Your base $500 SkillsFuture Credit no longer expires, which is exactly why most Singaporeans still have not touched it. We read every fee line on the official MySkillsFuture portal on 10 September 2026 and pulled eight courses where the sums actually work: seven of the eight land at $0 payable for a Singapore Citizen once the SSG subsidy and the $500 credit are applied, including the SFA-mandated Food Safety Course Level 1 at NTUC LearningHub ($150 full fee), the Singapore Red Cross CERT First Aider with CPR+AED ($130), BELLS Institute's smartphone photography course ($400, and the highest-reviewed course on this list at 11,537 ratings), and Bettr Barista's SCA Barista Skills Foundation ($448.60), which carries no government subsidy at all and is paid entirely out of credit. The one course your $500 will not swallow whole is Vertical Institute's WSQ GenAI Bootcamp: $1,650 full fee, $643.50 nett for citizens aged 40 and above. Two things to know before you book: the portal's estimated fee is calculated before GST, and the $0 assumes your credit is untouched.
Most people are sitting on $500 they have never spent, because nothing forces them to.
> Quick view: cheapest here is the Red Cross first aid course at $130; seven of the eight work out to $0 payable after subsidy plus credit. The catch: the portal's estimate is calculated before GST.
The most-taken course on this list and the one that opens the most doors. The Singapore Food Agency requires every food handler in an SFA-licensed establishment, retail or non-retail, to hold WSQ Food Safety Course Level 1, so this is the piece of paper behind most hawker, cafe and kitchen jobs. NTUC LearningHub runs it in 7.5 hours, one day. Full fee is $150; the portal applies $75 of SkillsFuture subsidy and $75 of credit, so a Singapore Citizen pays $0. Rating is 5.0 from 13,253 reviews and 25,253 people have attended, both the highest on this list. Eight dates are open, the next on 11 September 2026 at ECM Building, and the course also runs in Chinese. One rule to diarise: your first refresher falls due in the 5th year after you pass, then every 10th year after that.
$150 full fee, $0 payable after $75 SSG subsidy and $75 SkillsFuture Credit
Nine hours, one certificate, and the lowest full fee in this roundup at $130, of which $65 is SSG subsidy and $65 comes off your credit, leaving $0. It covers first aid for common workplace and household emergencies, improvised carries, CPR and AED use, and it is the certificate companies ask for when they need a named first aider or Company Emergency Response Team member on the floor. The Red Cross carries a 5.0 rating from 7,484 ratings with 9,494 attendees, and it is the easiest course here to get into: 56 course runs are listed, with the next on 15 September 2026. Registration for each run closes the day before it starts, so book early rather than walking in.
$130 full fee, $0 payable after $65 SSG subsidy and $65 SkillsFuture Credit
If you want proof that people do spend their credit on skills they enjoy, this is it: 15,555 attendees and 11,537 ratings, the biggest review count of any course in this article, at 4.5 stars. Sixteen hours across two days at BELLS Institute of Higher Learning in Ang Mo Kio, covering smartphone camera settings, add-on lenses, and shooting consistent images for social media and business listings. Full fee is $400, split $200 subsidy and $200 credit, so a citizen pays $0 and still has $300 of base credit left for something else. Twenty-eight course runs are listed, which makes it one of the easier ones to slot into a work schedule.
$400 full fee, $0 payable after $200 SSG subsidy and $200 SkillsFuture Credit
The interesting one financially. This course draws no SSG subsidy at all, so the whole $448.60 is offset by SkillsFuture Credit, and a citizen still walks in at $0 out of pocket while using up most of the base $500. Bettr is a Singapore B Corp coffee company and its academy is a Specialty Coffee Association training campus, so the certificate is the international SCA one rather than a local-only cert. Eight hours covers espresso basics, grinder calibration, milk texturing, hands-on practice and machine backflushing, and the fee includes one online theory exam. Rating is 5.0 from 672 ratings with 1,931 attendees, and 24 runs are listed, the next on 18 September 2026.
