Last verified: July 2026, checked inside every live Sophia course. Updated because the 2024 version of this page had gone badly out of date — details below.
If you’re using Sophia Learning to knock out college credits, there’s one course feature that quietly decides how fast you finish and how much you pay: the Touchstone.
Here’s what most students learn the hard way. A Touchstone that gets graded by a human doesn’t just add work — it adds waiting. Each graded submission typically sits in a grading queue for about 4 business days. You can’t certify the course until it’s back. And while you wait, your $99/month Sophia subscription keeps running.
Do the math on a touchstone-heavy course: English Composition II carries 7 graded Touchstones. That’s roughly four weeks of pure waiting built into one course — waiting you pay for.
Which is why courses with zero graded Touchstones are the speed lane of the Sophia catalog. No grader, no queue, no dead days. You start when you want, finish when you’re done, and certify the moment you pass.
Sophia changed 12+ courses since 2024 — most free lists haven’t caught up. The live index re-verifies all 82 courses every month.
Show me the current rankings →
Verified July 2026 · all 82 courses ranked by real speed · $9.99 one-time, 90 days of access
What Almost Every Free List Gets Wrong
Before the list — one correction that changes everything, including the older version of this very article.
Most lists answer the question “does this course have Touchstones?” That’s the wrong question. The right one: “how many Touchstones are actually graded?”
Sophia courses often list several Touchstone steps — drafts, outlines, practice submissions — that all build toward onegraded submission. A course can show “6 Touchstones” on its syllabus and cost you only one grading wait. Another can show “2” and both are graded essays. Counting the listed number, the way the free wikis do, gets courses wrong in both directions.
Everything below is based on graded Touchstones, verified by opening every course this month — not by copying an old list.
A Preview: Verified No-Touchstone Courses (July 2026)
There are currently 23 courses on Sophia with zero graded Touchstones — more than a quarter of the whole catalog. Here’s a taste across categories:
- Financial Accounting — yes, really. Old lists still say it has Touchstones; it currently has none, making it one of the fastest 3-credit business courses on the platform.
- Macroeconomics and Microeconomics — both Touchstone-free, both light on challenges.
- Anatomy & Physiology I and II — the lecture courses dropped to zero (the labs still have graded work; don’t confuse them).
- Introduction to Physics — a brand-new course most lists haven’t even audited yet. Zero Touchstones.
- The Essentials of Managing Conflict and Developing Effective Teams — the smallest courses in the catalog, finishable in days.
- College Algebra and the other math courses — the entire math category is currently Touchstone-free (though read the caution below before celebrating).
That’s 10 of the 23. The complete verified list — all 23, plus which of them is actually fastest — lives inside CreditSprint, our ranked index of all 82 Sophia courses, re-verified every month. More on why the full ranking matters in a moment.
Why “No Touchstones” Isn’t the Whole Answer
Here’s the trap in planning purely from a no-touchstone list: zero Touchstones is not the same as fast.
College Algebra has no Touchstones — and around 65 hours of calculation-heavy work, one of the biggest time sinks on the platform. Meanwhile, several courses with a single graded Touchstone finish faster than half the no-touchstone list, because the underlying course is small. One 4-day wait on a 20-hour course beats zero waits on a 65-hour grind.
So the real planning question is never “which courses avoid Touchstones?” It’s: “For the specific courses MY school requires, what’s the fastest combination and order?” Answering that needs three numbers per course — the graded-Touchstone count, the wait days, and the realistic work hours — across the whole catalog, kept current.
That’s exactly what CreditSprint was built for: every course scored for speed and difficulty, the hidden grading-wait shown per course, and a plan estimator where you tick your required courses and see total days, subscription months, and dollars before you pay Sophia for a single month. It’s $9.99 for 90 days at the moment — the price of a tenth of one Sophia billing cycle.
Which of those 23 is actually the fastest?
A no-touchstone list tells you where the waiting isn’t. It doesn’t tell you which courses finish in 2 days versus 16, what the touchstone courses on your required list really cost you, or how many $99 subscription months your plan needs. CreditSprint ranks all 82 Sophia courses by verified speed and difficulty, shows the hidden grading-wait days per course, and estimates your total days, months and cost before you pay Sophia a cent.
Show me the full ranked index →
$9.99 one-time · 90 days of access · re-verified monthly · see the 5 fastest courses free before you buy
The Two-Course Trick That Makes Touchstones (Almost) Free
One more strategy worth knowing, because it changes how you use any list: Sophia lets you take two courses at the same time.
The smart pairing: one touchstone course + one no-touchstone course. Submit your Touchstone, and instead of losing 4 days to the grading queue, you grind the no-touchstone course while you wait. When the grade comes back, switch back. Played well, the grading wait costs you nothing.
The bad version: two touchstone-heavy courses at once — now you’re stuck waiting on two queues. This is where course order matters as much as course choice, and it’s the kind of sequencing the CreditSprint plan estimator is designed to work out for your exact list.
Why This Page Needed a Rewrite (And Old Lists Need Retiring)
The 2024 version of this article — like most lists still ranking on Google — had gone wrong in more than a dozen places. Since then, Sophia has quietly:
- Added graded Touchstones to courses old lists call “touchstone-free”: Art History I & II, Introduction to Ethics, Introduction to Information Technology, Introduction to Web Development, Visual Communications, Environmental Science, Health/Fitness/Wellness, Introduction to Business, and Project Management.
- Removed all Touchstones from Financial Accounting and the A&P lecture courses.
- Retired or renamed courses that still appear on old lists.
- Launched new courses — including a Touchstone-free physics option — that most lists haven’t audited at all.
Plan a credit sprint from a stale list and you lose either way: you pick a “safe” course that now stalls you in a grading queue, or you skip what’s quietly become one of the fastest 3-credit options on the platform. Either mistake costs a real subscription month.
That churn is the whole reason CreditSprint re-verifies all 82 courses monthly, with the check date stamped on the index. A list is a snapshot; a plan needs a live picture.
Before you pick your courses
One wrong pick costs a $99 subscription month. The right plan costs $9.99.
CreditSprint ranks every Sophia course by verified speed and difficulty, exposes the grading-wait days hiding in each one, and turns your required course list into a day-by-day, dollar-by-dollar plan. Re-checked every month, so it never goes stale like the free lists.
$9.99 one-time · 90 days of access · 5 fastest courses free before you buy · not affiliated with Sophia Learning