AI training for staff costs anything from nothing to around £1,500 a person, depending on the format. Short online courses run from free to about £50 per person per course. Public workshops cost about £350 to £600 plus VAT per person for a day, and certificated courses with an exam about £600 to £1,500. For most UK employers, the best value start is a short course on safe use for everyone, then paid skills training for the people who use AI most.
The market prices below are those UK providers published in November 2026.
What does AI training for staff cost in the UK?
The format drives the price far more than the provider does.
| Format | Typical published price | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Free government courses | Free | Basic AI skills for anyone |
| Short online courses | About £20 to £25 plus VAT per person per course, often under £10 at volume | Safe use and core skills for everyone |
| Public workshops, live online or in a classroom | About £350 to £600 plus VAT per person for a day | A few people who need hands-on practice |
| In-house workshops | About £1,800 to £3,500 plus VAT per session, for 10 to 15 people | A leadership team or one department |
| Certificated courses with an exam | About £600 to £1,500 per person | Specialists who want a formal exam |
| Organisation wide programmes | Quoted for your organisation | Everyone, with reporting for managers |
The free option is real: since January 2026, every adult in the UK can take free AI courses on the government’s AI Skills Hub, some under 20 minutes long (GOV.UK).
Two costs never appear in a price list. One is staff time: if an hour of someone’s time costs you £30, a 20 minute course uses £10 of it and a one day workshop more than £200, before any fee. The other is fit. Generic courses cannot teach your own rules and approved tools, so plan a short conversation in each team to cover them.
Who in your organisation needs which AI training?
In June 2026, only 11% of UK businesses with 10 or more employees told the ONS that more than half their workforce had received AI-related training (ONS). Match the training to how much each group uses AI and what could go wrong in their role.
| Who | What they need | A good place to start |
|---|---|---|
| Everyone | What AI gets wrong, what must never go into it, how to check an answer | AI at Work: The Essentials |
| Anyone handling customer or personal data | Shadow AI, confidential data and UK GDPR | AI Safety and Data Protection |
| People who use AI most days | Prompting, writing and the tool you pay for | Prompting That Works, Writing with AI and the course for their tool |
| Managers | Expectations, quality checks, fair decisions about people | AI for Managers |
| Whoever leads the rollout | Use cases, a pilot, measuring value | AI Champion: Rolling AI Out in Your Organisation |
| HR, finance, sales and other specialist teams | The tasks and risks of their own role | The role course for their team |
| Anyone who approves payments | Voice cloning and fake invoice scams | Spotting Deepfakes and AI Scams |
Where should AI training start?
- Agree your rules: which AI tools are approved and what information must never go into them. If nothing is written down yet, see our guide to writing an AI policy for employees.
- Train everyone on safe use before productivity tips. The biggest risks apply to anyone who opens a chat box, such as customer data pasted into a personal account or an invented figure sent to a client. Our free course, AI at Work: The Essentials, covers this in about 20 minutes.
- Build skills for regular users. Prompting and writing are where most people see results quickly.
- Brief your managers, so they can set expectations and check AI assisted work without redoing it.
- Add role and advanced training, such as agents and building assistants, for the people who need it.
To compare courses from any provider, use Skills England’s six AI foundation skills for work as a checklist.
Short online courses, workshops or a full programme?
Short online courses
Best for giving everyone the same safe foundation quickly. They cost the least per person, and people can take them between tasks or on a phone, which suits shift and field staff. Nobody is there to answer questions about your own set-up, so pair them with a team conversation and set a finish date. Check when a course was last updated, too: AI tools change from one week to the next, and a course recorded last year can teach menus that no longer exist.
Workshops
Best for leadership teams and small groups who need to practise on real tasks together, with a trainer to answer the awkward questions. You pay more per person, lose a day of each person’s time and depend on the trainer. Skills also fade if nobody uses them the following week.
A full programme
Best when everyone needs training and you need to see who has done what. A programme gives everyone a required starting point, renews it each year, adds role tracks and gives managers reporting. It needs someone to own it, and it is normally quoted for your organisation.