$448.60 full fee, $0 payable: no SSG subsidy, so SkillsFuture Credit covers all of it
A WSQ course on putting ChatGPT and other generative AI tools into an actual work process rather than playing with prompts: drafting FAQs and training material, scenario planning, checking AI output for quality, and the security and ethics side of feeding company information into a chatbot. Full fee is $500, met by $250 of subsidy and $250 of credit, so a citizen pays $0. Eight hours, 4.5 stars from 761 ratings, 909 attendees, and 11 runs listed with the next on 20 September 2026 at the JTC Summit in Jurong. This is also the category to watch: Budget 2026 attached six months of free premium AI tool subscriptions to selected AI courses on the portal from the second half of 2026.
$500 full fee, $0 payable after $250 SSG subsidy and $250 SkillsFuture Credit
The polytechnic option, and the one where the government pays the largest share: of the $370 fee, $259 is subsidy and only $111 comes out of your credit, so you keep $389 of the base $500 for a second course. Sixteen hours run by SP PACE at the Dover campus, covering the statistical and lookup functions people actually use, organising raw data for analysis, chart interpretation, and building dashboards with PivotTables and PivotCharts. It has 4.5 stars from 352 ratings with 771 attendees. The catch is availability: only one run is listed, on 14 and 15 December 2026, and registration for it closes on 23 November 2026.
$370 full fee, $0 payable after $259 SSG subsidy and $111 SkillsFuture Credit
Valid till 23 Nov 2026
The one to take before you need it. Seventeen hours at HMI Institute of Health Sciences on caring for a dependent elderly person: the philosophy of basic care, assessment and preparation, assisting with activities of daily living, and responding to emergencies. Full fee is $490.45, split almost exactly in half between subsidy ($245.23) and credit ($245.22), so a citizen pays $0. It has 4.5 stars from 445 ratings and 947 attendees. Two things to check before applying: there is a minimum entry requirement listed on the course page, and only three runs are open, the next from 19 to 21 October 2026 at the Devan Nair Institute in Jurong East.
$490.45 full fee, $0 payable after $245.23 SSG subsidy and $245.22 SkillsFuture Credit
Included precisely because it breaks the $0 pattern and shows where the credit runs out. Full fee is $1,650 for 21.5 hours at the Lifelong Learning Institute in Eunos, covering prompt engineering for analysis and reporting, automating routine tasks, and using the OpenAI API. Vertical publishes nett fees of $643.50 for Singapore Citizens and PRs aged 40 and above (70% subsidy) and $973.50 for those below 40 or PRs (50%), both inclusive of 9% GST, plus a $10.90 registration fee that is not refundable. The portal's own estimate is $325 payable, a figure calculated before GST. Rating is 4.5 from 935 ratings with 1,811 attendees, and 68 runs are listed. If you are 40 or above, the separate $4,000 SkillsFuture Credit (Mid-Career) covers this several times over. Funding validity for the course runs to 19 November 2027.
$1,650 full fee, $643.50 nett for citizens and PRs aged 40+, $973.50 below 40, both incl. GST
Valid till 19 Nov 2027
| Provider | Course | Hours | Full fee | Payable after subsidy + $500 credit | Next run listed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NTUC LearningHub | Food Safety Course Level 1 | 7.5 hrs | $150 | $0 | 11 Sept 2026 |
| Singapore Red Cross | CERT First Aider with CPR+AED | 9 hrs | $130 | $0 | 15 Sept 2026 |
| BELLS Institute | Digital Photography with Smartphones | 16 hrs | $400 | $0 | 11-18 Sept 2026 |
| Bettr Barista | SCA: Barista Skills Foundation | 8 hrs | $448.60 | $0 (no SSG subsidy, credit pays all) | 18 Sept 2026 |
| Info-Tech Academy | Understand Generative AI using ChatGPT | 8 hrs | $500 | $0 | 20 Sept 2026 |
| Singapore Polytechnic | Fundamental Data Analysis using Excel | 16 hrs | $370 | $0 | 14-15 Dec 2026 |
| HMI Institute | Care Assistance | 17 hrs | $490.45 | $0 | 19-21 Oct 2026 |
| Vertical Institute | WSQ GenAI Bootcamp | 21.5 hrs | $1,650 | $325 on the portal; $643.50 nett incl. GST at age 40+ | 12-20 Sept 2026 |
We searched the official MySkillsFuture course directory on 10 September 2026 and read the fee breakdown on each course's own listing rather than the training provider's marketing page. Every course here is claimable with SkillsFuture Credit, is currently open for registration (with the dates noted in each entry), and carries enough real attendance and rating history on the portal to show it is actually running, not just listed. Seven were chosen because the portal's own estimate lands at $0 payable for a Singapore Citizen. The eighth is there as the counter-example.
