SOC 2 cost in 2026: what a startup actually pays

A customer asked for your SOC 2 report. You searched for the price and got the two answers everyone gets: “it depends” and a contact-sales button.

Here is the version we give founders on a 15-minute call, with the numbers.

SOC 2 is not one cost. It is three: the audit, the platform, and the people doing the work. Vendors quote one of the three and let you discover the others later. Once you see all three next to each other, the price stops being mysterious.

Key takeaways

• Three numbers, not one. Audit, platform, people. Ask any vendor for all three before you compare anything.
• A startup under 15 people pays about $15,000 in year one. Roughly $4,000 for the platform, $6,000 for the people, $5,000 for a Type 2 audit with a smaller peer-reviewed firm. Between 15 and 30 people, budget $20,000 to $22,000.
• The expensive part is your time, not the invoice. Doing it yourself with a tool means 40 to 100 hours of founder or engineer time. Done for you, it is 5 to 10 hours.
• The audit fee depends on who signs it. About $5,000 to $40,000 for a Type 2, depending on the firm.
• A $2,000 audit is a red flag, not a bargain. A SOC 2 report is worth the auditor who signs it.

SOC 2 has three costs, not one

People search for “SOC 2 certification cost”. SOC 2 is not a certification, it is an attestation report written by a licensed CPA firm after examining your controls (here is what SOC 2 actually is). That detail matters for the price, because it means three different parties get paid.

1. The audit. A CPA firm examines your controls and signs a report. For a Type 2, they observe you over a period of at least three months. This is the only cost that is strictly required.

2. The platform. Somewhere to keep policies, risks, vendors, evidence and the auditor’s requests. It can be a compliance platform, a spreadsheet, or an open-source tool you host yourself.

3. The people. Someone has to write the policies for your company, run the risk analysis, review your vendors, collect the evidence, and answer the auditor. This is where most of the money goes, and it is the number most vendors leave out of their pricing page because it is your time.

What a startup pays in 2026

These are the figures we quote on calls, rounded. Platform and people are yearly fees, shown as platform + people. The audit line is what the US peer-reviewed CPA firm most of our customers use charges for a Type 2; we pass it through at cost. Other firms charge more, up to about $40,000 with the large audit brands (see below).

Two notes on the table.

Above about 50 people, nobody should quote you a flat number on a first call. The honest answer is a scoped proposal within 48 hours, after someone has asked about your entities, your infrastructure and your procurement process.

The “people” column is the one that changes most between vendors. With a pure software platform it is zero on the invoice and 40 to 100 hours on your calendar. With a consultancy it is a day rate. With us it is a compliance officer who does the work for the price above.

What moves the audit price

The audit is the part founders worry about most and understand least. Five things move it.

Headcount. More people means more access reviews, more laptops, more onboarding and offboarding evidence. A 10-person team and a 100-person team are not the same examination.

Infrastructure. One cloud account with managed services is cheap to audit. Multi-cloud, on-premise servers or a data centre in scope is not.

Trust Services Criteria. Security is mandatory. Adding Availability, Confidentiality, Processing Integrity or Privacy adds controls and days. Most startups only need Security, sometimes Confidentiality. Add criteria because a customer asked, not because the list looked short.

Type 1 plus Type 2, or Type 2 only. The checklist is identical. Most firms offer a bundle if you do both with them; with the firm most of our customers use, it adds about $1,500. Only three of our customers ever needed a Type 1, each because a deal was closing within six weeks. Everyone else went straight to Type 2 and showed the auditor’s engagement letter while the observation period ran. Here is how to talk about SOC 2 in progress without overclaiming.

The firm’s brand. A-LIGN, Coalfire or Schellman charge from $15,000 up to about $40,000 for the same report at startup size. Pay that only when a specific customer insists on a specific firm. Most buyers check that the auditor is a licensed, peer-reviewed CPA firm. They do not check the logo.

The cheap audit problem

You will find SOC 2 audits advertised at $1,000 or $2,000, sometimes bundled into a platform subscription. A real Type 2 examination takes days of a CPA’s time. At that price something is missing, and your customer’s security team will find it when they read the report.

Three checks take 20 minutes:

1. Ask who signs the report. A named CPA firm, not the platform vendor.
2. Ask for the firm’s AICPA peer review letter and look the firm up in the AICPA peer review register.
3. Ask how many audit days are planned. If the answer is vague, so is the audit.

Doing it yourself with a tool versus done for you

Here is the comparison nobody puts on a pricing page.

The tool column is where founders overpay without noticing. Sixty hours of a CTO’s time is a real cost even if it never shows up on an invoice. Several companies came to us after one or two years on a platform without ever booking an auditor: the subscription was paid, the checklist was green, the report did not exist. If you are weighing platforms, we compared the main ones in Vanta alternatives in 2026.

That said, if you have a technical co-founder with time, a simple AWS setup and a customer who will wait, the do-it-yourself route works. The templates are the easy part; the open-source version of Probo is free to self-host and comes with them. You are paying a service for the person who knows what the auditor will ask, and who chases it before they do.

What is not worth paying for yet

A penetration test. SOC 2 does not require one. If your sector expects it, an automated pentest costs $1,000 to $2,000 and a manual one $5,000 to $6,000. Keep it as its own line.

Two frameworks at once. If a prospect says “SOC 2 and ISO 27001”, ask which one they accept. Under 200 people almost nobody runs both. The work overlaps by 70% to 90%; the second audit does not overlap at all. Pick one (here is how) and add the other as a $5,000 to $6,000 service add-on later if a contract forces it.

A Type 1. See above. Unless a deal closes in the next six weeks, skip it.

Expensive training. Security awareness training is required. A hundred dollars a month covers a startup; free options exist.

A trust page product. Buyers want to see that you hold a report and request it under NDA. That is a compliance portal fed by your live compliance data, not a separate $5,000 subscription.

Year two and after

A Type 2 report covers a period, so it expires. The audit comes back every year at roughly the same fee. The platform fee stays the same unless you double in size.

What changes is the work. Year two is quarterly access reviews, policy reviews, vendor re-assessments, security questionnaires from new customers, and a shorter audit. If you want to take that in-house, two options cost less than the full service: keep the platform alone at about $4,000 a year, or self-host the open-source version and export everything.

Pay after the revenue

The best answer to “can we afford this now?” is to not pay before the deal that justifies it.

If a customer’s contract depends on SOC 2, write the commitment into that contract: certified within four months. Sign with your compliance provider the day the customer signs with you. The auditor is booked within a week, the observation period starts, and the “SOC 2 in progress” sentence on your security page is true. The $15,000 lands after the revenue it unlocks.

And if nobody has asked yet, do not start. Keep your policies and a security page in order, and send the first request you get to someone who can quote the three numbers the same day.

The bottom line

For a startup under 15 people working with a smaller peer-reviewed auditor, SOC 2 costs about $15,000 in year one and 5 to 10 hours of your time, with a report three to four months after you start. Anything much cheaper is missing one of the three parts. Anything much more expensive is paying for a brand or for a consultancy’s day rate.

If you want the three numbers for your company in one sentence, book a 15-minute call. We ask about headcount and infrastructure first, then tell you the price on the call, not in a follow-up email.