Free interactive course

Learn quantum by playing a spy

Quantum Courier Service is OQS's free course in quantum information. No sign-up, no coding experience, and no physics background required. You're operating your first instrument within ten minutes, and the whole course is 3 hours 41 minutes if you do every mission.

The idea

Lessons told as a story, not a textbook

You play a recruit at a fictional spy agency racing to outsmart a rival network, and each mission teaches you something real about quantum physics along the way.

Every concept comes with an interactive visualisation you run yourself rather than just read about, so ideas that normally take a full lecture start clicking within minutes.

Eight missions

What you'll learn

By the end you'll be able to…

  • Explain why a qubit isn't a coin that's already landed.
  • Work out how many bits survive BB84 sifting, and why roughly half don't.
  • Say what teleportation does and doesn't move, and why it can't beat a phone call.
  • Read a CHSH plot and say why S > 2 matters.
  • Tell a friend why “unhackable” is the wrong word for quantum encryption.

No sign-up, and nothing to install. Notation is defined where it first appears.

Scroll through the missions

00
Mission 00

The Information Problem

How classical information really works, and why a bit can always be copied, read, and quietly stolen.

01
Mission 01

Enter the Quantum World

Qubits and superposition, and why a quantum bit plays by completely different rules.

02
Mission 02

The Art of Quantum Messages

Measurement and bases: how the question you ask a qubit changes the answer you get.

03
Mission 03

The No-Cloning Mystery

The no-cloning theorem, and what it means for keeping a secret truly safe.

04
Mission 04

Entanglement

The "spooky action at a distance" that Einstein spent years trying to argue away.

05
Mission 05

Quantum Key Distribution

How protocols like BB84 use physics itself to catch an eavesdropper red-handed.

06
Mission 06

Quantum Teleportation

How a quantum state can vanish from one place and reappear intact somewhere else, and why it still can’t get there faster than a phone call.

07
Mission 07

Building the Quantum Internet

What it would actually take to link quantum computers together across the globe.

By students, for everyone

Built by OQS

Every mission, visualisation, and quiz here was written and built by OQS members, not a faceless ed-tech company. It runs in any browser, on a laptop or a phone. You're hands-on within the first few minutes, so there's nothing stopping you starting right now.

The society behind it

More from OQS

Quantum Courier Service is just one of the things we do. Here's where to learn more about the society behind it.

No lectures. No prerequisites.
Just you, a mission, and real quantum physics.

Quantum Courier Service · a free course from OQS