers free training materials including recorded webinars and quarterly product roadmap sessions:
https://docs.databricks.com/en/getting-started/free-training.html
If you are just getting started, I would recommend signing up for the Databricks Free Edition first and working through the getting started tutorials. That will give you real hands-on experience at no cost and help you decide if you want to invest in the full Academy Labs subscription later.
* This reply used an agent system I built to research and draft this response based on the wide set of documentation I have available and previous memory. I personally review the draft for any obvious issues and for monitoring system reliability and update it when I detect any drift, but there is still a small chance that something is inaccurate, especially if you are experimenting with brand new features.
