Can I Afford a Bootcamp? All About How to Pay, Financial Aid, and More.

Yes, you can afford a bootcamp. There’s our anti-clickbait answer. One word, simple and confident: yes. Now, don’t get us wrong; bootcamps cost money. But there are numerous ways to pay for a coding bootcamp — income share agreements, coding bootcamp loans, or even paying for it up front, just to name a few. 

If you are dedicated to upgrading your career, you and the institution you choose can work together to find a way to get you the education you crave at a reasonable price.

So let’s dig into that. Here’s how to pay for a coding bootcamp and why it’s absolutely worth your money.

Can you afford not to join a bootcamp?

Usually, this section would come last. A typical article about financial aid for coding bootcamps would start out presenting all the dry data. Credit scores, loan options, and more would dominate the discussion. And we’ll get to a full explanation about financial aid and all that later, don’t worry.

But we want to start out by reminding you that an investment in a bootcamp is unlike any other you’ll make. In fact, affordability is a time-sensitive metric. Based on data from our Outcomes Report, not joining a bootcamp is actually the less affordable option if we consider the earning potential over time. 

Here’s what we mean — take a look at this info on our Software Engineering Bootcamp grads.

Our Software Engineering grads came to us earning a median salary of $46,000, so we set that as the baseline for both the career switcher and the person staying put. 

But in the first year following the pivot, the person switching sees their earnings skyrocket by $29,000 when they begin a new career in tech. In contrast, we estimated that the non-switcher would only increase their earnings by 3%, the average yearly raise.

Ah, but you caught us: we didn’t include the cost of the bootcamp itself in the stats. Let’s account for that. After all, the bootcamp isn’t free.

This assumes that the person who enrolled chose the most expensive way to pay for the bootcamp: in installments. And still, after subtracting the investment from the rewards, the switcher ended up increasing their earnings by $17,000. What does that mean? Well, in a certain way, by not making the change, you could be paying to stay where you are.

And over time? The choice to stay where you are might really start costing you. To illustrate this, let’s give the person choosing to stay put the best chance of competing. 

We’ll say that they change jobs every three years, earning a 20% increase with each new position. We’ll also give them a boost and say they switched jobs for year 0 and earned a 20% raise instead of the average 3% raise we’ve been using above. 

And we’ll leave the year 0 earning potential for the switcher diminished by the bootcamp cost. After all, the bootcamp is an expense incurred only when shifting careers.

For full transparency, we’re using the three-year switching schedule because it provides a good comparison to Glassdoor’s stats on software engineers and their earnings relative to their experience.

So, explanation over. What does this look like?

Even with a 20% raise the first year and every three years thereafter, the person staying where they are doesn’t crack a six-figure salary on our timeline. The person who switched to software engineering? They land six figures within their first three years. And yikes, y’all. The gulf in what that means in terms of total earnings is shocking.

The bars themselves don’t look all that striking until you realize that the difference between them totals to $433,892. Depending on where you are, that’s the price of a house.

This also assumes that you are the average person, which, of course, you aren’t. It doesn’t account for the fact that you could specialize and land a lucrative tech job that might even pay you up to $269,917_{The Top 18 Companies That Pay Software Engineers the Most in 2024}.

See, education is an investment that doesn’t depreciate. The costs that bootcamp students incur at the start of their journey are more than repaid over their career. The financial benefits only magnify.

But we’ll get off our soapbox. There’s a real world out there where things cost real money right now, we know. So let’s get into the actual nuts and bolts and talk about coding bootcamps with deferred tuition, financial aid for coding bootcamp students, monthly payments, interest rates, and more. The future’s promising. It’s just about getting over the first financial hurdle.

How to pay for a coding bootcamp

Just so we’re on the same page, we’re going to be using our Software Engineering program as the example for bootcamp costs. This will give you a sense of what the different payment options look like without overwhelming you with information. If you want more specifics on what different programs cost and the nuances of payment plans, you can find details on our FAQ page. With that out of the way, let’s talk about four common ways of covering bootcamp tuition.

Paying upfront

We’re not surprising anyone by including this, but it deserves mention. Paying upfront is by far the cheapest way to cover your bootcamp tuition — $9,700 for our Software Engineering program. By handling the cost in one lump sum, you can save up to $2,300. In addition, this approach means you won’t have to potentially take on debt, which, depending on your situation, could be difficult or affect your credit score.

Installments

This breaks down the total cost into monthly payments made during your time at a bootcamp. Through TripleTen, you have the option of plans that last from three to ten months. If you choose to go with our lending partner, Mia Share, this schedule can extend to last from 12 to 36 months.

