SOC 2 cost in 2026: the four lines on the bill

SOC 2 cost is one of the first questions a small team asks, and the honest answer is a range. A CPA firm that performs these examinations puts it plainly: Linford and Company puts the range at $20,000 to $150,000 with a median around $30,000 (Linford and Company, checked July 30, 2026). That spread is real, but most of it comes from choices you control. This guide breaks the bill into its four lines, shows what the market charges for each, and points out where a small team can spend less without cutting the parts that matter.

What you are paying for

SOC 2 is a framework from the AICPA. An independent, licensed CPA firm examines the controls you run to protect customer data and issues a report on them, measured against the Trust Services Criteria. Security is the one criteria set every report covers. Availability, Confidentiality, Processing Integrity and Privacy are optional, and each one you add widens the scope.

There are two kinds of report:

• Type 1 looks at whether your controls are designed properly as of a single date.
• Type 2 looks at whether those controls actually operated over a period, usually somewhere between three and twelve months.

SOC 2 is not a certification. It is an attestation report, and a buyer reads it to decide whether to trust you with their data.

The four lines on the bill

Every SOC 2 budget breaks down the same way.

| Line | What it covers | Who can do it | |---|---|---| | Software | Policies, evidence, control tracking, the package for the auditor | You, with a tool, or a spreadsheet | | Readiness | Finding your gaps before the auditor does | You, a tool, or a paid firm | | The audit | The examination and the signed report | Only an independent licensed CPA firm | | Your time | Writing policies, fixing gaps, collecting evidence | Your team |

The first three lines show up on invoices. The fourth never does, and it is often the largest.

Line one: software

This is the hardest line to price, because the larger vendors do not publish it.

• Vanta lists four plans on its pricing page and no dollar figure. The call to action is to request personalized pricing (Vanta, checked July 30, 2026).
• Secureframe lists its Fundamentals plan as starting at $7,500 a year and shows no dollar figure for its other two plans, Complete and Defense. Every plan links to a quote request (Secureframe, checked September 28, 2026).
• Drata lists its plans, Foundation, Advanced and Enterprise, on a plans page with no dollar figure, and each plan button leads to a demo request or a contact-sales form (Drata, checked October 2, 2026).

So the better evidence is what buyers actually paid. Vendr, a software buying service, reports that the median buyer pays $20,000 for Vanta (Vendr), $25,000 per year for Drata (Vendr) and $20,000 for Secureframe (Vendr), based on completed purchases and checked July 30, 2026. The audit is billed separately on top of all three.

Some smaller vendors publish a price. LowerPlane publishes three annual plans, Starter at $4,995, Growth at $9,995 and Scale at $15,995 a year, and states that auditor fees are separate and paid directly to your chosen auditor, with no auditor figure given (LowerPlane, checked September 28, 2026).

Line two: readiness

A readiness assessment compares what you do today against the criteria and lists what is missing. Firms sell it as its own engagement. IS Partners, an audit and advisory firm, states that a professional SOC 2 readiness assessment can cost anywhere between $10,000 to $17,000, and that the assessment itself can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months (IS Partners, checked September 1, 2026).

Readiness is also the line most teams can do themselves. The questions are knowable: do you enforce MFA, do you review access, do you have an incident response plan, do you know which vendors hold customer data. A structured questionnaire gets you most of the way. That is why we give ours away as a free readiness assessment.

Line three: the audit

The audit is the one line nobody can do for you. Only a licensed CPA firm can sign a SOC 2 report, and it has to be independent of the company it examines.

The platforms' own cost guides give the range. Drata estimates the audit fee for a SOC 2 Type 1 at $7,500 to $15,000 and for a Type 2 at $12,000 to $20,000 for small to midsize companies, and puts the total first-year cost at $25,000 for a small startup (Drata, checked October 2, 2026). Vanta states that a SOC 2 audit fee usually runs between $10,000 and $50,000 (Vanta, checked October 2, 2026).

What moves an audit fee:

| Factor | Why it matters | |---|---| | Type 1 or Type 2 | Type 2 means testing samples across the whole period | | Criteria in scope | Each optional criteria set adds controls to test | | Systems in scope | More systems, more evidence to sample | | How prepared you are | Evidence that arrives organized takes fewer auditor hours |

The last factor is the one you control. Auditors bill for time, and time spent chasing missing screenshots is time you pay for. For more on what drives the fee, see how SOC 2 auditor fees work.

Line four: your time

Someone on your team writes or approves policies, turns on MFA everywhere, sets up access reviews, documents onboarding and offboarding, lists vendors and uploads evidence. For a small team this usually lands on a founder or the first engineer. Good software shrinks this line by asking plain questions and telling you exactly what to upload next, rather than handing you a blank control library.

What SOC 2 costs with cybersoftware

We built cybersoftware so the price of SOC 2 stops deciding who gets to have one, and we publish every figure.

• The readiness assessment is free: your score, every gap category counted and your first findings written out, with no card.
• Onboarding is $2,000 one time. It covers the software, readiness work and policy lines above: gap remediation, policies written for your company, evidence mapped to every control and the complete audit package. Or choose $4,000 one time, which adds the SOC 2 Type 1 examination and report with the CPA firm's fee included.
• SOC 2 Type 2 is $600 a month on a 12-month term, or $6,600 up front for the first 12 months. Your first SOC 2 Type 2 audit is included in the term, so line three is inside the price, with no separate auditor invoice.
• A first year comes to $9,200 all in, or $11,200 with Type 1. Audits after the first are quoted before they begin.

cybersoftware is not a CPA firm. SOC 2 examinations are performed by independent licensed U.S. CPA firms. The full price list is on our pricing page.

Frequently asked questions

Is SOC 2 a one-time cost?

No. A SOC 2 report covers a date or a period in the past, so buyers usually ask for a fresh one every year. Budget for the software and the audit as recurring costs.

Can we get SOC 2 without buying software?

Yes. Nothing in the AICPA framework requires a platform. You can run the program in documents and spreadsheets, and it costs more of your time instead of money.

Why do the published ranges vary so much?

Scope, report type and preparation. A five person team on one cloud provider with Security only is a very different engagement from a large company with every criteria set in scope.

What is the smallest amount of SOC 2 cost we can start with?

Nothing. The readiness assessment is free, and it tells you how far you are from a report before you spend anything. With cybersoftware, the first payment is onboarding at $2,000.

Start with a free readiness assessment. It takes about fifteen minutes and needs no card.