Affordable SOC 2 compliance software: a published price, the audit included

Affordable SOC 2 compliance software should put a SOC 2 report within reach of any team. If you are asking what the cheapest way to get SOC 2 is, the honest answer for most small teams is to do the readiness work yourself with software, instead of paying a consultant and a separate audit firm on top of a platform contract. This page compares the ways to get there and what each asks of you.

A SOC 2 report is how a small company proves it can be trusted with a customer's data. It unlocks the same enterprise deals for a five person startup as for a large vendor. Yet the software to get one has mostly been priced for companies with a compliance department, and the audit has been a second invoice nobody quotes up front. cybersoftware prints both.

Four ways to get SOC 2, compared

Every route ends at the same place: an independent CPA firm examines your controls and signs the report. What changes is who does the work before the auditor arrives, and how you pay for it.

Why compliance has been out of reach

A typical first SOC 2 has three layers of cost. There is a platform subscription. There is often onboarding help or a consultant. Then a CPA firm bills separately for the audit. These are the published figures for each layer.

• Vendr reports a median annual contract value of $20,000 for Secureframe, based on purchases completed through its marketplace. Source, checked 2026-07-30.
• Vanta states that a SOC 2 audit fee usually runs between $10,000 and $50,000, and that the all-in cost of a first SOC 2 lands somewhere between $10,000 and $80,000 or more. Source, checked 2026-10-02.
• Comp AI states that a vCISO or compliance consultant might charge $150 to $400 an hour, which can total $20,000 to $50,000 for a full SOC 2 prep engagement. Source, checked 2026-07-30.

Set against those figures, a published, all-in price for readiness plus a signed Type 1 report comes to a fraction of what incumbents charge, as of August 2026. None of that makes the larger vendors a scam. Sales teams, custom contracts and onboarding services are real costs, and a large company buying for many frameworks gets value from them. A five person startup pays for the same machinery and uses a fraction of it.

How we keep it affordable

We took out the layers a small team does not need. Three changes do most of the work.

• No sales call. The price is public and you sign up yourself. No quote, no negotiation, no account executive to pay for.
• Software instead of consultant hours. Gap analysis, policy drafting and evidence mapping are done by the platform from your answers. That is the work consultants used to bill hourly for.
• The first audit is in the price. Your first SOC 2 Type 2 audit is included in the term. There is no separate auditor invoice for it, and it starts on its own once the 3-month observation window closes.

What you get is the whole product. Policies written from your real setup, evidence traced to its source, monitoring, and the audit package. Nothing is held back for a higher tier, because there is no higher tier.

What it costs here

You start with a free readiness assessment. Free. No payment and no card. It takes about 15 minutes and returns your readiness score, every gap category counted with exact numbers, and your first findings written out in full, so you see where you stand before spending anything.

When you are ready, you choose one entry at checkout and pay it once: $2,000 for platform onboarding, or $4,000 for onboarding plus the SOC 2 Type 1 examination and report, with the auditor fee included. Then SOC 2 Type 2 is $600 a month on a 12-month term, or $6,600 for the year, pay for eleven months, get twelve. A first year comes to $9,200 on the onboarding entry, or $11,200 with Type 1.

Any audit after the first is arranged on request: our team negotiates with independent audit firms on your behalf, and the engagement is quoted before it begins. Every detail is on the pricing page, and the cost calculator totals two years on each path.

What the self-serve model asks of you

The trade is simple. You do the work.

Nobody from our side joins your standups or writes your answers. The software tells you what to do next, drafts what it can, and flags what is missing. A founder or an engineer still has to spend focused time closing gaps and reviewing policies. If you want a team to do it for you, a consultant or a full service platform is the better buy, and it is priced that way.

Scope is the other limit. cybersoftware does SOC 2 and only SOC 2. If you need several frameworks at once, deep procurement workflows or a dedicated customer success manager, a larger platform fits better. Our comparisons with Vanta, Drata and Secureframe say where each one wins.

Does a lower price mean a weaker report?

No. A SOC 2 report is only as credible as the firm that signs it. The examination is performed by an independent partner auditor, a licensed U.S. CPA firm, under the same AICPA standards any other firm follows, and you can look the firm up with its state board before you sign anything.

We take that question seriously enough to have written a whole page on it: is a low-priced SOC 2 audit legitimate? It includes the red flags that are real. The quickest way to judge the product itself is free. Take the free readiness assessment and read your own gap list, or see how it fits an early company on SOC 2 for startups.