What SOC 2 actually costs
The vendors who sell SOC 2 publish what an audit costs and hide what they charge. Here is the whole invoice, line by line.
How much does SOC 2 cost? Through Polara Labs a Type 1 is $4,000 one time, and that includes the examination and the fee for the independent partner auditor. Staying compliant afterwards is $600 per month, and each Type 2 examination is $5,000.
Elsewhere the same outcome is quoted higher and vaguer, and the numbers below come from the vendors’ own pages rather than from us. Almost nobody will give you their own price without a call first.
Search the question and the first page of results belongs to companies that sell compliance software. The ranges they publish are wide, and every one of them is about somebody else’s invoice. If you want the sequencing question first, Type 1 versus Type 2 covers which one your buyer is asking for.
What the invoice is made of
A SOC 2 has two costs, always, no matter who you buy it from. Conflating them is what makes the published ranges so wide and so useless.
- The platform fee
- Software that collects evidence, tracks controls, writes policies and assembles the package. This is the part vendors sell.
A single quoted number for SOC 2 can mean either one, or both, and the difference is most of the money. Here is ours. The platform fee and the auditor engagement fee arrive as one number, and what a SOC 2 auditor actually charges breaks down what the second one is made of.
| What you are buying | Price | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| SOC 2 Type 1 | $4,000 | Platform, gap analysis, thirteen policies written from your own stack, the evidence binder, and the first examination including the auditor engagement fee |
| Type 2 subscription | $600 per month | Continuous evidence collection, monthly check-ins and deviation tracking, on a 12-month term |
| Type 2 subscription, first year up front | $6,000 | One invoice for the first year, two months free versus paying monthly. The subscription continues at $600 per month afterwards |
| Type 2 examination | $5,000 | Each examination, including your first. Available once the 3-month observation window completes |
The auditor fee sits inside that Type 1 number rather than arriving as a second invoice later. That is the part most quotes leave out, and it is the bigger of the two.
Nobody else publishes their price
This is not a rhetorical flourish. Every one of these was opened and read on the date shown.
- Vanta lists four plans on its pricing page and no dollar figure. The call to action is to request personalized pricing. Source, checked 2026-07-30.
- Secureframe lists three plans on its pricing page and no dollar figure. Each one links to a quote request. Source, checked 2026-07-30.
- Drata has no public pricing page. The URL serves the homepage, where the calls to action are to contact sales or book a demo. Source, checked 2026-07-30.
- Suralink publishes no price, stating that every company and team has different needs and inviting prospects to reach out. Source, checked 2026-07-30.
Now the same companies on the subject of what you should expect to pay, on pages that are confident to the dollar:
- Drata estimates a SOC 2 Type 1 audit at $7,500 to $15,000 and a Type 2 at $12,000 to $20,000, and puts a small startup first-year total at $25,000 or more. Source, checked 2026-07-30.
- Vanta states that the fees for a SOC 2 audit range between $10K and $50K. Source, checked 2026-07-30.
When every seller hides its price, the only public numbers come from parties with an interest in the number being large. That is how a vendor ends up publishing a confident first-year total for a small startup while never publishing what it charges for its own product.
What a year actually looks like
Year one is the Type 1 at $4,000. If an enterprise customer needs Type 2 as well, you add the subscription and one examination. Scope drives the rest, and a team under twenty people has less of it to cover: what Type 1 actually requires walks through the decisions that move the number.
For comparison, independent published figures for the same outcome:
- Linford and Company, a CPA firm performing SOC 2 examinations, puts the range at $20,000 to $150,000 with a median around $30,000. Source, checked 2026-07-30.
- LowerPlane publishes $4,995 a year for its platform and states that auditor fees are separate, paid directly to an auditor it introduces, at a rate it puts at $8,000 to $15,000 for SOC 2. Source, checked 2026-07-30.
The obvious objection
Auditor fees, where anyone publishes them at all, run higher than our entire price. Drata’s own Type 1 audit range starts above what we charge for everything, first examination included. So ours must be missing something. That is a fair thing to think, and the people who publish the higher numbers say it out loud:
- One published practitioner breakdown puts a Security-only Type 2 at 60 to 80 auditor hours, at partner rates of $250 to $350 per hour and staff rates of $100 to $175, giving a stated floor near $9,000. Source, checked 2026-07-30.
- Linford and Company warns buyers to be careful when a compliance tool has a partner audit firm with a set fee far below other bids, citing a case where one firm issued the same form report to every client with only the names changed. Source, checked 2026-07-30.
The answer is not that our auditors are cheaper people. It is that most of an auditor’s hours on a small engagement go into chasing evidence that was never organized: asking for a screenshot, receiving the wrong one, asking again.
When the package arrives complete, indexed and mapped to criteria, the examination is shorter and the fee reflects the work rather than the wrangling. Whether a cheap audit is legitimate takes that objection apart properly, including how to check a firm with its state board.
Verify it rather than taking our word for it. The firm on your engagement is disclosed on request before you sign the engagement letter, and every U.S. CPA firm is searchable in its state board’s public license register.3 Our head to head comparison sets out where we are genuinely a worse fit than the incumbents, which is the other half of an honest price argument.
Polara Labs is not a CPA firm. SOC 2 examinations are performed by independent licensed U.S. CPA firms.
How to compare quotes honestly
- Ask what the auditor fee is, separately. If a vendor cannot tell you, the quote is not comparable to anything. Here is what that number is made of.
- Ask whether the first examination is included or billed on top once you are already committed.
- Ask about year two. Renewal is where compliance pricing moves, and the second year is the one that decides what this really costs.
- Ask what happens to your evidence if you leave. Work that cannot be exported is work you will pay for twice.
Questions
Is the auditor fee included in the price?
What does SOC 2 cost every year after the first one?
Why is this so much less than the figures other vendors publish?
Does a lower price mean a weaker report?
Sources
Get audit-ready without a compliance team.
$4,000 one time for SOC 2 Type 1, with the first examination and the auditor engagement fee included. audit-ready starting at about a week.
Get startedPolara Labs is not a CPA firm. SOC 2 examinations are performed by independent licensed U.S. CPA firms.