polara labs

The deal needs SOC 2. You have one week.

Polara Labs is SOC 2 for startups that don't have a compliance team. Answer the intake in an afternoon, fix exactly what it finds, and hand a complete audit package to an independent CPA firm.

Get startedWalk the product demo

Made in the USA · Featured at Startup Grind

Starting at about a week
From intake to audit-ready Type 1
$4,000 one time
First examination and auditor fee included
$600 per month
Type 2 keeps you audit-ready
Independent partner auditor
A licensed U.S. CPA firm signs the opinion

Built for the teams that move fastest

  • Y Combinator
  • Techstars
  • Antler
  • 500 Global
  • South Park Commons

The SOC 2 pipeline for founders who ship. Independent partner auditor, nothing faked.

Your CEO can do this. Three steps.

Policies are generated from your actual infrastructure, team structure and tools, rather than from a template with your logo swapped in.

Step 1

The intake assessment.

Tell us about your stack, your data, and your team. A rules engine, not AI guesswork, maps the answers to SOC 2 controls and flags your gaps. Same inputs, same outputs, every time.

An afternoon, no prep. Auto-saved so you can resume anytime.

Intake progress: 16%

Step 2

Close gaps on the dashboard.

Remediation tells you exactly what to fix and what evidence to upload. Policies are generated from your actual infrastructure, team structure, and tools, and they fail loud if the evidence doesn't back them up.

About five days of focused work, tracked live on the readiness ring.

Readiness15%
CriticalIncident Response

Incident response plan

A documented incident response plan with severity levels, escalation procedures, and communication channels.

Who approved the IR plan?
Key contacts in the IR plan (names/roles)

Step 3

Independent review.

Your package goes to an independent partner auditor, a licensed U.S. CPA firm. No referral fees. The engagement fee is already included in what you paid.

Polara Labs is not a CPA firm; the audit opinion is the CPA firm’s alone.

Ready to Generate

All compliance items are complete.

All policies complete
All evidence uploaded
Onboarding data complete

What your auditor gets.

Custom policy suite

Thirteen SOC 2 policies written from your data, every claim traceable to evidence you uploaded.

Evidence map

Every control mapped to the proof your auditor needs, with timestamps and chain of custody.

Complete audit package

Control matrix, evidence index, policy set, readiness report. Type 2 adds observation tracking.

A SOC 2 report is a statement of facts, not a certificate you buy. If two companies' reports could be swapped without anyone noticing, neither of them is real.
The operating principle at Polara Labs

$4,000 to start. $600 a month to stay.

Same deliverable, a SOC 2 report an enterprise buyer will accept. The bigger platforms aren't bad. We're just built for an earlier company with a thinner margin for compliance spend.

VendorTime to audit-readyWhat you payFirst-year cost
Polara LabsThis is usSOC 2 Type 1, then Type 2Starting at about a week$4,000 once, then $600 a month.$11,200Type 1 examination included
Automation platformsVanta, Drata, Secureframe, Sprinto3 to 4 weeksA reported average of $19,900 a year. The audit is billed separately by a CPA firm.$19,900Audit not included
ConsultantsTraditional firms and Big 43 to 6 monthsA typical $35,000 prep engagement, then about $15,000 a year to stay current. The audit is billed separately by a CPA firm.$35,000Audit not included

No consultant overhead, no enterprise sales team, no renewal cliff. Our first year is $4,000 for Type 1 plus 12 months of Type 2 at $600, and you can check that against the rate in the row rather than take our word for the total. Put the first year of Type 2 on a single $6,000 invoice instead and it comes down, which is two months free versus paying monthly; the column quotes the higher of the two so the arithmetic stays in plain sight. The Type 1 examination and the auditor engagement fee are inside our figure, while the other two rows bill the audit separately through a CPA firm on top of the figure shown, so our column is if anything conservative. A Type 2 examination is arranged on demand with a partner audit firm and is not in anybody's column here. Competitor figures are reported market midpoints. Platform figures are averages of observed contracts across every customer size, from about $7,500 to $60,000 a year, so a very small team would be quoted nearer the bottom of that range.

Get audit-ready. Stay audit-ready.

Two steps. Type 1 includes your first examination, and Type 2 examinations are arranged with a partner auditor when you choose to run one. Type 2 runs on a 12-month term.

SOC 2 Type 1

Get audit-ready

$4,000one time

  • First Type 1 examination included, auditor fee in the price
  • Thirteen policies drafted from your stack
  • Evidence binder with control mapping
  • Audit-ready starting at about a week

SOC 2 Type 2

Stay audit-ready

$600per month

First year available as one $6,000 invoice, two months free versus paying monthly. Then $600 a month.