This approach relieves immediate financial pressure, but ends up more expensive in the long run. Returning to our example: for the ten-installment plan through TripleTen, the total cost for the Software Engineering program is $12,000 over ten months. The shorter installment plans would be cheaper than this, but would remain more expensive than paying upfront.

Loans

If you’re familiar with student loans, then you’ll likely have no problem grasping bootcamp loans. The one caveat we’ll add here is that the debt you take on with these loans is far less than the debt you’d assume to cover tuition at a four-year institution. 

For our Software Engineering program, the total cost with loans arranged through Climb or Meritize would be $10,969. Compare that to the average $30,500 of debt people take on for a bachelor’s degree.

So this might be the way to go if your credit is solid and you’re confident in your ability to make monthly payments after graduating.

Income share agreements

If you want to defer tuition payments until you have a higher salary, an income share agreement might be right for you. Basically, in this set up, you pay after you get a job. This shouldn’t be confused with paying by installments or taking out a loan, though. This agreement comes with two core metrics: a fixed percentage of your salary that you agree to pay after landing a job and the period over which you’ll pay.

This means that you’ll spend nothing to gain the education to make a career pivot. In addition, this setup incentivizes bootcamps to ensure their students get jobs, as the school won’t get paid until the students do.

However, the percentage and period can combine to lead to you paying far more than you expected. Often, contracts include caps. For example, they may limit your payments to twice the upfront cost of tuition. Unscrupulous lenders might not have these caps, though. 

This is a fairly complex topic, so we encourage you to read more about it_{Should I use an Income Share Agreement to Fund my Coding Bootcamp?} to see if it’s right for you. As of the writing of this article, TripleTen does not offer an income share agreement.

Honorable mention: Easy Start

Strictly speaking, this isn’t a way of paying for a bootcamp, but it should be mentioned here, as it’s an add-on for all the above cases. Here’s how it works: if you choose to go with Easy Start, you get full access to the bootcamp for two weeks while you figure out the funding strategy that best fits your needs.

This means that arranging your specific payment approach won’t hold you back from launching your career change journey.

What your tuition covers

At a bootcamp, students pay for much, much more than just professional education. Yes, gaining programming chops is key to the experience. But there’s so much more included, too. For example, rather than just giving students know-how in hard skills such as coding, good bootcamps include training in soft skills as well. 

After all, as shown by our employer report that surveyed over 1,000 decision makers, 68% of respondents said that hard skills were paramount for an applicant’s success. Just behind that, 65% said soft skills were also crucial.

So we teach both. In our Software Engineering Bootcamp, industry experts teach in-demand skills in JavaScript_{Why Learning JavaScript Will Ensure You Stay In Demand For Years to Come}, for example. Then we structure learning to simulate the environment of working in tech, which, by design, allows students to acquire soft skills such as communication, teamwork, and problem solving.

It doesn’t stop there, though. This investment can even get you your first experience in tech via externships_{Why Externships Are Great for Your Portfolio}. These are work placement opportunities that you can apply for as your time with the bootcamp closes. 

Through them, you’ll learn what it’s like to work in tech first-hand, and you’ll lock in the first entry in your tech portfolio. (Protip: According to our employer survey, a strong portfolio is something that goes a long way in convincing employers you’re a good hire.)

And frankly, they’re just cool. Our students made the landing page_{Externship with TripleTen: Arqlite} for a company tackling the problem of unrecyclable plastic. They also crafted a site for a company building industrial robotics, and they helped construct an algorithm_{Externship with TripleTen: Allcorrect Games} to help a video game localization company predict what games to translate next.

A get-hired guarantee

There’s one last thing to mention as we talk about if you can afford a bootcamp: our money back guarantee. Good bootcamps offer this as a token of confidence in the services we provide. 

With us, landing a job is the focus. If you finish the bootcamp, follow the advice we give, adhere to a set of guidelines, and don’t find a relevant role within 180 days, we’ll refund the full cost of your bootcamp.

We will note here: 87% of TripleTen grads do land jobs within six months of finishing the program. So your likelihood of needing this guarantee is low. Still, our guarantee means that your investment is safe.

So, can you afford it? The options are either a lucrative career pivot or your money back. That sounds pretty affordable to us.

See if a bootcamp is right for you

If you want to make sure that a bootcamp will be the best way for you to gain new tech skills to make a career change, we’ve got just the thing for you. Discover if a bootcamp is right for you by taking our self-assessment quiz.