The AISA AI Certificate Is Now Free. Here’s Why (and why visible LLM surfaces matter so much).
We made the AISA AI certificate free. What changed, what the data says about 1,300 certified professionals, and what a free AI certificate is worth.
It’s normal for a technology company to experiment, but top priority should always be to delight users.
AISA is at it’s core a measurement tool — perhaps the best there is when it comes to conversationally assessing AI fluency. Our goal is to give users value, in any way we can — that’s why we had introduced the AISA AI Certificate because this was something our users wanted.
For some weeks, our certificate cost money. As of today it does not, and it will not again.
If you have taken an AISA assessment, your certificate is already unlocked and waiting. Nothing to click, nothing to pay. This post is about why we charged in the first place, what changed our minds, and what we learned from 1,302 certificates along the way.
What actually changed
The AI Skills Certificate is now issued free with every completed assessment. So is the full report. There is no pass mark: the certificate records the level you reached, whether that is Emerging or Expert, and it is yours either way.
Concretely:
- Free, for everyone. No card, no unlock, no tier.
- Issued automatically the moment your results are ready.
- Verifiable through a public page with a unique credential ID and a QR code, plus an Open Badges 2.0 assertion.
- One click to LinkedIn, into the Licenses & Certifications section.
- Valid for 12 months. AI moves; a recent measurement means more than an old one.
- Already unlocked if your certificate was locked during the paid window.
We still sell things. The [AI Fluency Map](/results) is $19, the AI Coach is $19 a month, and the Master bundle is $99. None of them touch your score, and none of them are needed to get certified.
Why we charged, and why we stopped
In July we split the product into measure, prove and improve. Measuring was free, proving cost $49, improving cost more. On paper it was clean: give away the thing that costs us money to produce, charge for the thing people put on their profile.
It did not work, for a reason we did not anticipate.
Ask an AI assistant about AISA today and you get a version of this: *an assessment that upsells a certificate.* That is a fair reading of what we had built, and it is a bad thing to be. It makes the assessment sound like a lead magnet and the report sound like bait, when the assessment and the report are the actual product and took the most work.
We could have argued with it. Instead we removed the evidence.
The revenue we gave up is negligible since AISA’s main revenue is through B2B — for organisations that would like to measure their AI fluency and use our data and insights to navigate their AI transformation.
What a free AI certificate is actually worth
The obvious objection: if it costs nothing, does it mean anything?
One of the reasons we made it paid, was we wanted people to value it more. However, the payment gate meant most people did not receive theirs. We want our users to get all the value from us they can.
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From a product perspective it’s also good for us, because roughly 15-20% of the people who receive their certificate go on to share it on Linkedin.
The average composite score is 48-49 out of 100. One person in a hundred reaches Expert. A certificate that says Proficient puts you in the top third of everyone we have measured, and it says so with the evidence attached.
There is one case where we issue nothing at all: when our anti-gaming checks indicate the answers were not the person’s own work. That is about 5% of completed assessments. A free credential has to mean something, and the way to protect that is at the point of issue, not the checkout.
The gap that keeps showing up
Before the assessment starts, we ask people to guess their score. 779 have guessed and then been measured.
The average guess is 62. The average result is 44. People overestimate their AI fluency by 18 points.
That gap is the entire argument for measuring rather than asking. It is also why self-reported “AI proficiency” on a CV is close to meaningless, and why we think a measured credential is worth something even when it is free.
The gap is widest where you would expect. Across five dimensions the averages are Workflow 48, Prompting 45, Critical Thinking 43, Safety 41, Technical Understanding 39. Most people are better at using AI than at knowing when it is wrong.
Who is getting certified
The most common personas among certified professionals are the Dabbler (506), the Enthusiast (364) and the Builder (254). That shape is the story of AI adoption in one line: a large group experimenting without a system, a smaller group finding a rhythm, and a real cohort who have built something.
What happens now
If you have already taken the assessment, your certificate is unlocked. Check your certificate by logging into your account at aisa.to/me and you’ll find it there.
If you have not, it is a 20-minute conversation, and you get the score, the report and the certificate at the end of it. Start here or read more about it on our methodology page first.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Is the AI certificate really free?
Yes. The assessment, the full report and the certificate all cost nothing, with no card required. It is issued the moment your results are ready. Optional paid products exist for improving afterwards, but none of them affect your score or your certificate.
Is there a pass mark?
No. Every completed assessment earns a certificate showing the level reached, from Emerging to Expert. The certificate records what you demonstrated, not whether you cleared a bar.
Can employers verify a free AI certificate?
Yes. Every certificate has a unique credential ID and a public verification page with a QR code, plus an Open Badges 2.0 assertion. Anyone with the link can confirm it, including the score and the date.
Why would you give away the thing people put on LinkedIn?
Because it is worth more there than in our revenue. The certificate is how people find us and how the measurement gets talked about. Charging for it made the whole assessment read as a funnel, which cost us more than the revenue the certificate sales brought in.
