SOC 2 Compliance Cost: What Startups Actually Pay in 2026

Some startups spend $20,000 on SOC 2. Others spend $200,000. Both can end up with the same report.

The difference isn't the auditor, the size of the company, or the quality of the outcome. It's almost entirely planning. Startups that understand what drives cost before they start the process consistently spend less, move faster, and avoid the expensive surprises that derail unprepared teams.

This guide breaks down what SOC 2 compliance actually costs in 2026—not the optimistic estimates you'll find on vendor landing pages, but the real numbers based on what startups are paying across different approaches, scopes, and timelines.

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What SOC 2 Is (and Why It Matters for Startups)

SOC 2 is an auditing framework developed by the AICPA (American Institute of Certified Public Accountants) based on Trust Services Criteria. It evaluates whether your organization has the controls in place to protect customer data across five categories: Security, Availability, Processing Integrity, Confidentiality, and Privacy.

Most startups pursue SOC 2 for one reason: enterprise customers require it. A single enterprise deal worth $200,000 or more often cannot close without a valid SOC 2 report in hand. Security questionnaires from procurement teams increasingly list SOC 2 as a prerequisite, not a preference.

Type I vs. Type II is the first cost decision you'll make. A Type I report attests that your controls are designed correctly at a point in time. A Type II report attests that those controls operated effectively over an observation period—typically 6 to 12 months. Type I is faster and cheaper to obtain, but enterprise buyers increasingly require Type II. Many startups use Type I as a stepping stone, planning for Type II from the start.

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The Full Cost Breakdown

There is no single number that applies universally, but the ranges below reflect what the market actually looks like in 2026 for a startup with 10–100 employees pursuing SOC 2 Type II with Security as the primary trust service criterion.

Direct Costs

Auditor Fees

The audit itself is the most visible cost. Fees vary significantly based on auditor reputation, your company size, the number of trust service criteria included, and whether this is a first-time or renewal audit.

Auditor Type	Type I	Type II
Boutique / regional CPA firm	$8,000–$18,000	$15,000–$30,000
Mid-market audit firm	$18,000–$30,000	$30,000–$50,000
Big 4 / top-tier firm	$40,000–$80,000	$60,000–$150,000

Big 4 reports carry more brand recognition, but most enterprise buyers accept reports from reputable mid-market firms. Unless your customers are specifically requesting a name-brand auditor, paying a premium for a Big 4 firm rarely changes the outcome of the deal.

Compliance Tooling

Automated compliance platforms reduce internal labor and evidence collection overhead significantly. The major platforms—Vanta, Drata, Secureframe, Tugboat Logic—charge based on seat count and integrations.

Tool Category	Annual Cost
Compliance automation platform (Vanta, Drata, etc.)	$7,000–$20,000/yr
Vulnerability scanning (Qualys, Tenable, etc.)	$3,000–$8,000/yr
Endpoint detection (CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, etc.)	$2,000–$6,000/yr
SIEM / log management	$2,000–$10,000/yr
Password manager (enterprise tier)	$500–$2,000/yr

Not every tool is required for every startup. Your existing infrastructure matters—a company already running AWS with CloudTrail enabled, GitHub with branch protections, and an MDM solution for endpoints will need fewer new tools than one starting from scratch.

Readiness Consulting

Many startups hire a consultant or fractional CISO to prepare for the audit. This covers gap assessment, policy writing, control implementation guidance, and audit preparation.

Engagement Type	Cost Range
Gap assessment only (one-time)	$3,000–$8,000
Full readiness engagement (policy + controls)	$15,000–$40,000
Fractional CISO (per month)	$4,000–$12,000/mo
Managed compliance service	$3,000–$8,000/mo

The range is wide because scope varies enormously. A startup with mature engineering practices and existing security tooling needs far less hand-holding than one building controls from scratch.

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Hidden Costs Most Startups Miss

The line items above are predictable. The costs below are where budgets break.

Internal Engineering Time

Someone on your team is doing the implementation work. Every hour a senior engineer spends configuring logging pipelines, writing runbooks, or remediating findings is an hour not spent on product. For a senior engineer billing at $150–$200/hr equivalent, 200 hours of compliance work—a conservative estimate for a startup starting from scratch—represents $30,000–$40,000 in opportunity cost.

