Is a Video Course Enough to Pass the CCNA in 2026?

A good video course will teach you roughly 80 percent of what you need to pass the Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) exam. Neil Anderson’s course and Jeremy’s IT Lab both cover the full 200-301 blueprint, and either one can carry you through the learning phase on its own. The missing 20 percent is exam readiness, and that gap is where most first attempts go wrong.

I review CCNA training programs for a living, and this question lands in my inbox in two specific forms: is Neil Anderson enough, and is Jeremy’s IT Lab enough. The honest answer is the same for both, with one difference worth understanding before you build your study plan around either course.

Is Neil Anderson’s CCNA Course Enough to Pass?

Neil Anderson’s course is enough to learn the material, but most candidates who pass on the first attempt add practice exams on top of it. His Udemy course runs about 43 hours across 326 lectures, was updated for the 200-301 v1.1 blueprint as recently as June 2026, and includes follow-along labs and Anki flashcards. As a teaching product, it holds up. I went into the details in my full Neil Anderson review, and my conclusion hasn’t changed.

What the course doesn’t do is simulate the exam. The built-in labs are designed for following along with a demonstration, which builds familiarity rather than the troubleshooting reflexes Cisco tests under time pressure. Neil tells you what you need to know. Whether you can retrieve it cold, in a randomized order, with a clock running, is a separate skill the course never measures.

Is Jeremy’s IT Lab Enough to Pass the CCNA?

Jeremy’s IT Lab gets you closer than any other free resource, and it still isn’t quite enough by itself for most people. The complete course is free on YouTube, with Packet Tracer labs and an Anki flashcard deck for every lecture, and Jeremy goes deeper on theory than most paid competitors. Depth was never the problem. I covered the catch in my Jeremy’s IT Lab review, and it applies directly here.

The quizzes attached to each video test you on what you just watched. That feels productive, and it is, but it measures recognition, not recall. On exam day nobody tells you which video the question came from. Candidates finish all of Jeremy’s content, feel ready, then sit a full-length practice exam and score in the 60s. That score isn’t a verdict on Jeremy. It’s the normal gap between knowing material and performing it, and you want to discover that gap at home rather than at a testing center.

Should You Choose Neil Anderson or Jeremy’s IT Lab?

Pick Jeremy’s IT Lab if you want depth and a price of zero. Pick Neil Anderson if you want a structured platform with progress tracking and a faster path through the material. Passing-wise, the choice matters less than people think, because candidates pass with both every month and fail with both every month. The variable is what happens after the course ends.

Read the bottom row again, because that’s the entire point of this article. The two courses differ in price, pacing, and personality, and they share the exact same blind spot. Neither one will ever sit you down for a randomized, timed, 100-question exam and show you a score. Whichever course you pick, the supplement you need is the same.

One pairing I see work well: candidates with some networking background use Neil Anderson for the speed, while complete beginners do better with Jeremy’s slower, more thorough treatment of fundamentals like subnetting. If you’re torn, watch one video from each on the same topic. The teaching styles are different enough that most people know within twenty minutes which one fits.

Why Isn’t a Video Course Alone Enough?

A video course can’t replicate the conditions that make the CCNA hard. Three conditions in particular.

The first is mixed-topic retrieval. Courses teach in tidy modules, so your brain learns OSPF in an OSPF context and answers OSPF questions while still warm from the lesson. The real exam shuffles every domain together and asks roughly 100 questions in 120 minutes with no going back. Pulling the right fact out of a pile of unrelated questions is a trained skill, and watching videos doesn’t train it.

Question wording is another. Cisco writes distractors that are plausible to anyone with partial knowledge. Course quizzes rarely do, because their job is reinforcement, not discrimination.

Then there’s pacing. Until you’ve worked through a timed, full-length exam, you have no idea whether you’re a 90-minute finisher or someone who runs out of clock with 15 questions left. Both types pass, but only if they know which one they are beforehand.

What Should You Add to a Video Course?

Add full-length practice exams, and add them earlier than feels comfortable. The study stack I recommend hasn’t changed: a video course to learn the material, the Official Cert Guide for deeper reading on the topics that won’t stick, and Boson ExSim to build the exam-ready thinking the test actually measures. Boson’s exams run harder than the real thing, which is exactly what you want from a diagnostic. A first score in the 60s after finishing your course is typical, and the climb from there tells you when you’re ready to schedule.

If budget is the constraint, the order of operations matters. Jeremy’s course is free, Packet Tracer is free, and the Anki decks are free, so a candidate can get through the entire learning phase without spending anything. Save the money for the practice exams instead of a second video course. Two courses teach you the same material twice. A practice exam tells you something neither course can: whether you’d pass today. I ranked the options in my practice exam rankings if you want the full comparison.

And give the readiness phase real time on the calendar. Most people need three to six months total, and the last three to four weeks of that should belong to practice exams and targeted review, not new lectures.

How Do You Know When You’re Ready to Schedule the Exam?

You’re ready when you can score 85 percent or higher on a full-length practice exam you haven’t seen before, under timed conditions, with no notes. Finishing your video course is not a readiness signal. It’s a milestone in the middle of the plan, usually somewhere around the two-thirds mark of the total timeline.

A few secondary signals worth checking before you pay Cisco. Your domain scores should be reasonably level, because an 85 average built on a 95 in routing and a 55 in security fundamentals is a riskier position than the average suggests. You should be finishing timed exams with at least 10 to 15 minutes to spare, since the real exam doesn’t let you return to skipped questions and pacing mistakes are unrecoverable. And your scores should be holding across two or three different practice exams rather than one exam you’ve retaken until you memorized it.

If you finish Neil’s or Jeremy’s course and your first practice exam comes back at 62, nothing went wrong. That number is the starting line of the readiness phase, not evidence the course failed you. Most candidates need two to four weeks of practice exams and targeted review to close the gap, which is why that time belongs on the calendar from the start.

The Bottom Line

Neil Anderson and Jeremy’s IT Lab are both complete, current, and good enough to be your only course in 2026. Neither one is a complete exam prep plan. Treat the video course as the engine and practice exams as the gauge, and the “is it enough” question answers itself in your score reports a few weeks before you ever sit the real thing.

Regina Martinelli

Network Engineer | CCNA | CCNP Enterprise

Regina Martinelli is a CCNP-certified network engineer who covers IT training programs, certification paths, and Cisco industry news. She started writing about the CCNA from the inside as a candidate, and that ground-level perspective still shapes how she evaluates training resources and helps others navigate the path she has already walked.