SOC 2 Cost and Budget
Should I budget the SOC 2 audit and remediation separately?
Why Separate the Audit From Remediation?
The two lines behave differently. The audit fee is a quote from a CPA firm, and at a startup-focused firm it lands in a narrow band: $5,000–$10,000 for a Type I and $7,000–$15,000 for a Type II. It barely moves whether you prepare in spreadsheets, on a platform, with a consultant, or with an agent.
Remediation is the work the auditor tests. It covers every control in scope: MFA on admin accounts, branch protection and reviewed changes, encryption at rest, log retention, an incident response plan you have exercised, a backup restore you have actually run, offboarding inside the window your policy promises, and a review of the vendors that touch customer data. Its cost depends on the gap between your current setup and those controls, and it is paid mostly in your team's hours. A single budget line for "SOC 2" hides the part that varies inside the part that doesn't.
What Does Each Line Cost?
Year one to a SOC 2 Type II, up to 50 employees, one legal entity, Security criteria, an independent startup-focused CPA firm, penetration test excluded. Team time includes fixing the controls and is priced at $150/hr.
| Line | Excel + DIY | Vanta/Drata + DIY | Vanta/Drata + vCISO | Screenata |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Audit (Type II) | $7–15K | $7–15K | $7–15K | $7–15K |
| Platform, one year | $0 | $12–25K | $12–25K | $5,988 |
| Consultant or vCISO | $0 | $0 | $5–120K | $0 |
| Team time, with remediation | ~440 hrs ($66K) | ~200 hrs ($30K) | ~120 hrs ($18K) | 60–80 hrs ($9–12K) |
| Year-one total | $73–81K | $49–70K | $42–178K | $22–33K |
The audit row is identical across the table. Everything that separates the paths is in the rows below it. Model your own report type and plan with the SOC 2 cost calculator, and see how the platform lines compare vendor by vendor in the real cost of SOC 2.
What Happens When Both Are One Budget?
The usual failure is a report bought against the audit budget alone. The fee is small, so the choice optimizes for the fee, and the remediation gets squeezed into whatever time is left before fieldwork. The report can still come back looking complete.
The cost shows up later, inside a customer's procurement. An enterprise buyer's security team reads the report line by line, finds a control that was covered lightly, and asks for evidence that it works. Now the control has to be fixed and tested again while the deal waits, which is the most expensive moment to do work that was always going to be needed. If you are weighing a vendor that sells the audit inside its price, ask one question before you sign: does your platform vendor also provide your auditor?
How Do You Keep Remediation From Growing?
- Scan before you scope. Find the gaps against your actual cloud, code, and identity setup before you book an auditor, so the remediation budget is based on what you found rather than a guess.
- Scope to Security only unless a customer contract requires Availability, Confidentiality, or Privacy.
- Count a control as done only when there is dated evidence that it works. A setting that is on but undocumented gets requested again during fieldwork.
- Re-check on a schedule. Settings drift during a Type II window, and a drifted control found by the auditor costs more than one found by you.
- Choose the auditor yourself, and confirm its AICPA peer review is published. See which SOC 2 auditor a startup should choose.
Where Does Screenata Fit?
Screenata cuts the remediation line rather than the audit line. Vera scans your cloud, code, and identity providers, writes the fix steps for each failing check, opens the ticket, and re-verifies after your engineer applies the change; the finding closes on its own once the nightly re-check passes. Evidence comes in through APIs, screenshots, and guided procedures, dated and signed so any auditor can verify it. Your team's part in a Type II year is 60–80 hours of applying fixes, approvals, and attestations.
Screenata is $5,988 a year per framework for a standard startup scope, typically up to 50 employees and one legal entity. Screenata does not sell the audit, so the auditor fee stays its own line, paid directly to a firm you choose.