Secureframe pricing: two published floors and the audit

Two published floors that do not agree

Secureframe publishes two price lists, in two places, and they describe different contracts. The website gives a starting figure for a plan. The AWS listing splits the same idea into a platform line and a framework line.

Added up, the two AWS lines come to $15,000 for 12 months. That is double the website’s starting figure. Both can be true at once, because each is a starting figure for its own contract. Neither page says which one applies to you. Ask in writing before you compare quotes.

One thing does agree across both. Neither price list carries an auditor fee.

What each plan includes

The plans differ more in volume than in frameworks. Both of the two lower plans carry a single framework, and the gap shows up in questionnaires, document requests and advanced modules:

• Secureframe’s pricing page lists one compliance framework on both Fundamentals and Complete, 100 AI questionnaire answers a year on Fundamentals against 15,000 on Complete, and a Get a quote button on every plan. Source.

Complete adds advanced third-party risk management, advanced user access reviews, custom integrations and single sign-on connections. Defense adds tooling for the CMMC rules that U.S. defense contractors follow. If you sell to the Department of Defense, that plan is built for you. If you are a startup buying one SOC 2 report, Fundamentals is the plan the starting price describes.

What the audit adds

A SOC 2 report is issued by a licensed CPA firm.¹ Secureframe connects you to firms through its audit partner network, and the firm’s fee is in none of its published prices. Secureframe does publish what it expects that fee to be:

• Secureframe estimates the audit alone at around $5-20k for a SOC 2 Type 1 and $7k-150k on average for a Type 2. Source.
• Secureframe states that a professional SOC 2 readiness assessment typically costs between $10-17,000, and that cost depends on the size of your organization and the scope of your audit. Source.

Put the website floor beside the Type 1 estimate and a first year with a Type 1 report runs between $12,500 and $27,500. That is arithmetic on figures from one company, not a quote. It leaves out any penetration test, any readiness help you buy, and the larger AWS figure. A Type 2 costs more again, because the auditor tests your controls over months rather than on one date.

The auditor fee guide explains what moves the examination fee, and the readiness assessment guide covers the step before it.

What buyers report paying

List prices start a negotiation. One purchasing service publishes what its own customers paid:

• Vendr, a software buying service, reports that the median buyer pays $20,000 per year for Secureframe. Source.

That is Vendr’s data, not a Secureframe price. It covers purchases Vendr handled, across whatever plans and team sizes those buyers had. It sits above both published floors.

Against Vanta and Drata on price

Both larger rivals also print their only figures on AWS Marketplace, so the three listings can be read side by side. They do not cover the same team:

• Vanta’s own AWS Marketplace listing prices its Essentials package at a starting cost of $14,000 for a 12-month contract, for 1 to 20 employees. Source.
• Drata’s own AWS Marketplace listing prices the Drata Platform Fee, with capacity for a 100 FTE organization, at $25,000 for a 12-month contract, and the SOC 2 framework at $7,500 on a separate line. Source.

For a team of 20 or fewer, the Secureframe and Vanta listings sit close together, and Secureframe’s website floor is lower than either. For a team of 21 to 100, Vanta prints nothing for your band. Of the two listings that do, Secureframe’s is the smaller figure, by a wide margin. None of the three includes the audit. The Vanta vs Drata comparison covers the other pair.

Where Secureframe is the better buy

Some buyers should pay for it. These are the cases the published plans support.

• You sell to the U.S. defense market. Defense is a plan built around CMMC paperwork, and we do not sell one.
• You answer a lot of security questionnaires. Complete raises the yearly allowance of AI-drafted answers from 100 questions to 15,000.
• You buy software through AWS. The Marketplace contract bills through your AWS account, with the rest of your cloud spend.
• You want a printed figure from a large vendor. Of the platforms this site compares, Vanta, Drata, Sprinto and Thoropass print no figure on their own websites. Secureframe prints one.

The Secureframe comparison covers the same choice from the product side.

How to get a quote you can compare

A Secureframe quote and any other quote compare cleanly only when they answer the same questions. Ask each vendor, in writing:

• Which plan, which frameworks, and which employee band the figure covers.
• Whether the figure is the website price, the AWS price, or neither.
• Whether any audit fee is inside it, and if not, which firms you can use.
• What the second year costs, and whether the renewal can rise.

Then get the audit quote from the firm itself, and confirm its license with the state board.² The SOC 2 software pricing index sets Secureframe’s floor beside every other published price we could find.

What Polara Labs publishes

Our price sits on our own site, once. Star is $2,000 one time to get audit-ready, and a SOC 2 Type 1 report adds $2,000 with the fee for the independent partner auditor inside it. Orbit is $7,800 a year, and your SOC 2 Type 2 audit is included in every contract year. We do not sell a defense plan, and we publish no customer counts.