How Much Does a SOC 2 Audit Cost? (2026 Breakdown)

How much does a SOC 2 audit cost?

A SOC 2 audit fee alone usually runs $10,000 to $60,000 in the US: roughly $5,000 to $25,000 for a Type 1 and $15,000 to $70,000 for a Type 2 from a specialist CPA firm. All in, counting readiness work, tooling, and a penetration test, most startups budget $25,000 to $80,000 in year one.

Last updated July 2026.

That spread is wide because "SOC 2 audit cost" is really two numbers pretending to be one. There is the fee the CPA firm invoices you, and there is the total program cost, which is the fee plus everything you had to buy and do to survive the fee. Buyers get burned when they budget for the first number and get billed for the second. This guide separates them, shows what each line item actually costs in 2026, and explains which decisions move the total the most.

The SOC 2 cost breakdown, line by line

Here is what a typical first SOC 2 looks like for a 30 to 150 person US SaaS company, with the ranges reputable sources are publishing for 2025 and 2026. Treat the low end as a lean, Security-only scope with a specialist auditor, and the high end as a broad scope with a national firm.

Add those up and the published totals start to make sense. Drata reports typical first-year spend of roughly $28,000 for a startup, about $75,000 for a mid-size company, and $180,000 or more for an enterprise. Vanta puts the all-in range at $10,000 to $80,000 or more. Secureframe, which counts consulting-heavy programs, goes as high as $80,000 to $350,000. The sources disagree mostly because they draw the boundary of "cost" in different places, and because a 25-person company with a single AWS account and a 400-person company with three data residency regions are not remotely the same audit.

What actually drives the number

Four decisions explain most of the variance between a $25,000 program and a $150,000 one.

• Which Trust Services Criteria you scope. Security (the Common Criteria) is mandatory and is the cheapest possible scope. Every additional criterion you add, Availability, Confidentiality, Processing Integrity, or Privacy, adds testing hours. Only scope what a customer has actually asked for in writing.
• Which tier of firm you hire. This is the biggest single lever. A specialist SOC 2 practice and a Big Four office issue reports with the same AICPA standing, but the Big Four quote for a comparable Type 2 can be several times higher. Enterprise buyers almost never require a specific firm. Ask before you assume they do.
• Type 1 versus Type 2, and the audit period. A three-month Type 2 window costs less to test than a twelve-month one, because the auditor samples across the period. If you are unsure which report you need, our guide to SOC 2 Type 1 vs Type 2 walks through the trade-off.
• How ready you are on day one. Gaps found during fieldwork are the most expensive gaps there are. They stall the engagement, burn auditor hours, and can push you into a second observation window. Gaps found before the auditor arrives are just Tuesday.

The cost that never shows up on an invoice

Screenshot-hunting is the real tax. Engineers pulling access logs, exporting change tickets, and chasing signed policy acknowledgements is unbilled work that still costs you a quarter of a roadmap. This is where SOC 2 compliance software pays for itself: mapping controls to the criteria once, collecting evidence automatically as systems run, and flagging gaps while they are still cheap to fix. Scrutineer does the readiness half; an accredited independent auditor still performs the examination and issues the report.

Why is SOC 2 so expensive?

Three reasons. Only a licensed CPA firm can issue a SOC 2 attestation, so you are buying regulated professional labor at professional rates. A Type 2 requires testing controls across months, not a single day. And the audit fee is the smallest part: readiness, tooling, a pen test, and hundreds of internal hours usually cost more than the auditor does.

None of that is padding. What you can control is how much of it is avoidable rework. The audit fee is only part of the budget, and teams that keep a read-only view of cloud and SaaS spend tend to catch the second and third redundant security tool before it lands in the compliance line item.

How much does a SOC 2 audit cost for a startup?

A seed to Series A startup with a single web app, a small AWS footprint, and Security-only scope typically pays $10,000 to $25,000 for a Type 2 audit fee, and lands somewhere near $25,000 to $50,000 all in for year one including tooling and a scoped-down penetration test. Under 20 people, the low end is realistic.

The way startups blow this budget is scope creep: adding Availability and Confidentiality because they sound thorough, hiring a consultant to write policies that a template plus an hour of judgment would have covered, or booking a twelve-month observation window when the customer would have accepted three. Every one of those is a choice, not a requirement.

Is a SOC 2 Type 1 cheaper than Type 2?

Yes, usually by roughly half. Type 1 tests control design at a single point in time, so there is no observation period and far fewer samples to pull. Type 2 tests operating effectiveness across three to twelve months, which multiplies testing hours. But Type 1 does not satisfy most enterprise buyers, so paying for it can mean paying twice.

The honest calculus: if a specific deal will close on a Type 1 today, buy it. If you are doing it to feel like you made progress, put the money toward audit readiness and start the Type 2 observation window instead. Many companies skip Type 1 entirely and are fine.

Is penetration testing included in SOC 2 audit cost?

No. A penetration test is almost always a separate engagement with a separate vendor, billed separately. Budget $5,000 to $30,000 depending on scope, with a single-app SaaS at the low end. The Trust Services Criteria do not name pen testing explicitly, but auditors and enterprise customers routinely expect an annual test as evidence.

How much does the annual SOC 2 renewal cost?

Renewals typically run about 75 to 90 percent of the first-year audit fee when you stay with the same firm, since scoping and system understanding carry over. Add ongoing tooling and an annual pen test and most companies land at roughly $15,000 to $40,000 per year in steady state, per Drata's maintenance figures.

Renewal is where continuous compliance shows up in the P&L rather than in a slide. If evidence accumulates on its own throughout the year, the second audit is a review. If it does not, you pay the readiness cost again, every single year, in engineering time you cannot invoice anyone for.

Can we do a SOC 2 audit ourselves?

You cannot audit yourself. SOC 2 is an attestation under AICPA standards, and only an independent licensed CPA firm can perform the examination and issue the report. What you absolutely can do in-house is the readiness work: scoping, control mapping, policy writing, and evidence collection. That is where the savings are.

How long does a SOC 2 audit take?

Fieldwork itself is short: about two to six weeks for a Type 1 and three to six weeks for a Type 2 once the observation period closes. The long pole is everything before it. Readiness takes one to five months depending on your starting posture, and a Type 2 then needs a three to twelve month observation window on top.

Is SOC 2 worth the cost?

If enterprise deals are stalling in security review, yes, and the math is not close. A single mid-five-figure contract that unblocks pays for the entire first-year program. SOC 2 also collapses the questionnaire treadmill: one report answers what would otherwise be dozens of bespoke spreadsheets. If no customer has asked, wait.

How to budget without getting surprised

Get three quotes from specialist firms, not one. Ask each explicitly whether readiness, the report bridge letter, and remediation support are inside or outside the quoted fee, because that alone can swing the invoice by $20,000. Scope Security-only unless a customer contract names another criterion. Then be brutally honest about your starting posture, because pre-audit readiness is the one variable you fully control and the one that decides whether your first SOC 2 costs $30,000 or $90,000.