Are free online safety courses worth anything?
As awareness training, often yes. As evidence, usually not — and the difference is the whole point.
There is nothing wrong with free safety training. Plenty of it is well made, and something is meaningfully better than nothing if the alternative is an induction that never happens.
The problem is what it is worth afterwards. Training has two jobs: making somebody safer, and being able to show that you made them safer. Free courses are often decent at the first and useless at the second, because they carry no awarding body, no assessment worth the name, and no certificate anybody can verify.
A quick test. If the course does not tell you which body stands behind it and which regulations it is written against, assume an inspector will treat it as if it did not happen. If the certificate has no code that can be checked independently, assume the same. That is not cynicism about the content; it is how evidence works.
Use free training as an introduction, or as a refresher between formal renewals. Do not use it as the thing you point at when somebody asks whether your workforce is trained.