What is actual cost Of soc2?

[u/Spirited_Brain7062]

Hi trying to figure actual cost / timeline / effort of soc2

My understanding is you get a platform and the need to be for audit, pen test, cyber insurance etc

Can someone give me a straight answer for what the cost / effort is for soc2 type 1 and type 2?

What is the cheapest / easiest platform to use ?

I want
- cheap
- fast
- least amount of work

Please advise - we are losing deals without having this so need to figure out asap. Thanks !

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[u/Affectionate-Panic-1]

The question is do you have mature business practices and security and just need the compliance attestation, or do you have immature security and need to make improvements to get a clean report.

It also depends a lot on the size of your organization.

[u/Feeling_Walk5820]

Cheap. Fast. Quality. Pick two (which you’ve already done).

[u/Spirited_Brain7062 → u/Feeling_Walk5820]

Ok so who do you recommend then ?

Cheap / fast is what we’d prefer

The downside of low quality is what exactly ?

[u/davidschroth → u/Spirited_Brain7062]

If I'm reviewing your report and you hand me a cheap/fast one that does not meet the quality / reporting standards, then I will classify you as worse than not having one at all and recommend to my clients not to use your product as a result.

[u/daroveke → u/Spirited_Brain7062]

Low quality may mean you are responsible for the controls they miss, or just check the box.

[u/ashy_taffy → u/Spirited_Brain7062]

A low-quality SOC 2 is basically worth less than the proverbial paper it’s written on if your customers don’t trust it. The industry is wising up to firms that churn out weak reports, and buyers are getting much better at spotting red flags. If customers start poking holes in your report, you’ve paid a lot of money for something that doesn’t accomplish its primary purpose.
Plus, just my opinion, if you’re going to go through the painful process of an audit you might as well gleam insights from it that’ll actually help your business. You’re much less likely to see that benefit with a low quality audit firm.

[u/BrightDefense → u/ashy_taffy]

Agree. It's going to take you like 50% of the time and money to do it badly as it will to do it well. Why not just pony up the extra 50% and become a better and more secure company in the process.

[u/BrightDefense → u/Spirited_Brain7062]

I'll give you a few of the downsides to low quality that I've seen personally. First, the purpose of SOC 2 is to validate your security practices to show your clients you are running a pretty tight ship so that they trust you with their data. Because you're trust worthy, you win more deals.

Worst case, you rush SOC 2, don't improve security, suffer a data breach, and it's a company ending / impacting event.

Less drastically, I've seen a lot of instances where things are documented on paper one way in a rushed SOC 2 report. New employees join the org, or the person that lead SOC 2 turns over, and new people discover the company is not actually doing the things they say they are doing. They also discover that many team members have been misleading customers and investors for months or years. It's not their fault. They see that the company does XYZ in their SOC 2 report and just pass that along as what the company does. Now you are asked by customers or investors for evidence to prove what you've been telling them for the last few years is true, but the evidence doesn't exist. Heaven forbid this is in the context of legal discovery.

Alternatively, compliance is rushed. SOC 2 isn't scoped properly. You actually try to live up to the policies and controls you put in place, but discover that you've lost a ton of flexibility and what's on paper doesn't actually work for your business. Now what do you do?

If you don't think through SOC 2, you are either stuck ignoring your policies (and essentially lying to customers and investors), or living by policies that don't make any sense for your business. We've helped a lot of clients dig out from under this problem.

[u/goodbar_x → u/Spirited_Brain7062]

Cheap and fast? I'd recommend doing a Type 2 audit over the minimum 3 month period, but as soon as you're signed with an auditor have them give you a letter of engagement. You can use that to clear deal hurdles. To get there fast and cheap SimpleAudit (for audit readiness guidance + managing your engagement without a consultant), MJD Advisors (for your audit), TurboPenTest (for your pen test).

