SOC 2 costs most startups $20,000–$50,000 all-in in year one — the audit fee is only part of it, alongside a readiness assessment, a GRC platform, and months of engineering time. A Type 1 typically runs ~$13k–40k; a Type 2 ~$20k–50k. With Folksoft’s hands-off, expert-guided approach, most startups reach audit-ready in weeks for a fraction of that — a real GRC analyst plus AICPA-accredited auditors, no dashboard to babysit.
What most startups pay across auditor, tooling, readiness and internal time — for a team of 11–25 on simple infrastructure.
Those are open-market figures. Leave your name and work email and someone from our team will come back to you with your price for this exact scope, or book a call and talk it through.
Indicative ranges based on what early-stage startups typically pay in the US market — your figure depends on scope, cloud footprint and which Trust Services Criteria apply.
Four line items make up a SOC 2 budget. The audit fee — the one everybody quotes — is barely a third of it.
A licensed CPA firm examines your controls and issues the report. Type 1 runs $4,000–$8,000 and Type 2 $6,000–$12,000, both scaling with headcount. Only a CPA firm can issue a SOC 2 report, so this cost never goes away — and it is the part you have least control over.
A gap analysis against the five Trust Services Criteria, plus policy drafting and remediation guidance. It prices on how much infrastructure is in scope, not on headcount. Skipping it is a false economy — walking into an audit unprepared means qualified findings and a second engagement.
An annual licence to collect and store evidence. Most vendors price per employee, so it grows every time you hire — and unlike the audit fee, it renews every single year whether or not you are mid-audit.
The line nobody budgets for. Engineers pulled off the roadmap to write policies, wire up logging, remediate findings and chase screenshots. It scales on both axes at once — a ten-person team on a single cloud account loses a fraction of what a fifty-person team running three environments does.
The audit fee difference is modest. The timeline difference is what actually drives your total cost.
Confirms your controls are designed correctly on a single date. The fastest way to put a real report in front of a customer who is blocking a deal.
Confirms those controls operated effectively across an observation window of 3–12 months. This is what most enterprise buyers actually ask for.
Every extra month of readiness work is another month of engineering time on the bill. That is why the timeline, not the audit fee, is where SOC 2 budgets are won or lost. See the full SOC 2 programme.
Most of the savings are in scoping and sequencing, not in haggling with your auditor.
Only the systems inside your product’s trust boundary belong in the audit. Every extra system in scope adds evidence to collect and hours to the auditor’s bill.
If a customer needs proof this quarter, a Type 1 unblocks the deal for a lower fee while the Type 2 observation window runs behind it. You do not pay twice for the readiness work.
A consultant for readiness, a platform for evidence and an auditor for the report is three invoices and three onboardings. One engagement that covers readiness and evidence removes two of them.
HIPAA, ISO 27001 and GDPR share most of their controls with SOC 2. Running them through one programme costs far less than three separate projects — toggle them in the calculator above to see the difference.
Most startups spend $20,000–$50,000 all-in during year one. That splits roughly into the audit fee ($4,000–$12,000 depending on Type 1 or Type 2 and on headcount), a readiness assessment ($3,000–$8,000), a GRC platform licence ($3,000–$10,000 a year), and internal engineering and security time ($3,000–$21,500, depending on team size and how much infrastructure is in scope). Folksoft covers the same scope for less. What that comes to depends on your environment, so we price it properly rather than guessing at it here — leave your details on the calculator above and we’ll come back with your price.
Type 1 is a point-in-time report and costs less: expect $4,000–$8,000 for the audit versus $6,000–$12,000 for Type 2, with both scaling on headcount. All-in, a Type 1 year lands at $13,000–$39,500 against $20,000–$51,500 for a Type 2. The bigger difference is time. Type 2 requires an observation window, so it runs 6–12 months end to end against 4–8 months for Type 1, and every extra month adds internal cost.
Four things. The audit fee itself is only about a third of the total. Add a readiness assessment or gap analysis ($3,000–$8,000, priced on how much infrastructure is in scope), a GRC platform to collect evidence ($3,000–$10,000 a year, priced per employee), and your own team’s time writing policies, remediating findings and chasing evidence — $3,000–$21,500 depending on headcount and complexity, and the line most startups forget to count. Penetration testing, security awareness training and any remediation work sit on top.
Scope tightly — only the systems inside your product’s trust boundary. Start with Type 1 if a customer needs proof now, then roll into Type 2. Avoid paying separately for a consultant, a platform and an auditor when one engagement covers readiness and evidence. And do not underestimate internal time: an expert-guided service that writes the policies and collects the evidence for you removes the largest line on the bill. Bundling adjacent frameworks like HIPAA or ISO 27001 into the same programme is cheaper than running them one at a time.
A Type 1 typically takes 4–8 months from kickoff to report, and a Type 2 takes 6–12 months because of the observation window. Most of that is readiness work, not the audit itself. Folksoft gets startups audit-ready in weeks, and the Type 2 observation window then runs in the background.
Fifteen minutes on a call and we’ll scope your SOC 2, name the price and give you a date for the report.