Article 4 of the EU AI Act has required AI literacy of every organisation using AI since February 2025, and a training market appeared overnight to serve it. Most of it is fine. What is not fine is the number of providers implying the SLIM subsidy will pay 60% of their invoice. This page compares the formats and prices, and explains what SLIM actually funds.
By Tom Joseph · Last updated: 5 August 2026
Dutch AI training comes in four formats at very different prices: e-learning at roughly €50–€180 per person, open-enrolment day courses at €600–€950 per person, in-company days at €1,500–€3,000 per group per day, and structured multi-week programmes from about €6,500. On subsidy, be careful: SLIM funds learning and development structures — plans, methods, coaching embedded in a change — not standalone commercial courses. It reimburses up to 60% to a maximum of €24,999, and when oversubscribed it is awarded by lottery.
Every firm below was found through public search on the query this page answers, then checked against four criteria. We list what we could verify, and we say so when we could not.
Choosing the format correctly matters more than choosing the provider. Prices are market ranges gathered from Dutch providers' public pages, verified 5 August 2026, excluding VAT.
| Format | Typical price | Good for | Weak for |
|---|---|---|---|
| E-learning / self-paced | €50–€180 per person | Broad baseline literacy across a whole workforce; evidencing Article 4 cheaply | Behaviour change. Completion rates are the known problem |
| Open-enrolment day course | €600–€950 per person | One or two people who need to go deep and bring it back | Teams — the cost scales linearly and the content is generic |
| In-company training day | €1,500–€3,000 per group per day | A whole team, on your own use cases and your own tools | One-off days rarely survive contact with the working week |
| Structured programme (multi-week) | from ~€6,500 (SPAIK AI Fundamentals €6,490, 6 weeks, 10 people) | Genuine adoption; also the only shape that plausibly fits SLIM | Budget and calendar commitment |
This is the part worth reading twice, because getting it wrong costs you an application round.
SLIM does not simply reimburse 60% of a training invoice. The scheme funds the structures that make learning possible in an SME: training and development plans, career and development advice, and the development or introduction of learning methods. Ordinary courses and standalone commercial workshops fall outside it. AI training can qualify — but as coaching or training-on-the-job that is an integral part of introducing a method, inside a broader development plan. Not as a course you bought.
The mechanics, for individual SMEs in 2026:
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Reimbursement | 60% of eligible costs |
| Maximum | €24,999 per application (€20,000 for agricultural businesses) |
| Minimum | the application must cover at least €5,000 of eligible costs |
| Window (tijdvak 2, individual SMEs) | 19 August 2026, 09:00 — 7 September 2026, 17:00 |
| Allocation | By lottery if applications exceed budget — the date you apply does not matter |
| Budget for this window | approximately €6 million |
"Apply on 10 August." That date was announced and then corrected. The second window for individual SMEs opens 19 August 2026. Several provider pages and news items still carry the old date.
"Apply early to be sure of funding." There is no advantage to applying at 09:01 on the opening day. If the round is oversubscribed, awards are drawn by lottery, and the receipt date is explicitly irrelevant. Any provider urging you to hurry for that reason either has not read the scheme or is using it as a closing technique.
We are not subsidy advisors and this is not subsidy advice — check the official source before you apply, and see our free subsidiecheck for which schemes stack for your province.
Alphabetical, not ranked. This market has a long tail and changes fast; these are providers with a visible, current Dutch offer as of the verification date.
| Provider | Format focus | Note |
|---|---|---|
| AI Business Academy | In-company training | Publishes guidance on choosing and costing in-company AI training |
| Academie Nederland | Practical team training | Organisation- and team-oriented programmes |
| CleverAI | AI literacy training | Publishes on funding routes for literacy training |
| Crux Digits | Structured AI-literacy programme, €12,500 | Built around Article 4 evidence; we are an implementation firm that also trains, not a training institute |
| HAS green academy | Accredited professional programme | An educational institution — relevant if recognised-programme status matters to your SLIM case |
| Hiper Academy | Open AI training | General AI application training |
| SPAIK | AI Fundamentals €6,490 — 6 weeks, 10 people | Adoption-led; publishes price, duration and group size, which is rare |
| Teacher4AI | AI schooling positioned around SLIM | Explicitly frames its AI training as part of a broader learning plan |
| Wyzer | AI-literacy course | Catalogue-style academy offer |
The failure mode in this market is not buying bad training. It is buying good training that nobody applies.
Disclosure: Crux Digits is one of the firms on this page. We built the list, so treat our own entry with the scepticism that deserves — and check the others' sites yourself. There are no affiliate links, no paid placements and no reciprocal-listing deals anywhere on this page. The order is alphabetical, not a ranking.
Crux Digits sells a €12,500 AI-literacy programme, so we compete with several names above. We are an implementation firm that trains around its own builds — if you want a pure training institute with an accredited catalogue, providers like HAS green academy are a better structural fit than we are, and if you mainly need cheap broad coverage, e-learning at €50–€180 a head will beat both of us on cost per person.
We build the systems people are being trained on, so the training runs on your real tools. Twenty minutes, no deck.
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