Productivity Loss During Evidence Collection

Auditors request evidence. Evidence requires people to gather it. During active audit periods, expect 5–15 hours per week of distraction across your engineering and operations teams. Over a 3-month audit window, that's a meaningful drain on throughput.

Policy and Documentation Overhead

SOC 2 requires documented policies for information security, acceptable use, access control, incident response, vendor management, and more. Writing these from scratch takes time. Buying templates helps, but customization and employee acknowledgment workflows add friction. Budget 40–80 hours of non-engineering time minimum.

Remediation Costs

Your gap assessment will surface findings. Some are quick fixes (enable MFA on a forgotten admin account). Others are expensive (implement a centralized SIEM, migrate to encrypted storage, rebuild access control architecture). Startups regularly discover $10,000–$50,000 in infrastructure remediation they didn't anticipate.

Ongoing Annual Costs

SOC 2 Type II is not a one-time project. Annual renewal audits, continuous monitoring tooling, and periodic policy reviews are permanent operational costs. Budget $15,000–$40,000 per year ongoing after the initial certification.

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Type I vs. Type II: The Cost Tradeoff

Type I reports are cheaper and faster. Type II reports are what most buyers actually want.

Factor	Type I	Type II
Audit duration	1–4 weeks	3–6 months observation + audit
Typical total cost	$25,000–$60,000	$50,000–$150,000
Enterprise buyer acceptance	Limited	Broadly accepted
Time to first report	6–12 weeks	9–18 months

The strategic use of Type I is to accelerate deals while Type II is in progress. You get a report you can share today while building the observation period that enables a Type II report 6–12 months later. This works well when a prospect needs something now but can wait for Type II renewal.

If your enterprise pipeline requires SOC 2 and you're more than 6 months from a Type II report, starting with Type I can unlock revenue while the observation period runs. Just be transparent with buyers about the timeline to Type II.

The risk: some buyers won't accept Type I at all. Before investing in Type I as a bridge strategy, confirm with your actual prospects what they require.

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Timeline Directly Affects Cost

A 90-day rush to SOC 2 costs more than a 6-month planned approach. Here's why.

Compressed timelines require:

• External consultants working at full engagement (not fractional)
• Prioritizing remediation over optimization, which leads to more expensive quick fixes
• Engineering resources pulled off product work with urgency premium
• Auditors who can accommodate expedited schedules (fewer firms, higher rates)

Realistic timeline benchmarks:

Approach	Timeline to Type II	Total Cost Range
Managed service (full support)	90–120 days	$60,000–$120,000
Consultant-led (partial support)	4–8 months	$50,000–$100,000
DIY (internal only)	6–18 months	$30,000–$80,000

The managed service path appears most expensive at first glance but often delivers the best cost-per-outcome when internal time and risk of audit failure are factored in. A failed or delayed audit at month six costs more in lost deals than the difference between service tiers.

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DIY vs. Consultant vs. Managed Service

Each approach has a legitimate use case. The wrong choice for your situation adds cost and extends timelines.

DIY

Best for startups with a dedicated security-minded engineer, existing cloud-native infrastructure, and time to invest. Compliance automation platforms handle much of the evidence collection and policy tracking. The gap assessment is typically done with the tooling's built-in readiness checks.

Pros: Lowest cash outlay, deep internal knowledge built, control over pacing. Cons: Requires significant internal time, high risk of scope missteps, slower without expertise, audit prep often underestimated.

Realistic total cost: $30,000–$60,000 (cash), plus 300–600 hours of internal time.

Consultant-Led

A readiness consultant or fractional CISO guides your internal team through the process. They write policies, identify gaps, direct remediation, and prepare audit evidence. Your team executes under their guidance.

Pros: Faster than pure DIY, less expensive than full managed service, builds internal capability. Cons: Quality varies widely across consultants, still requires significant internal bandwidth.

Realistic total cost: $50,000–$100,000 all-in.

