TL;DR: A security audit costs anywhere from $0 to five figures. The tier decides the price: a free scan is $0, a full audit report is $499 one time, a consultant code review runs in the low thousands, and a manual pen test runs five figures. Who needs the proof decides the tier: you, a customer, or a buyer's legal team.
"Security audit" is one label for five different products. That is why quotes range so widely. This guide breaks each tier down: what it costs, and when to pay. Our own prices are exact. The rest are marked as typical market rates. That is market data, not ours.
Want your own number first? Run the free scan on your live URL. It takes about a minute. Then read on.
The full price table, tier by tier
Here is the whole market in one table. The first four rows are our prices. The last four are typical market rates we see founders quoted.
| What you buy | Typical cost | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Free automated scan | $0 | A pre-launch sanity check. |
| Automated audit report (our Launch Readiness Audit) | $499 one time | Startups with their first paying users. |
| Compliance Score (GDPR, EU AI Act, SOC 2 and ISO foundations) | $799 one time | Founders with EU users. |
| Monitoring plans | $149–$599/mo | Post-launch teams shipping weekly. |
| Consultant code review | Low thousands (market rate) | A human second opinion on tricky logic. |
| Manual pen test | Five figures, $10,000+ (market rate) | Enterprise sales requirements. |
| SOC 2 audit | $10,000–$50,000 (market rate) | Enterprise contracts that demand proof. |
| ISO 27001 certificate | $15,000–$35,000 (market rate) | International enterprise deals. |
Look at the gap between row two and row six. That gap is where startups waste money. Most founders do not need a five-figure audit yet. They need to know if their database is open to the web. That answer costs far less.
Free scans: what $0 actually buys
A free scan is a real first pass, not a gimmick. Ours runs against your live URL in about a minute. No code access. No install. You get a Launch Readiness Score out of 100, plus your top gaps across security, reliability, performance, and monitoring. You can see what the scan checks.
The average score across the first 100 AI-built apps we scanned was 42/100. That number is why free scans matter. Most apps that look finished are not. A scan tells you in one minute whether yours is one of them.
Free is the right price before launch. It stops being enough once real people trust you with real data.
The $499 audit report
This tier is where most startups should spend. Our Launch Readiness Audit is $499, one time. It goes deep on all four areas, and it comes back fast.
What the one-time report includes that the free scan does not:
- A branded PDF report you can hand to a co-founder or an investor.
- A benchmark that ranks your app against 200+ audited apps.
- A ranked fix plan with a time estimate per issue.
- A senior review of every finding before it reaches you.
You can see the format for yourself on the sample report page. The point of this tier is simple: every finding, ranked, with fixes an engineer can act on the same day.
Consultant code reviews: the low thousands
A freelance security engineer reads your code by hand. At typical market rates, that runs in the low thousands for a small app. Rates scale with hours, so scope creeps fast.
A human review is worth it when the risk lives in your business logic. Think billing edge cases or a hand-rolled auth flow. It is a poor first step, though. Paying consultant rates to find an exposed key is like paying a plumber to tell you the tap is on. Run the cheap scans first. Spend the human hours on what machines cannot see.
Manual pen tests: five figures
A real pen test means a human attacker tries to break into your app, on purpose, for days. At typical market rates that starts near $10,000 and climbs from there.
One warning. Some firms sell a plain scan under a pen test label. If the quote looks too good, ask what a human will test by hand, and for how many days. A real answer names methods and time. A vague answer means you are buying a scan you could run yourself.
Buy a pen test when a big buyer requires one, or when you handle money or health data at scale. Not before.
SOC 2 and ISO 27001: certificates, not fix lists
SOC 2 and ISO 27001 are not security audits in the way founders mean the phrase. They are proof for buyers. An auditor checks that your controls exist and held up over time. Startups report $10,000 to $50,000 for SOC 2 and $15,000 to $35,000 all-in for ISO 27001 at typical market rates. Add months of internal staff time on top.
The rule: buy a certificate when a contract demands it, not because it sounds responsible. If you want to get ready without the five-figure spend, our Compliance Score runs 60 checks across GDPR, the EU AI Act, SOC 2 foundations, and ISO 27001 foundations for $799. We do not certify. We prep you for the auditor who does.
Why AI-built apps change the math
If you built with Lovable, Bolt, Cursor, or v0, your risks follow a pattern. That is good news for your budget.
The outside data is blunt. Symbiotic Security scanned 1,072 AI-built apps. 98% had at least one flaw. 16% had critical issues. CMU's SusVibes study found 61% of AI-written code carried at least one security flaw. And CVE-2025-48757 showed 170+ Lovable apps exposed by one shared default: Row Level Security left off.
Known gaps are cheap to find. You can check the big three yourself right now, free:
- Test your database policies with the Supabase RLS checker.
- Test your response headers with the security headers checker.
- Test one endpoint with the API rate limit checker.
This is why platform-aware scanning costs hundreds, not thousands. The scanner already knows where each platform leaves holes. Our vibe coding security guide walks the full list.
The most expensive option: doing nothing
Every price above competes with one other choice: skip the audit and hope. That choice has costs too. A breach costs users and trust. A failed review by a buyer's team costs the deal itself.
The law adds a hard date. Does your app have an AI feature and EU users? Then the EU AI Act's transparency rules under Article 50 apply from August 2, 2026. Users must be told they are talking to an AI. Fines for that breach run up to €15 million or 3% of global turnover. A $799 check against a fine that size is not a hard call. The Compliance Wing covers it.
Which tier fits you
- Pre-launch, no users yet: run the free scan. $0. Do it today.
- First paying customers: get the $499 audit report. Add the $799 Compliance Score if you have EU users.
- Shipping features weekly: add monitoring from $149 to $599 a month. New gaps get caught the day they ship.
- Not technical, want it fixed for you: done-for-you setup is $1,999. A named CTO does the work. It leads into an ongoing $2,999/mo plan.
- Enterprise buyer demands a certificate: now budget five figures for SOC 2 or ISO 27001. Not a day earlier than you must.
FAQ
How much does a security audit cost for a small startup?
For most startups, $0 to $499 covers the first real audit. A free scan gives you a score and your top findings. A $499 audit report gives you every finding plus a ranked fix plan. Five-figure audits only make sense once an enterprise buyer demands one.
Is a free security scan actually useful?
Yes, as a first pass. It runs against your live URL and returns a score out of 100 with your top gaps. It will not catch everything. It will tell you fast if your database or your keys are exposed.
How much does a penetration test cost?
A real manual pen test runs five figures at typical market rates. $10,000 and up is a normal quote. Cheap offers under a few thousand dollars are often plain scans with a new label. Ask exactly what a human will test by hand.
How much does a SOC 2 audit cost in 2026?
Most startups report $10,000 to $50,000 at typical market rates, plus months of staff time. SOC 2 is proof for buyers, not a fix list. Buy it when an enterprise contract requires it, not before.
Do AI-built apps need a different kind of security audit?
Yes. Apps built with Lovable, Bolt, Cursor, or v0 fail in predictable ways: Row Level Security left off, exposed keys, and missing rate limits. Platform-aware scanning checks those exact defaults first. That makes the audit faster and cheaper.
When should a startup pay for a security audit?
Pay once you have real users, real data, or a launch date. Before that, run the free scan. After that, a $499 report costs less than the first breach, the first lost deal, or the first angry customer email.
So, how much does a security audit cost? For most startups the honest answer is this. Start at $0. Spend $499 when real users arrive. Save the five-figure spend for the day a contract demands it. The order matters more than the amounts. Cheap checks first. Human hours second. Papers last.