Training costs, 2026

What it really costs to get into a trade

Training centres are good at telling you the fee and vague about the timescale. This page gives you both, plus the bit almost nobody puts in writing: the year or two after the course where you are qualified on paper and still earning improver money.

Three ways in

Pick on the basis of what you can afford to lose, in money and in time. Both count.

Apprenticeship

Nothing3 to 4 years

School leavers, and anyone who can live on an apprentice wage for a few years.

The cheapest and the most respected route by a distance. Your employer and government funding cover the qualifications, you earn while you learn, and you come out the other side with genuine site experience rather than a certificate. The catch is the wage and the wait.

Fast track at a private centre

£5,000 to £11,00015 weeks to 2 years

Career changers with savings and no time to spend three years on apprentice money.

The classroom part genuinely is quick. What the marketing tends to skate over is that the qualification everybody actually wants still requires on site experience you have to go and find yourself, which is where the timescale quietly stretches from months into a couple of years.

Part time at college

£1,500 to £5,0002 to 4 years

Anyone keeping a full time job while they retrain.

Cheapest of the paid routes and the slowest. Evenings and weekends for two years while working full time is harder than it sounds in January. Plenty of people start it and fewer finish it.

Cost and time by trade

Three trades with reliable published figures. All three sit in the top four of the UK for day rate once you are established.

Electrician

£9,700 to £11,200 all inAround 2 years, realistically

What you pay

  • A full Gold Card package runs around £8,849 and covers Level 2, Level 3, the 18th Edition, the 2391 inspection and testing qualification and NVQ assessment.
  • Budget roughly £9,700 to £11,200 once you add the AM2 assessment, your ECS card and a starting set of tools.
  • Fast track packages advertise from about £5,258, but you still buy the 18th Edition at around £439 and the NVQ on top, so the headline number is not the real one.

How long it takes

Full time classroom and workshop is 15 weeks, or 32 weeks part time. The on site NVQ phase then takes roughly 12 months, with a two year window to finish it. Via an apprenticeship instead, 3 to 4 years and no fees.

What it pays after

£360 a day typical once established, £225 to £620 range

Running a business in this trade

Gas engineer

£4,000 to £7,5009 to 18 months

What you pay

  • A new entrant Managed Learning Programme runs £4,000 to £7,500. If you are already in a related trade, an experienced worker MLP is cheaper at £3,000 to £5,500.
  • The initial ACS assessment is charged separately at around £750 plus VAT. Ask any centre directly whether portfolio building and assessments are inside their quoted price, because often they are not.

How long it takes

Classroom is around 15 weeks, or 30 evenings if you are keeping a job on. On site experience under a Gas Safe registered engineer must run a minimum of 18 weeks before you sit the ACS. Registration with Gas Safe follows the assessment.

What it pays after

£420 a day typical, the best paid trade in the UK on day rate

Running a business in this trade

Plumber

£500 to £6,000 plus8 weeks to 4 years

What you pay

  • The widest spread of the three. An introductory course starts around £500. A full fast track package at a private centre runs past £6,000.
  • Most plumbers add gas within a few years, so treat the gas engineer figures above as the second instalment rather than a separate career.

How long it takes

The classroom phase of a fast track route is 8 to 16 weeks. A full pathway to a properly recognised qualification runs 2 to 4 years. Apprentices pay nothing and take the longer road.

What it pays after

£330 a day typical, £215 to £570 range

Running a business in this trade

Does it pay back?

Take the most expensive route on this page. An electrician, trained privately, all in at £11,200 and roughly two years from first day in the classroom to holding the card.

At an established day rate of £360 and 200 billed days, that is £72,000 of turnover in a full year. The training cost is recovered inside the first proper trading year with a very large amount left over. On the raw numbers it is one of the better returns available to somebody without a degree.

The bit that catches people is not the fee, it is the shape of the two years in between. You are paying the course up front, you are earning improver money while you build the on site portfolio, and none of the day rates on this site apply to you yet. Anyone who has committed to it will tell you the same thing: the money is fine, the middle is the hard part.

See what each trade pays

Ten UK trades ranked by what they actually charge per day, with the tickets that lift you to the top of each band.

Best paid trades by day rate

Three things the brochure leaves out

Fast track is a marketing word

The classroom weeks are quick and everything after them is not. The qualification that gets you on a commercial site needs documented on site experience, and no training centre can hand you that. Read any advert offering a career in 15 weeks as offering the first 15 weeks of a career.

You cannot go straight to self employed

You need the on site portfolio, which means working for somebody else first, usually on improver money. Budget for a year or two of earning well below the day rates on this site before you are charging them yourself.

The card is the product, not the course

Nobody on site asks what you paid or where you studied. They ask for the card. Every pound you spend should be traceable to a card, a registration or an assessment, and anything that is not is decoration.

Common questions

How much does it cost to become an electrician in the UK?
Budget £9,700 to £11,200 all in for the private training route. A full Gold Card package runs around £8,849 and covers Level 2, Level 3, the 18th Edition, 2391 and NVQ assessment, with the AM2, your ECS card and tools on top. An apprenticeship costs you nothing at all, because employer and government funding cover the qualifications.
How much does gas engineer training cost?
A new entrant Managed Learning Programme is £4,000 to £7,500. If you already work in a related trade, an experienced worker route runs £3,000 to £5,500. The ACS assessment is charged separately at roughly £750 plus VAT, so always ask whether a quoted price includes assessments and portfolio building.
How long does it take to qualify?
For an electrician, realistically about two years: 15 weeks full time in the classroom, then around 12 months of on site NVQ work. Gas is faster at 9 to 18 months, with a minimum 18 weeks of supervised on site experience before the ACS. Apprenticeships in either take 3 to 4 years but cost nothing and carry more weight on site.
Which trade pays best once you are qualified?
On day rate, commercial gas and heating engineers lead at around £420 a day, ahead of electricians at £360 and air conditioning engineers at £345. Gas also has one of the shorter training routes, which makes it the strongest combination of cost, time and earnings of the three covered here.
Is it worth retraining as a tradesperson in your thirties or forties?
On the numbers, usually yes. Around £10,000 and two years is a large commitment, but a £360 day rate at 200 billed days is £72,000 of turnover, so the training pays for itself inside the first proper year of trading. The honest caveat is the gap in the middle, where you are on improver money building your on site portfolio.
Can I train while keeping my current job?
Yes, and most career changers do. Part time college runs 2 to 4 years on evenings and weekends, and several gas centres run 30 evening sessions over 15 weeks. The hard part is the on site experience, which has to happen during working hours, so at some point most people go part time or take the jump.

Sources

Compiled July 2026. Course fees vary a lot by centre and region, so always confirm what is included before you pay a deposit.

Once you are trading

Best paid trades by day rateWhat to charge for a jobFree day rate calculatorMaking Tax Digital for tradesFree invoice templateCIS deduction tracking

The trade is the easy part

Quoting, invoicing, chasing money and keeping records is what actually catches people out in year one. Traddie handles all of it from your phone, so you can spend the evening somewhere other than a spreadsheet.

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