About TrainingCost.com

Why this site exists

Corporate L&D cost data in 2026 is fragmented. ATD publishes the annual State of the Industry headline numbers ($1,054 per employee, 13.7 hours, $165 per hour for the 2025 report covering 2024 data) inside a press release that does not show up at the top of most cost-comparison searches. LinkedIn Learning publishes the Workplace Learning Report annually; Training Magazine publishes the Industry Report annually; McKinsey publishes intermittent L&D cost research; CIPD publishes the Learning at Work survey for the UK; Brandon Hall Group sells most of its segmentation behind a paywall. Vendor LMS pricing is split between platforms that publish (TalentLMS, 360Learning, iSpring, LinkedIn Learning) and platforms that do not (Docebo, Cornerstone, Workday Learning, SAP SuccessFactors Learning) and the quote-based gap is filled by Vendr, G2, Capterra, and educate-me aggregators with materially different methodologies.

On top of that, almost every published cost figure covers direct cost only: content licences, facilitator fees, LMS subscriptions, materials. The indirect cost (employee time off desk at loaded salary, replacement coverage, productivity ramp) is roughly 40 to 60 percent of the true total for most programs and is the single biggest reason L&D budgets are systematically under-quoted to CFOs and boards.

This site collapses that into one place. The home-page calculator computes direct plus indirect using the ATD anchors as defaults and a loaded-salary multiplier you control. The by-type pages publish per-hour and per-employee ranges with each figure traced to the source it came from. The LMS comparison page is split into public-pricing and quote-based vendors with the third-party source clearly labelled. The headline number is the headline, not buried at the bottom of a 3,000-word piece.

Who builds this

TrainingCost.com is built and maintained by Oliver Wakefield-Smith at Digital Signet. Digital Signet runs a portfolio of independent, single-topic cost reference sites covering corporate L&D, HR, hiring, retention, and software-engineering operations. Each site is editorially independent of the vendors, associations, and authorities it cites.

Editorial position

We are not a training vendor, an LMS, a coaching platform, a content library, or a consultancy lead-gen funnel. We are not affiliated with the Association for Talent Development (ATD), the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), Brandon Hall Group, LinkedIn Learning, Workday, Cornerstone OnDemand, Docebo, SAP, TalentLMS, LearnUpon, Sandler, MEDDIC Academy, Challenger, Force Management, Winning by Design, BetterUp, CoachHub, Torch, Vendr, G2, Gartner, Capterra, Harvard Business School, Wharton, the Phillips ROI Institute, Kirkpatrick Partners, the International Coach Federation, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, or any other authority, vendor, association, or training platform named on this site. Brand and authority names appear because they are the real names of the things the prices come from.

We do not run paid placements. No vendor, association, or platform has paid for inclusion. There are no live affiliate links today. If that ever changes, disclosure goes at the top of the page that contains the link, not in a footer.

We surface disagreements among authorities. ATD reports cost-per-employee on direct expenditure only; LinkedIn Learning Workplace Learning Report frames L&D priorities without published per-employee figures; Training Magazine Industry Report uses a different segmentation; McKinsey research uses a third. Where they differ, the page surfaces the spread rather than picking a single point estimate.

What this site covers

Editorial principles

Methodology in brief

The full source list and per-figure verification record lives on the methodology page. In summary: the home calculator and benchmarks page anchor on ATD 2025 State of the Industry. Indirect cost uses the loaded-salary method ((loaded annual salary / 2,080 working hours) x training hours x headcount) with a 30 percent loaded multiplier defended explicitly on the calculator methodology page. By-type pricing aggregates vendor public pricing pages, industry-aggregator surveys, and Vendr / G2 / Capterra quote-based estimates labelled inline. LMS comparison is split into public and quote-based with the source named per figure. eLearning development cost uses Chapman Alliance 2010 anchors with a 2010-to-2026 CPI inflation adjustment of approximately +42 percent. ROI uses Kirkpatrick four-level + Phillips Level 5 with three worked examples on the ROI measurement page.

When sources disagree, the page surfaces the disagreement. When a range is wide (for example, $20 to $80 per delivered hour for compliance training, or $1,054 to $1,283 per employee year over year across the 2024 and 2025 ATD reports), the page explains what drives the spread.