  • Examination eligibility after a 3-month observation window
  • Guided monthly evidence check-ins with reminders
  • Deviation tracking and evidence replay
  • 12-month term

On-demand examinations

You can run a Type 2 examination whenever you need one, through one of our partner audit firms. One click from your dashboard once your observation window completes, same independent partner auditor opinion. Active subscribers only, and we quote it with you then.

Get started

Begin with Type 1; subscribe to Type 2 from your dashboard once your report is issued. Polara Labs is not a CPA firm. SOC 2 examinations are performed by independent licensed U.S. CPA firms.

Independence is architected, not promised.

AICPA professional standards require that auditors stay structurally independent from the entity they examine. When one platform generates policies and also drafts audit conclusions, that independence doesn't exist, and neither does the report. Every architectural decision we made was designed to prevent exactly that.

True auditor independence

Independent partner auditors, licensed U.S. CPA firms. They receive your package and conduct their own examination. We never draft conclusions or influence findings. Firm identity is available on request before you sign the engagement letter.

Unique to you policies

Every policy is generated from your actual data. Two Polara Labs customers comparing policy suites would find completely different documents, because they are completely different companies.

Real evidence, verified

Screenshots you took. Configs you exported. Documents you provided. We map evidence to controls, we don't fabricate it. A missing control shows as a gap, not a fiction.

Your data stays yours

No shared spreadsheets. No unsecured links. No bulk exports. Role gated access, audit logged, encrypted in S3 with presigned URLs only you and your auditor can use.

Read the full independence and ethics commitment

Questions founders actually ask.

Scope, pricing, timing and what the auditor does.