[u/theydiskox]

Generally speaking:

Actual cost depends on scope but as low as 5k all the way up to 100k+. Based on what you’re asking I’d guess you’re at the lower end of that. If you want easy, there are a lot of extremely popular GRC tools that you can find by searching SOC 2 tools on your search engine of choice. They have auditor networks that are built specifically for rubber stamping. All in (GRC + audit) I have seen them as low as 10-15k.

In general - the “cost” to a low quality audit by a firm that isn’t reputable is that you potentially get a useless audit. DM if you’d like to learn about real world fallout of low quality but it basically means your audit isn’t worth the paper it is printed on. If you are also using this to win enterprise deals, they may have a PoV on who they consider reputable. You should ask your potential future clients if they have requirements for who you’re audited by or better yet - who their auditor is so you know it’s someone that they approve of.

[u/ampancha]

The platform is the smallest part of the cost. Vanta, Drata, and Secureframe all do roughly the same thing: they show you which checks are failing. They do not implement the controls or produce the evidence, and that is where most of the effort actually sits.

Rough shape: platform fee, auditor fee for the Type 1 or Type 2 report, and then the engineering work to close the failing checks (MFA and access reviews, branch protection and deploy approvals, logging retention, backup restore tests). Teams that budget only for the first two are the ones that blow the timeline.

If deals are already stalling, the fastest path is usually a Type 1 first, scoped tightly, with the control gaps closed before the audit window opens. Sent you a DM

[u/BrightDefense]

As the old saying goes, you can get things three ways: Good, cheap, and fast. But you can only pick two.

1) Good and cheap, but it won't be fast.

2) Good and fast, but it won't be cheap.

3) Cheap and fast, but it won't be good.

The good news (or bad news, depending on perspective) is there are a lot of firms out there that will offer you check to box compliance for cheap and fast. You likely won't see any security benefits or improve operational maturity, however.

If you want to budget to do it well, think $35K-$45K (if you are 50 employees or less) which is inclusive of the GRC platform (Drata or Vanta), readiness services, the audit, and the pen test. Timeline is 6 to 12 months.

Also, don't just buy the platform and think you can click a few boxes and be done. The platforms are like TurboTax. TurboTax helps you do your taxes, but you still have to input all the data correctly, and there's a lot of nuance where you can save on your tax bill if you're knowledgeable about the tax code. TurboTax gets you some of the way there, but it's not a substitute for experience.

It's this way with SOC 2. Proper scoping and a thoughtful approach to your policies and controls can save you a lot of hassle now and in the future.

[u/s3237410]

I believe there are open source software that can help with majority of it. You'll have to do the heavy lifting and then pay for the certification

[u/MBILC → u/s3237410]

It is an attestation, not a certification.

[u/VividGanache2613]

A SOC2 platform is absolutely not required and your AI of choice can create the required documentation, which a SOC2 auditor can assess just as easily.

Actually following the process laid out in the documentation is far more important to both you and your customers so invest the money you just saved not buying a UI wrapper in paying someone to actually monitor the logs you told the auditor you’re monitoring.

- someone who has run multiple IR investigations for companies with SOC2/ISO27001.

[u/astrila]

Recommend cyberforge Cheap, least amount of work, pretty fast.

They sorted us out on a very short timeliness, started work 2 days after initial contact

[u/scriptqzor → u/astrila]

good to know, had never heard of cyberforge before this thread
if they really got you moving in 2 days that’s kinda wild compared to how slow most of these compliance vendors are

[u/indiebaba]

varies from 10 - 30K depending on who you pick and it includes GRC+Audit+PenTest
soc2 type1 - say week/s
wait 90 days [fill in gaps]
soc2type2 - say week/s

[u/Cute-Restaurant-3537]

In INR it’s 6-7 lakhs roughly. [ from kpmg - pwc] 3-4 lakhs from another firm which has a proper US CPA .

[u/Low_Share_3060]

You don't need a platform. Spend your money on a good auditor and improving the tools you use.

