Polara Labs vs Vanta, Drata, and Delve: who signs, and what it costs

Start with the part no platform can do. A SOC 2 report is an opinion, and only an independent licensed CPA firm can issue one. Vanta, Drata, Delve and Polara Labs all sell the work that comes before the opinion. None of them signs it. So the first question for any alternative is which firm signs your report, and whether you can check that firm yourself.

You can. The opinion letter names the firm, and every U.S. CPA firm is listed with its state board of accountancy. How to tell if a SOC 2 report is real walks through the check, and who can perform a SOC 2 audit explains why the answer is only a CPA firm.

If you are here because of Delve

On March 22, 2026, TechCrunch reported that an anonymous Substack author had accused Delve of misleading customers about their compliance. The author alleged, among other things, that Delve produced fake evidence and generated auditor conclusions for firms that rubber stamp reports. Delve disputed the claims. TechCrunch: Delve accused of misleading customers with ‘fake compliance’, read 2026-10-02.

Those are allegations. We have not examined any Delve customer's report, and nothing on this page is a finding about one. Delve has answered in two posts of its own, summarized here with the dates we read them:

• On March 24, 2026, Delve posted that an anonymous Substack had made claims about it that it called false and misleading, stated that it does not sign audit reports, and offered customers a re-audit at no cost by an independent, peer-reviewed, AICPA-accredited SOC 2 auditor. Source, checked 2026-10-02.
• On April 3, 2026, Delve posted that a series of anonymous posts about it relied on fabricated claims and data taken out of context, apologized for the inconvenience, said it fell short of its own standard as it scaled, and listed changes that include rebuilding its auditor network and removing firms that do not meet its standards, complimentary re-audits and penetration tests for active customers, and halting automation that interacts with audit workflows. Source, checked 2026-10-02.

Check the report you already hold

The checks are the same whoever prepared the report. None of them needs Delve, and none of them needs us.

1. Find the firm. The opinion letter at the front of the report, the independent service auditor's report, names the CPA firm that signed it and the date it signed.
2. Look up its license. Search for that firm with the state board of accountancy in the state it names (the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) directory lists every board). A SOC 2 opinion has to come from a licensed CPA firm.
3. Confirm it with the firm. Write to the firm at the address on its license record, not one printed in the report, and ask it to confirm that it issued your report on that date.
4. Read Section 4. In a Type 2, Section 4 usually lists each test the firm performed and what it found. The tests should name your systems, your people and your period. Wording that could describe any company is a fair question to put to the firm.

Your options if a buyer is asking

If the firm checks out, that report is the answer to give your buyer, with the lookup you just did beside it. If it does not, or you would rather not wait to find out, there are two honest routes.

• Take Delve's re-audit. Delve says it will arrange one at no cost, as quoted above. Run the same four checks on the firm it names before you accept.
• Start a new examination. Engage a licensed CPA firm you choose and can check, through any platform or none. A Type 1 can be issued once the controls are in place. A Type 2 needs an observation window first. Switching SOC 2 auditors covers what carries over to a new firm.

We are not in a position to judge any particular report, and we will not try. A report whose firm checks out is the answer to give a buyer who is asking questions. A report whose firm does not check out is a reason to get a new examination before they ask.

What the big GRC platforms sell

The category is sometimes called "compliance automation." The core product is an integration platform plus a control catalog: you connect your cloud, source control and HR system, the platform reads evidence from each, and a dashboard tells you which controls are covered. Policy templates, vendor management, questionnaire answers and trust center hosting usually sit around it.

None of that is the audit. The examination is a separate engagement with a CPA firm, and the fee for it is a separate number from the platform fee unless a vendor says otherwise. What the larger vendors leave off their own websites, beyond one starting figure, is their own price:

• Vanta lists four plans on its pricing page and no dollar figure. The call to action is to request personalized pricing. Source, checked 2026-10-02.
• 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. Source, checked 2026-09-28.
• 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. Source, checked 2026-10-02.
• Delve shows no dollar figure on its homepage, and its calls to action are to book a demo. Source, checked 2026-10-02.

They are willing to estimate what an audit costs you, which is the asymmetry worth noticing:

• 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. Source, checked 2026-10-02.
• 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.

Vanta and Drata do print 12-month prices for their software, on the listing each keeps on AWS Marketplace rather than on its own site. Vanta pricing and Drata pricing quote them with their sources, and SOC 2 software that publishes its pricing sorts eighteen platforms by where their price is printed.

The one-vendor versions of this comparison are the Vanta alternative and Drata alternative pages, and the best SOC 2 software for startups roundup lines up nine of them.

What Polara Labs sells

Polara Labs publishes its first-year SOC 2 price: $9,200 all in, which is $2,000 onboarding plus twelve months at $600 a month, and the first Type 2 audit by an independent licensed U.S. CPA firm is included in the term.

Entry is one payment, chosen at checkout. $2,000 one time gets you audit-ready, and $4,000 one time adds the SOC 2 Type 1 examination and the report on top of the same work, with the independent CPA engagement included in that figure. The Type 2 term can also be paid as a single $6,600 invoice for the first twelve months, so you pay the first 12 months up front and save $600.

Every audit after the first one is arranged on request instead: you ask us for a quote, our team negotiates with independent audit firms on your behalf, and the engagement is quoted before it begins.

Every report issued through Polara can be checked at polaralabs.com/verify from the reference printed on it or the SHA-256 hash of the PDF, with no account. The full cost picture, with the auditor fee separated out, is on how much SOC 2 costs.

Side by side, on what each one publishes

When you should NOT use Polara Labs

We tell people this on sales calls and we'll tell you here. You should use a bigger platform if any of these are true:

• You're past 100 employees, with a full security or GRC function.
• You need HIPAA, PCI DSS, FedRAMP, or several frameworks at once. We cover SOC 2 and ISO 27001, and nothing else.
• You sell to enterprise buyers who require a hosted trust center with continuous monitoring dashboards.
• You have a dedicated security team that lives in the GRC dashboard day-to-day, with workflows for vendor reviews, risk assessments, and quarterly access certifications.

What we mean by "the on-ramp"

Polara Labs is built for the bottom of the ladder: companies handling customer data, two to fifty people, no dedicated compliance hire, with a real deal on the line. When you outgrow us, you graduate to a bigger platform with your audit history intact. The audit history travels with you, because the CPA report is yours, not ours.

We took one job, getting a startup its SOC 2 from a firm it can check, and left everything that wasn't that job out of the price.

Further reading

• SOC 2 Type 1 vs Type 2: which to start with, and when
• What SOC 2 Type 1 actually requires for a SaaS under 20 people
• Is a cheap SOC 2 audit legitimate?