What our online AI courses cost
Our online store has 24 AI courses for people at work. Each takes about 20 minutes, is interactive, works on a phone, tablet or computer, and ends with a quiz. Pass it and you get a Capytech certificate of completion, and access lasts 12 months. Browse all the AI courses or get every one with All Access.
| Option | What is in it | Price inc VAT (ex VAT) |
|---|---|---|
| AI at Work: The Essentials | The starter course, with a free account and no card | Free |
| Every other single course | Prompting, writing, data safety, Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, the role courses and more | £9 (£7.50) |
| All Access | All 24 courses for 12 months, plus every new course we add | £49 (£40.83), or £29 (£24.17) until 31 January 2027 |
| All Access for a team | The same, for 5 or more people | £39 (£32.50) a person |
Buying for 50 or more people? Contact us and we will quote.
As a worked example, take a hypothetical business of 40 people. All 40 take the free essentials course. The 22 people who use AI most, including the managers and the finance team, get All Access at the team price of £39 each (or the £29 launch price until 31 January 2027). That is £858 including VAT (£715 excluding VAT), about £21 a head across the business, and each of the 22 can take any course for a year. Sending the same 22 people to a one day public workshop at £350 plus VAT each would cost £7,700 plus VAT and a working day each. Workshops still suit a leadership team, but most of your people do not need one.
Always updated
AI changes every week. Don’t worry, so do we. Every course in our store is checked every week against the latest ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Claude and Gemini updates and against the law and guidance. When a button moves, a feature is renamed or a rule changes, we update the course, usually the same week, and each course shows the date it was last checked. Every update is included in your 12 months of access, so keeping the training current costs nothing extra in that time.
When the AI Academy is the better fit
For a whole organisation with reporting, look at the Capytech AI Academy. Everyone starts with the AI Licence on safe and secure use, renewed each year. Four stages follow, from Explorer to Champion, with tracks for seven roles, guides to the main AI tools and an IT and security track. Lessons take 5 to 7 minutes, managers see progress and Licence status on a dashboard, and we can turn your own AI policy into a lesson inside the Licence. It is quoted on your headcount and the add-ons you choose.
A rough rule: buy from the store for individuals and small teams, and choose the Academy when everyone needs training, yearly renewal and reporting.
How to roll out AI training
- Pilot with one team that has obvious uses for AI, for two weeks.
- Ask managers to give people 20 minutes in working hours and agree a finish date.
- Hold a 30 minute team conversation afterwards: which tasks you will use AI for, and what stays off limits.
- Fix what the pilot shows, then roll out to everyone and add manager and role courses.
- Refresh once a year, and sooner if your tools or rules change.
How to check the training worked
- Completion and quiz results. Our certificates carry a verification code, so you can confirm any of them.
- A before and after task. Ask a sample of people to summarise a real report and check it, before training and a month later.
- Time saved. Ask each team for two or three tasks where AI now helps, with a rough time estimate.
- Safer habits. Notice whether people ask before using customer data, and whether near misses get reported.
- Use of the tools you pay for. Business versions of the main AI tools usually give administrators usage reports.
Our guide to measuring training success goes further.
Frequently asked questions
Online AI courses cost from nothing to about £50 per person per course. Ours are free or £9 including VAT, and All Access to all 24 courses is £49 (£29 until 31 January 2027). Public workshops cost about £350 to £600 plus VAT per person for a day. Staff time is often the larger cost, so short online courses usually work out cheapest.
Yes. The government’s AI Skills Hub offers free AI courses to every adult in the UK, and our starter course, AI at Work: The Essentials, is free with a learning account. Free courses are generic, so you still need to brief staff on your own rules and approved tools.
No UK law requires it, but UK GDPR applies when staff put personal data into AI tools. If you provide or use AI systems in the EU market, Article 4 of the EU AI Act requires you to take measures to support your staff’s AI literacy. Our guide to AI literacy training explains when that applies.
Each of our online courses takes about 20 minutes, so the four starter courses take about 80 minutes. Public workshops usually last one or two days. The core route through the Capytech AI Academy takes about four hours, in 5 to 7 minute lessons.
Staff who pass the end quiz on our courses get a Capytech certificate of completion with a verification code. It records completion and is not an accredited qualification. For a formal qualification, look at certificated courses with an exam, which cost about £600 to £1,500.
AI changes every week. Don’t worry, so do we. We check every course every week against the latest ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Claude and Gemini updates, against the law and guidance, and for every fact and link. If anything has changed, the course is updated, usually the same week, and the date of the last check is shown on the course page, at checkout and in the learning portal. Updates are part of the 12 months of access, so they cost nothing extra.
Train your whole team to use AI safely
The Capytech AI Academy gives every employee practical, safe AI skills in short lessons, starting with the AI Licence.