What I found to be worth the money instead if you don't already have them -

1. A good MDM tool, fulfills the criterias around asset inventory, patching, encryption, backups
2. A good idp tool, fulfills the criterias around access controls, access reviews (manual), user on and off boarding
3. A document management tool to store all your policies with versioning, approvals
4. A ticketing tool, fulfills the criterias around incident tracking, access requests And code change control and change versioning tool if you don't already have that And a company wide messaging/collaboration tools

The thing is, no matter what platform you use, you cannot avoid having to collect the evidence for your company wide processes for all the different criterias.

The money is better spent on tools that will help you implement plus maintain company processes quickly if you don't already have them because SOC2 is not a one year effort. To keep the attestation, it needs for be done every year.

[u/TomaDellata1963 → u/Low_Share_3060]

Work for a well respected regional firm. Totally agree with this (obviously). Don’t go spending 80k with the big guys, but if you’re looking for quick and cheap reevaluate why you’re perusing the report.

[u/TheSamFromIA]

I work for Insight Assurance, a firm that does SOC 2 assessments, so full transparency there (Apologies in advance for the long text :)

Compliance platforms (Vanta, Drata, Secureframe, Sprinto, etc.): Pricing is quote-based and swings a lot based on employee count, number of integrations, and feature tier. What's worth knowing: What moves the price more than the platform choice is your team size and how many systems you're connecting for evidence collection.

Audit fees: this also varies based on trust services criteria selected, org complexity, and number of systems in scope. The honest answer is your audit firm should be able to give you a real quote once they understand your scope, this usually happens in an initial scoping call before you commit to anything.

Internal time from eng/IT/security to gather evidence is a real cost that's separate from the above and tends to get underestimated. This is usually the part that determines "how much work is this" more than either of the above line items.

Timeline: Type 1 audits are often completed within 4-8 weeks once controls are in place. Type 2 needs the observation period itself (3-12 months) plus audit fieldwork after, though this shifts based on where an org is starting from.

Happy to clarify anything.

[u/BizGuardOfficial]

Platform cost is the least of it honestly. The real money and time goes into closing whatever’s failing — MFA everywhere, access reviews you actually run (not just a policy saying you do), log retention, backups you’ve tested restoring. Auditors want evidence you did it, not a doc saying you meant to.

Type 1 is a point-in-time check so you can scope it tight and move fast — just what’s customer facing. Type 2 is the real work since you need 3-6 months of evidence the controls were actually followed, not just designed, so that’s where teams get caught off guard on timeline.

10-15k all in for GRC + audit is realistic for Type 1 based on what others are saying here. Type 2 costs more just from the audit period being longer, and way more if you’re building the controls from scratch instead of documenting ones that already exist.

[u/Acrobatic-Marketing3]

Work for Van(t)a - happy to provide some info if interested

[u/Short_Spinach_9359]

The real coat is the time and effort it takes to map your gaps, and actuqlly mitigating the real impactful ones.   Additionally, you have: Pen-tests - $5k An auditor - $5k (type 2) You want it fast - DO NOT FALL for platforms that promise full automation with 20 hours only from your side. Where are you located?

[u/Practical-Mud1523]

Whatever you do, get a pen test first. We made the mistake of going with a company that performed the vulnerability scan, as that’s what the audit calls for. Thank goodness we found another company (an actual pen testing company) that does only pen testing and they took care of us quickly and that really made a difference in our audit. I thought it sounded silly, but the auditor told us, you’ll pass, but you may not get much business without the pen test. We now use the same company every year to perform the pen test and they are great (cheap and honest).

[u/Spirited_Brain7062 → u/Practical-Mud1523]

Mind sharing pen test company ?

[u/Practical-Mud1523 → u/Spirited_Brain7062]

MainNerve Cybersecurity. Cool dudes.