Managed Compliance Service

A managed service provider handles the end-to-end process: gap assessment, policy development, control implementation, tooling configuration, audit coordination, and evidence preparation. Your team provides access and answers questions.

Pros: Fastest path to audit-ready, minimal internal distraction, predictable timeline. Cons: Higher monthly cost, requires trust in the provider's process.

Realistic total cost: $60,000–$120,000 for first-year Type II. See PlatOps pricing for current managed compliance rates.

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How to Reduce Your Total Compliance Cost

Cost reduction in SOC 2 comes from scope control, preparation quality, and automation—not from cutting corners on controls.

Start with a gap assessment. Before committing to any approach, understand where you stand. A proper gap assessment against the AICPA Trust Services Criteria identifies which controls you already have in place, which need remediation, and which are out of scope entirely. Starting without this is the most common cause of cost overruns. Use our SOC 2 Readiness Checklist to get a preliminary read on your current posture.

Scope to Security only (initially). SOC 2 requires only the Security criterion. Availability, Processing Integrity, Confidentiality, and Privacy are optional add-ons. Each additional criterion adds cost to the audit and increases the control surface you must maintain. Start with Security. Add criteria in future audit cycles if customer demand warrants.

Leverage existing controls. If you're on AWS, you likely already have CloudTrail, CloudWatch, and IAM. If you use GitHub, you have code review and branch protection controls. Map what you have before assuming you need to build everything from scratch. Many startups are 40–60% compliant before they begin formal work.

Use automation for evidence collection. Manual evidence collection is expensive and error-prone. Compliance platforms like Vanta or Drata integrate with your AWS, GitHub, GSuite, and other systems to continuously collect evidence. The annual cost ($7,000–$20,000) is almost always lower than the internal time it replaces.

Choose your auditor based on fit, not name recognition. Mid-market CPA firms with dedicated SOC 2 practices deliver the same legally valid report as Big 4 firms at significantly lower cost. Confirm the firm has relevant experience in your industry and ask for client references.

Avoid rush timelines. If you have 6 months before a major deal closes, start now with a realistic schedule. Compressed timelines force expensive tradeoffs.

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When SOC 2 ROI Is Immediate

SOC 2 is not always the right investment at every stage. If your customers are individual consumers, early-stage SMBs, or companies that have never asked about your security posture, the immediate ROI is limited.

The ROI calculus changes completely in enterprise sales.

A startup that closes a single $1.5M ARR deal that was blocked by the absence of SOC 2 recovers the entire compliance investment in that one contract. This is not a hypothetical scenario—it's a pattern that repeats consistently. One healthcare SaaS company using PlatOps-managed compliance closed their first enterprise contract within 60 days of receiving their SOC 2 report after a year of stalled procurement conversations. See the full case study here.

SOC 2 makes financial sense when:

• You are actively losing deals to the absence of a report
• Enterprise contracts in your pipeline are worth more than $200,000 ARR
• Your sales cycle routinely hits security questionnaire bottlenecks
• You're expanding into regulated industries (healthcare, finance, government)

SOC 2 may not be the priority when:

• Your current customer base has not requested it
• You are pre-product-market fit with limited revenue to fund the project
• A lighter alternative (e.g., annual penetration test, CAIQ response) would satisfy current prospects

If you're unsure where you fall, start with a gap assessment to understand both your compliance distance and your realistic total cost before committing to a path.

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What to Do Next

The most expensive thing you can do is start without clarity on scope, current posture, or the timeline your buyers actually require. The second most expensive thing is waiting until a deal is about to close to start the process.

A proper gap assessment—whether internal or with outside help—takes 2–4 weeks and gives you the information you need to make a defensible budget decision.

PlatOps helps startups achieve SOC 2 compliance in 90 days through a managed service that covers readiness assessment through audit coordination. Get a free assessment to understand your specific costs, current control gaps, and the fastest path to a report your enterprise buyers will accept.

For teams that want to start with self-assessment, the SOC 2 Readiness Checklist covers all 61 AICPA Common Criteria controls across your cloud, identity, endpoint, and operational environments.

If you're evaluating the full compliance service model, review the SOC 2 Compliance service page for a detailed breakdown of what the engagement includes and how the timeline works.