The basics
B2B SaaS startups, usually between two and fifty people. Running a cloud product, handling customer data, closing enterprise deals that require SOC 2. If the founder is the one reading this, you're the target. We are not for Fortune 500s with 200 person compliance teams. We are for the founder who just got the security questionnaire and needs to move fast.
Two pieces. $4,000 one time for your Type 1 audit report, with the first examination and auditor fee included. Then $600 a month on a 12-month term (or put the first year on a single $6,000 invoice, two months free versus paying monthly) to subscribe to Type 2, which adds continuous monitoring and guided evidence collection. After a three-month observation period you become eligible for your Type 2 examination, which is arranged on demand through one of our partner audit firms and quoted then. The intake, gap analysis, and remediation tooling are free to use.
Type 2 isn't a one-time thing the way Type 1 is. It's an examination of your controls operating consistently over a window of time, which means we have to actually be watching your controls during that window. A subscription matches that work: continuous evidence collection, monthly check-ins, and deviation tracking. The examination itself stays a separate purchase you make when you want it, so you are never paying a monthly fee toward an opinion you have not asked for yet.
You keep access through the end of whatever you already paid for. Type 2 runs on a 12-month term, so if you cancel, you keep access through the end of that term. After that, Type 2 features (monthly check-ins, deviation tracking, the active observation window) pause, but your already-issued Type 1 audit report and any completed Type 2 reports stay accessible forever. Resume by restarting the subscription.
You get a seven-day grace period. Day zero we email you and show a banner in your dashboard. Day three we send a reminder. If your card is still failing on day seven, Type 2 features pause until you update your payment method. Your Type 1 audit report is never affected. The seven-day window is deterministic on our end regardless of what Stripe's retry schedule is doing in the background.
Because we built Polara Labs for one narrow slice of the market, startups under fifty people, and we don't have the overhead the bigger platforms carry. No enterprise sales team, no SF office, no marketing blitz. Built the pipeline ourselves and cut the fat. Big platforms are optimized for companies that can pay $25K a year without blinking. That isn't you right now, and we don't want it to be us either.
You outgrow us when the tool stops fitting your company, not on any deadline we set. Usually that's around 100 people, or once you pick up a second compliance framework like ISO 27001, or the moment you hire a dedicated GRC lead. At that point Vanta, Drata, or a bigger enterprise GRC is a better fit than us, and we will tell you. Your audit history and policies move with you. We are a launchpad, not a lifer subscription. That is the whole point.
Type 1, Type 2, and the timeline
Type 1 proves your controls are designed correctly at a single point in time. You can get one starting at about a week. Enterprise buyers usually accept it to unlock a deal. Type 2 proves your controls actually worked over an observation period. Polara Labs locks your first Type 2 observation at three months, the minimum first-year window under SOC 2, so customers move toward their first Type 2 examination on a predictable schedule. The Type 2 subscription runs continuously during and after that window on a 12-month term.
Yes, if you're an active Type 2 subscriber. You can run a Type 2 examination whenever you need one, through one of our partner audit firms, starting the day your observation window completes. One click from your dashboard, same independent partner auditor opinion, and we quote the examination with you at that point. If you're a Type 1 customer who never subscribed to Type 2, the Type 2 path starts with a subscription, not an on-demand purchase.
Once your Type 1 audit report is issued, the dashboard offers the Type 2 subscription with monthly or first-year-on-one-invoice billing. Your assessment data, policies, evidence, and audit history all carry over, so there is nothing to re-enter. The three-month observation window starts the day your subscription activates, and we email you the day it completes so you can buy the examination.
Type 1 goes audit-ready starting at about a week of focused work. Intake takes an afternoon, a few hours of focused work, not days. Evidence upload and remediation depend on how prepared you are, but the platform tells you exactly what is needed and tracks progress live. Once you hit 100 percent, auditor review typically takes a few business days. Type 2 then runs on top, quietly, through its observation window.
Yes. The intake reads like a founder survey in plain English, not a GRC questionnaire. The dashboard tells you what to fix and what to upload in order. If something needs engineering help, it says so plainly. You do not need a compliance manager, a security engineer, or a consultant on retainer to finish a SOC 2 with Polara Labs.
Trust and auditor independence
Yes. We generate the full policy set, control matrix, and evidence checklist that auditors expect, then hand the entire package to an independent partner auditor, a licensed U.S. CPA firm. You implement the controls we outline. The auditor does the examination. We stay aligned until Type 1 is issued and then continue through Type 2.
The industry had a recent high profile scandal where a venture backed compliance platform was caught producing hundreds of SOC 2 reports with identical boilerplate and pre written auditor conclusions. We built the opposite. Our gap analysis is a deterministic rules engine, not AI. Policies are generated from your data and fail loudly rather than fabricating claims. Examinations are performed by independent partner auditors with no referral fees. Every report is unique because every company is different. See the ethics section above for the full architecture.
They are independent partner auditors, licensed U.S. CPA firms. Polara Labs is not a CPA firm and does not issue the opinion. The specific firm on your engagement is disclosed to you on request before you sign the engagement letter, so you can verify their credentials with the state board. If you already work with a CPA firm that meets AICPA independence requirements, we can onboard them.
Your data stays in the pipeline. The AI we use to draft policies processes information to generate output but does not store or train on it. Evidence files are encrypted at rest in S3 with presigned URLs, and only you and your assigned auditor can access them. Each engagement is isolated. No cross customer learning.
Every policy is built from your actual assessment answers and uploaded evidence, not templates with your logo swapped in. The system traces each claim back to your data. If your evidence doesn't support a statement, generation fails rather than guessing. You can edit any policy before it reaches the auditor, and the auditor independently reviews everything before signing. Two layers of human verification on top of the AI output.
Getting started and leaving
Nothing. Really. You don't need existing policies, you don't need a GRC hire, you don't need to know what SOC 2 means. You just need ten minutes to answer questions about your company, your cloud provider, the tools you use, and how you handle customer data. The platform takes it from there and tells you exactly what to do next.
You keep everything. Your audit reports are yours, the policies we generated for you are yours, your evidence is yours. Export the whole package and walk, in the formats the next platform can read. Nothing is held back to make leaving harder, and you do not have to ask us for a copy of your own file.
We generate policies, evidence checklists, and remediation guidance. You stay responsible for implementing controls and owning the audit outcome. Before final documents reach your auditor, it is a good idea to have qualified internal or external reviewers look at them, the same way you would with any compliance output. We never represent our output as a substitute for legal or professional advice.

You got the email.
We built the pipeline.

$4,000 one time, with your first examination by an independent partner auditor included in that price. Type 2 keeps you audit-ready after it. Every price is on this page.

Book a call
Set up in an afternoon · audit-ready starting at about a week · close the deal this week
polara labs

Polara Labs builds both sides of the SOC 2 audit: the readiness platform startups use to earn their report, and the practice OS audit firms use to run the examination. Prices are published on each product page.

© 2026 Polara Labs Inc. All rights reserved.Contact: founder@polaralabs.com

Polara Labs is not a CPA firm. SOC 2 examinations are performed by independent licensed U.S. CPA firms in our network; the audit opinion is theirs alone and is not regulated by Polara Labs. We generate custom policies, evidence checklists, and remediation guidance. You remain responsible for implementing controls and owning audit outcomes. Replace placeholders with your actual controls and have final documents reviewed by qualified professionals before your audit.