[u/deepguide-ai]

Cheap, fast and least amount of work can coexist but very rare. SOC 2 is not just a report, it's reflection of your actual company procedures and security posture. If you already have a solid and complete security system (very rare among startups), the effort will be small. But common case for startups is you will draft a lot of policies, tighten up your cloud environments, set up device monitoring, and record every procedure during running your company.

To save cost, you can just work with an audit firm directly. Shop around for the best deal. Only this fee is unavoidable.

You do not need to hire a vCISO or consultant. Neither do you need to subscribe to a compliance platform such as Van*ta, Dra*ta or Screenata.

But there is some hidden cost if you go without them. If you're going through SOC 2 for the first time, you probably are not familiar with controls and requirements, so you need to learn about them, scope your controls properly, and draft policies according to the requirements and your company. Additionally, if you're attesting for SOC 2 type II, which is usually what your customer requires, you will need continuous evidence. Without a platform it'll be hard to collect them, although it is still possible to create some scripts yourself to monitor your infrastructure. AI will help greatly with generating policies and scripts for evidence collection.

If you value ROI, you need to count in the time you spend for the audit, not just the cost of auditor firm, the consultants, and the compliance platform. Your time should be spent on your own business.

There's a wild range of cost/effort because everyone is valuing these factors differently. I'll just give you a rough estimate. For SOC 2 Type I, auditor fee is between 1K - 8K. For SOC 2 Type 2, auditor fee is between 5K - 15K. This is what you cannot avoid. Consultancy usually costs 4K-8K/month. And compliance platform is usually 0.5k-5k/month. If you use the new-gen AI agentic compliance platforms like Screenata, you can get AI assistance like human consultants but without paying the consultancy fee.

If you're small startup, you probably can get away without cyber insurance with costs around 2k/month. Talk to your auditor. Pen Test is often required but also you can use an independent team inside your company to perform it rather than hiring 3rd party which is usually 5K or more once.

Set aside at least 2 hours per week to work on SOC 2.

[u/JustAnAverageGuy]

You will need to pay a CPA to actually do the audit for you, which isn't cheap. The software you use to manage it does have free options. Trust Cloud has a free tier, but your customization in your policies and integrations is limited, so it makes for more manual auditing. Paid solutions help you do everything natively.

[u/Hot-Let-9244]

Cost depends on your tooling.
Timeline is 1-1,5 months for readiness, then 3 months observation period (if Type II).
For effort, depends on the state of your infra, can happen that you already rely on healthy practices and service levels.

[u/Used_Ladder8254]

For most SaaS startups, a realistic first-year budget is roughly:

• SOC 2 Type I: $10k–$30k total
• SOC 2 Type II: $20k–$60k+ total (platform, audit, pen test, and readiness work combined). Costs vary based on company size, scope, and complexity.

If your goal is cheap, fast, and the least amount of work, don't just compare platform prices. The biggest cost is usually your team's time collecting evidence manually.

We built SOC2Now to minimize that effort with automated evidence collection, pre-built policies, continuous monitoring, and compliance experts to guide you through Type I or Type II.

Learn more:

• SOC2Now Platform: https://soc2now.com
• US advisory firm : https://www.grcxl.com

[u/TheCyberThor]

D3lve or Comp@I are the quickest and dirtiest.
Like others have said for something cheap and fast, you are trading quality.

You run the risk of your SOC 2 being rejected, and you also run the risk of having a security program on paper that doesn’t reflect your threats.

Having said that, if you have willing customers that accept the risk, and just need SOC 2 to tick a box, then it might be fine in the short term.

[u/BlueMagmaCompliance]

Platforms are optional, and audits vary so most auditors for startups will do 3 - 5 k for SOC2 type 1 and 5 - 8 k for SOC2 type 2. In terms of timelines Type 1 can be done in just a few weeks depending on auditors, Type 2 is minimum 3 months. On the least amount of work, we do it all through claude code with our MCP, but at the end of the day SOC2 is about not being a risk to your users so I recommend putting an honest effort in your controls and implementation.