There are three layers and people routinely confuse them.
Layer 1, the course-fee subsidy. SkillsFuture Singapore pays up to 70% of the fee for citizens and PRs on WSQ and SSG-funded courses. Citizens aged 40 and above get the Mid-Career Enhanced Subsidy, worth up to 90% on eligible courses. This comes off the price before you touch any credit, and it is why a $150 course shows $75 of subsidy in the table above.
Layer 2, SkillsFuture Credit. Every Singapore Citizen aged 25 and above holds a $500 Opening Credit that does not expire. Citizens aged 40 and above also hold a $4,000 SkillsFuture Credit (Mid-Career), given from 1 May 2024 and likewise with no expiry date; younger Singaporeans receive theirs in the year they turn 40. Credit is applied at the point of enrolment through the portal.
Layer 3, UTAP. NTUC members can claim back 50% of what is left unfunded, capped at $250 a year, or $500 a year for members aged 40 and above. From 1 May 2026 the same annual cap also covers 50% of AI tool subscription costs.
The portal's fee is calculated before GST. The "estimated payable fee" you see on a course listing is not always the number on your invoice. Vertical Institute is the clearest example in this article: $325 on the portal, $643.50 on the provider's own fee page for a citizen aged 40 and above, because the provider quotes the fee inclusive of 9% GST.
The $0 assumes your credit is untouched. Every $0 in the table above is the portal's estimate for someone with the full $500 still sitting there. If you spent $300 on a course in 2024, the same listing will quote you a different number once you log in.
The 2020 top-up is gone. The $500 one-off top-up issued in 2020 expired on 31 December 2025 and cannot be applied to any course starting on or after 1 January 2026. The base $500 Opening Credit is a separate wallet and has no expiry.
PRs get subsidy, not credit. SkillsFuture Credit is for Singapore Citizens. Permanent Residents still qualify for the course-fee subsidy, which is why a PR sees a reduced fee but never a $0 one.
The $500 Opening Credit that every Singapore Citizen gets at 25 does not expire. Neither does the $4,000 SkillsFuture Credit (Mid-Career) for citizens aged 40 and above. The one that did expire was the separate $500 top-up issued in 2020: it died on 31 December 2025 and cannot be used for any course starting on or after 1 January 2026.
For seven of the eight, yes, if you are a Singapore Citizen aged 25 or above with your full $500 base credit unused. The portal applies the SSG subsidy first, then lets you offset the remainder with credit at the point of enrolment. Two caveats: the portal's estimate is calculated before GST, so a provider invoice can still show a small balance, and if you have already spent part of your credit the shortfall is yours to pay.
Yes, as long as the course is listed as SkillsFuture Credit eligible on the MySkillsFuture portal. BELLS Institute's smartphone photography course and Bettr Barista's SCA Barista Skills Foundation in this article both are. Note that a course can be credit-eligible without carrying any government subsidy, as the Bettr course shows, in which case your credit pays the entire fee.
From the second half of 2026, Singaporeans who take selected AI training courses listed on MySkillsFuture will get six months of free access to premium versions of AI tools. It is open to Singaporeans aged 25 and above, the Government has said it is in discussions with Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and Manus, and the tool you receive is expected to depend on the course you take. The list of qualifying courses and tools is still to be announced, so check the portal listing before assuming a given AI course qualifies.
Yes. UTAP reimburses 50% of the unfunded course fee, meaning whatever is left after the government subsidy, capped at $250 a year for members below 40 and $500 a year for members aged 40 and above. From 1 May 2026 the same annual cap also covers 50% of AI tool subscription fees, so the course claim and the tool claim share one pot.
