NASA provides a yearly global MODIS-based land-cover product at 500 m resolution: https://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/dataprod/mod12.php

Landsat derived land-cover is available for CONUS every 5 years (most recent is 2011) at 30 m resolution: https://www.mrlc.gov/nlcd2011.php

Other LC products derived from Landsat exist for other areas, but availability depends on where you're looking.

ALOS was declared dead in orbit in 2011. So the data is not very timely. A derived product appears to exist for Japan, but it incorporates data from other satellites (e.g. Landsat 8) as well: http://www.eorc.jaxa.jp/ALOS/lulc/jlulc_vnm.htm

By Copernicus, are you referring to Sentinel 2A/2B? 2A has been collecting very good spatial resolution data (10 m for most bands) for just about 2 years, and 2B just started several months ago. There are no large-scale derived land-cover products based on those yet. That would be a situation where you would likely need to do a classification on the imagery.

As to spatial resolution, 'better' depends on your needs and the size of your study area. For example, 10 m, or even 30 m, data can be challenging to work with at large scales. On the other hand, coarse resolution (e.g. MODIS) data would not be sufficient for tasks such as hydrologic modeling in small or meso-scale watersheds.

http://gisgeography.com/free-satellite-imagery-data-list/

For Europe, you can find LC maps from the CORINE project

http://land.copernicus.eu/pan-european/corine-land-cover

Regards