What an AI trainer costs per day in Italy, and what drives the rate_

Why do quotes for the same course differ so much?

Because it’s rarely the same course. The title matches, «Copilot for the office» or «generative AI for marketing», but the quotes cover different things, and the day in the room is only the part you can see.

A low quote is often a ready-made course, the same for every client, delivered remotely, with the slides as the only material. A high one often includes days of preparation on your processes, exercises built on your own files, travel, material the company keeps, and a check-in a few weeks later.

Both can be fair, for different needs. Trouble starts when you compare them as if they were the same thing: you pick the cheaper one and find out at the end that what you needed was never in it.

To compare them, ask both trainers for the same list of items. The sections below take one item each.

How much does preparation weigh, and when is it worth paying for?

It usually explains the biggest gap between two quotes, and it’s the item you see least.

▸ An off-the-shelf course is delivered as it is: the design work was done once and is spread across every company that buys it.

▸ A course built for you starts with a few hours alongside the people who know the processes: which tasks repeat, which documents can come into the room, what must never be uploaded. That produces exercises on your proposals, your minutes and your email, and all of it happens before the first session.

It’s worth paying for when you want people to change one specific way of working. If the goal is a first contact with the tool for a very mixed group, a well-made off-the-shelf course can be enough.

Two questions to ask about preparation. Who produces the slides, exercises and saved prompts, and who keeps them afterwards? Put it in writing before you start. And how many runs are planned? Design is paid once, so from the second run on the day rate should drop, and a quote for several runs should show it.

On site or remote, and in which language?

On site, travel, meals and sometimes a hotel come on top of the training. There’s a less visible cost too: a trainer who travels to you is booked for the whole day even when the session lasts four hours, so on-site quotes tend to think in days.

Remote removes travel and lets you split the hours, for example into two-hour sessions a week apart. There’s a separate guide on how to split the hours; here one point matters. Many short on-site sessions multiply the trips, and the bill grows while the hours in the room stay the same.

Language is the last factor. A course in English, or a room where people work in different languages, needs material in two versions and a trainer who can take questions in both. I deliver in English and Italian, remotely from Milan on Central European Time and in person when the course needs it. With a mixed group, decide the language before the course is designed, because it changes the examples and the pace of the day.

Are the licences included in the quote?

Almost never. The company buys the tool licences from the vendor, and the trainer works with whatever the company has. It’s worth settling early, because it decides what can happen in the room.

With Copilot the difference is concrete. Microsoft includes Copilot Chat with eligible Microsoft 365 licences, with no separate Copilot licence; Microsoft Copilot, the version that reasons across email, meetings and documents throughout the organisation, needs an add-on licence. A course designed for people with the full licence, run for a group that only has Copilot Chat, shows features nobody can find the next morning.

So before the quote, find out who in the room has which licence. If it’s mixed, the programme has to work for both situations, and that’s preparation too.

Sources: Microsoft Learn, overview of Microsoft Copilot Chat: included with eligible Microsoft 365 licences, no Microsoft Copilot licence required; the add-on licence extends grounding across organisational data ↗ (read on 11/10/2026)

Hiring the trainer directly or through a training provider?

When you buy through a training provider, the price includes the provider’s own work: finding the trainer, coordination, sometimes the venue, attendance records and invoicing. That’s real work, and a company with nobody to spare for it is glad to pay for it.

When you hire the trainer directly, someone on your side does that work: fixing dates, booking rooms, collecting attendance. For one short course it’s a small job; for a programme with several runs across several sites it becomes a job of its own.

I work both ways: directly with companies, and as a contract trainer for training providers in Italy and abroad. If you’re a provider placing an instructor in Italy, the same list of items applies, and agreeing who keeps the material matters even more.

What should you ask a trainer before asking for a quote?

Ask everyone the same questions and the quotes become comparable.

▸ How many hours in the room, in how many sessions, how far apart.

▸ How much preparation is included, and on which of the company’s materials.

▸ Who produces the slides, exercises and saved prompts, and who keeps them.

▸ On site or remote, and what the travel line covers.

▸ Which language, and whether the materials come in one language or two.

▸ What happens after the last session: a check-in, a channel for questions, or nothing.

▸ The price of each run after the first.

I give my rate on a call, for the case in front of me. The same number of hours costs differently depending on how much of your own material goes into it and how many runs are planned; quoting before I know that would make me wrong one way or the other.