Compliance Cost Calculator
Estimate your all-in first-year cost for SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, PCI-DSS or ISO 42001 — auditor, consulting, tooling and internal time — then see what it looks like automated.
- External auditor
- $17,500
- Consultant / readiness
- $22,500
- Legacy GRC tooling
- $26,500
- Internal time
- $23,375
- External auditor
- $17,500
- Consultant / readiness
- included
- CATAAM platform
- $1,788
- Internal time (−55%)
- $10,519
Estimates are directional, based on published 2025–2026 benchmarks for auditor fees, readiness consulting, GRC tooling and internal effort at a blended $85/hr. Your actual costs depend on scope, current posture and auditor. CATAAM does not replace your external auditor.
Compliance cost, explained
How much does SOC 2 compliance cost?
For most startups and SMBs, a first SOC 2 Type II runs roughly $30,000–$90,000 all-in in year one: a $10,000–$25,000 external auditor fee, $10,000–$35,000 of readiness consulting, a legacy GRC tool at $8,000–$45,000/yr, plus 150–400 hours of internal time. Automating evidence collection removes most of the consulting and tooling cost and cuts internal time by roughly half.
How much does ISO 27001 certification cost?
A first ISO 27001 certification typically costs $40,000–$100,000+ in year one — a $14,000–$30,000 certification-body audit (Stage 1 + Stage 2), $12,000–$40,000 of consulting to build the ISMS, tooling, and 200–500 hours of internal effort. Surveillance audits in years two and three are cheaper.
Does this calculator include the auditor fee?
Yes. The external auditor / certification-body fee is included and is the same on both routes — a platform like CATAAM automates your evidence and readiness, but you still engage an independent auditor for the attestation or certificate. What automation removes is the separate consultant, the legacy tooling spend, and roughly half of your internal prep time.
Why is doing multiple frameworks cheaper per framework?
Frameworks like SOC 2, ISO 27001 and HIPAA share a large set of underlying controls (access control, encryption, logging, change management). Once you have evidence for one, most of it maps to the others, so each additional framework is materially cheaper than the first. The calculator applies this overlap discount automatically.
How does CATAAM reduce the cost?
CATAAM connects to your cloud and tools (AWS, GitHub, Okta, Jira and 400+ more), continuously harvests and maps evidence to each control, and validates controls with built-in security testing — replacing the separate readiness consultant and legacy GRC tool, and cutting the manual evidence work that drives internal hours. Pricing is $149 per framework per month.