Vanta vs Drata: published prices, team size and the audit

What each one publishes about price

Both websites stop short of a number. Vanta’s pricing page names the plans. Drata’s plans page does the same:

• Vanta lists four plans on its pricing page, Essentials, Plus, Professional and Enterprise, with no dollar figure, and the call to action is to get personalized pricing. Source.
• Drata’s plans page lists Foundation, Advanced and Enterprise compliance plans with no dollar figure. Foundation covers up to 50 FTEs and one pre-mapped framework. Source.

The numbers live on AWS Marketplace, where each vendor sells a 12-month contract billed through the buyer’s AWS account. The listings are shaped differently. Vanta sells packages and prices extra modules on their own lines. Drata sells a platform fee and then one line per framework:

• The Vanta listing also prices add-on modules on separate lines, including Trust Center, Questionnaire Automation, Third Party Risk Management and an AWS FTR module. Source.
• The same Drata listing prices every other framework it shows, including ISO 27001, HIPAA and PCI DSS, at $7,500 each for 12 months, adds Trust Center and Risk Management modules on separate lines, and has no line for an audit. Source.

Take one SOC 2 program on the per-framework listing. Its platform fee and its SOC 2 line come to $32,500 a year. That buys room for 100 people. The lower figure in the takeaway buys room for 20. Compare like with like before you compare the totals.

What the audit adds on top

Neither listing includes the examination. A SOC 2 report is issued by a licensed CPA firm,¹ so on either platform the audit is a second contract. Both vendors publish what they expect that contract to cost:

• None of the ten lines on the Vanta listing is an audit or an auditor fee, and its overview states that pricing is tiered by company size and program complexity. Source.
• 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.
• 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.
• Drata gives a scenario for a startup of 25 employees with a total cost of about $28,000, covering a boutique audit, a compliance platform and a penetration test. Source.

The two estimates overlap. Neither binds the firm you hire. Your scope and the length of your observation window set the real number. The auditor fee guide explains what moves that number.

What buyers report paying

List prices are where a negotiation starts. One purchasing service publishes what its own customers paid for each platform:

• Vendr, a software buying service, reports that the median buyer pays $20,000 per year for Vanta, based on data from 378 purchases. Source.
• Vendr, a software buying service, reports that the median buyer pays $24,934 per year for Drata, based on data from 236 purchases. Source.

Read those as Vendr’s data, not as prices either vendor offers. They cover purchases Vendr handled, across whatever mix of plans, headcounts and modules those buyers chose. Use them to sanity check a quote, nothing more.

By team size

This is where the two listings disagree most, and it decides more than any feature.

• Up to 20 people. Vanta prints the lower software figure for your band. Drata’s platform fee is sized for a larger team than yours.
• 21 to 100 people. Drata’s listing still covers you at the printed figure. Vanta’s listing does not print your band, so you are working from a quote.
• Over 100 people. Both price you on a quote. Ask each for the same scope, in writing, and compare line by line.

Headcount is not the only input. A second framework changes the math on both, in different ways: on Drata it is another line, and on Vanta it depends on the package.

Where Vanta wins

Vanta is the larger company by its own figures, and it prices breadth into its packages. If you need several frameworks this year, that is a real advantage.

• Vanta’s own comparison page against Delve states that Vanta has 16,000+ customers, that 20,000+ audits have been completed through Vanta, and that it works with a network of AICPA peer-reviewed audit firms. Source.
• Vanta’s AWS Marketplace listing describes automated evidence collection across 35+ frameworks, including SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, PCI DSS and GDPR. Source.
• Vanta’s pricing page lists access to Vanta’s auditor network and the ability to bring your own auditor among its plan features, and names no auditor fee. Source.

The scale figures come from a page Vanta wrote to win a comparison. Weigh them that way, and ask any firm in its network for its latest peer review.²

Where Drata wins

Drata’s pricing is easier to model as you grow. The platform fee covers 100 people, and each extra framework is a known line rather than a package change.

• Drata’s plans page states that it is trusted by 8,500+ customers, limits the Foundation plan’s one framework to SOC 2, ISO 27001, Cyber Essentials, HIPAA or GDPR, and includes Audit Hub, a place to work with your auditor, in every plan. Source.

For a team between 20 and 100 people, that makes Drata the only one of the two with a printed figure for your size. Audit Hub also gives you one place to work with the firm you hire.

Who should pick neither

Both are built for a compliance program that grows. Some buyers need less. If one customer asked for one SOC 2 report and you want the audit inside a price you can read today, a platform priced that way fits better. If you have an engineer with time and want no platform, read SOC 2 without a compliance platform.

That first case is ours. Star is $2,000 one time to get audit-ready. Orbit is $7,800 a year, and your SOC 2 Type 2 audit is included in every contract year, performed by an independent partner auditor, a licensed U.S. CPA firm. We sell SOC 2 through to the audit by an independent licensed U.S. CPA firm, ISO 27001 and ISO 42001 readiness for certification, and HIPAA, GDPR, PCI DSS and NIST CSF 2.0 readiness. We publish no customer counts, so if you need a large vendor’s name on a security review, pick one of these two.

The Vanta pricing and Drata pricing pages go deeper on each listing. Weighing a third name? Vanta vs Delve covers it, and the SOC 2 software pricing index lists every published price we could find.