The rising cost of learning resources creates obstacles to accessi- bility in higher education, particularly for students pursuing Com- puter Science. With the increasing availability and quality of open educational resources (OER), they gained popularity as potential replacements for traditional paid materials. This study evaluates the effectiveness of an OER interactive textbook and a paid interactive textbook used in undergraduate computing courses. It focuses on students’ perceived educational value of each, aiming to provide ed- ucators with insights that support informed decisions about course resources. We surveyed undergraduate students at a research-first US university who had taken an “Intro to Programming” course with a free textbook and an “Intro to Data Structures” course with a paid textbook to compare their effectiveness. The collected data was analyzed to evaluate the comparative impact of free and paid resources. Our findings suggest that the OER interactive textbook examined in this study can offer educational value comparable to or greater than the paid alternative. While the paid resource was seen as more polished, students appreciated the free textbook’s interactivity and course-specific customization, highlighting the importance of utility and engagement in learning resources. Al- though limited to the textbooks studied, our findings highlight the potential for OER to serve as a viable option in undergraduate computing courses. This insight may encourage instructors to con- sider OER as a cost-effective alternative that enhances accessibility without compromising educational quality.