SOC 2 audit cost: the auditor's fee
One line item: the fee the CPA firm bills for the examination. For a Canadian company under 100 staff, that is $20,000 to $60,000 CAD for a Type 2 and $12,000 to $30,000 CAD for a Type 1.
A Canadian CPA firm quoting a first SOC 2 Type 2 examination for a company under 100 staff, Security criteria only, one production environment, will usually land between $20,000 and $60,000 CAD. A Type 1 on the same scope is normally $12,000 to $30,000 CAD. Those figures are the audit fee and nothing else: no readiness help, no compliance platform, no penetration test, no internal time.
$20,000 to $60,000 Type 2 examination fee, under 100 staff, CAD
$12,000 to $30,000 Type 1 examination fee, same scope, CAD
The phrase "SOC 2 cost" gets quoted two ways. Vendors selling readiness quote the all-in number, $35,000 to $90,000 CAD for a first year, which is the figure on our full cost breakdown. Auditors quote their own fee. Compare one against the other and a firm looks three times cheaper when the two quotes cover different work.
The fee by company size and report type
| Company size | Type 1 | Type 2, first year | Type 2, renewal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 25 staff, one environment | $12,000 to $20,000 | $20,000 to $35,000 | $15,000 to $28,000 |
| 25 to 100 staff | $18,000 to $30,000 | $30,000 to $60,000 | $25,000 to $50,000 |
| 100 to 500 staff | $25,000 to $45,000 | $50,000 to $110,000 | $45,000 to $95,000 |
| Type 1 and Type 2 in the same year, added up | $32,000 to $155,000 depending on size | ||
These are ranges, not a price list. A firm giving you a number before asking what is in scope is guessing. Add roughly 15 to 30 percent for each additional Trust Services Criteria beyond Security, and add again for a second production environment or a second product with its own architecture.
How the fee is actually built
Assurance work is priced on hours. A partner or senior manager scopes the engagement, estimates the hours the team will spend planning, testing and reporting, applies the firm's rates, and quotes a fixed fee against that estimate. That accounts for most of what looks arbitrary in a quote.
| Phase | Share of the fee | What the firm is doing |
|---|---|---|
| Planning and scoping | 10 to 15 percent | Agreeing the system description, the criteria, the period, and which controls map where |
| Walkthroughs | 15 to 20 percent | Sitting with your people and confirming each control works the way the description says |
| Testing | 40 to 50 percent | Sampling evidence against each control across the period. This is the part your evidence quality moves |
| Reporting and review | 20 to 25 percent | Drafting, partner review, quality review, and issuing the signed opinion |
| The whole fee | 100 percent | Testing is the block your evidence quality moves, and it is nearly half |
The testing block is the one you control. A firm that has to chase forty screenshots by email across six weeks bills for those weeks. A firm that pulls the same evidence from a platform you already keep current does not. That is the financial case for compliance automation, covered on the platform page.
Comparing firms for this? Tell us what you need and it goes to the ones in the directory that do this work. No charge, and no phone number required.
What moves your quote up
- Criteria beyond Security. Availability is the cheapest addition because the evidence overlaps with what you already produce. Processing Integrity is the most expensive, because the auditor has to understand what your system computes before it can test whether the computation is complete and accurate.
- Systems in scope. Two production environments is not two audits, but it is close to two sets of infrastructure testing. Carving out a legacy product that no customer asked about is the single cheapest scoping decision available to you.
- Subservice organisations. Every vendor you rely on for a control has to be addressed, either carved out or included. A long list means more vendor evidence and more report drafting.
- The length of the observation window. A twelve-month period is more expensive than a three-month one, because sampling scales with the population. First reports usually take three months for exactly this reason.
- How messy the first year is. Firms price a first-time client higher than a repeat one because nothing exists yet: no system description, no control matrix, no prior working papers to roll forward.
The renewal is where the real price shows up
First-year discounts are normal and they are recovered in year two and year three. Ask for the three-year fee before you sign the first one, and ask what triggers a re-quote. A firm that will not put year two in writing is telling you something.
Those variables, ranked by how far each moves the fee and marked with whether you control it, are on what drives a SOC 2 quote. The last one, the messiness of a first year, is what a firm is guessing at when it quotes you. Why audit quotes differ covers what a documented readiness position does to that guess.
When a low audit fee costs you money
A quote well below the ranges above usually means one of three things, and two of them are expensive.
It can mean the firm subcontracts the work. Some practices sell the engagement under their name and hand the fieldwork to another firm, sometimes offshore. That is a problem when nobody told you. The person signing the opinion has to stand behind work they supervised. Ask in writing who performs the testing and who signs.
It can mean the scope in the quote is smaller than the scope your customer asked for. Security only when the buyer's schedule said Security and Availability is a cheaper quote and a useless report.
Or it can mean the firm is small, efficient and quoting honestly. Smaller Canadian practices do good SOC 2 work at the low end of these ranges, and a regional firm that runs thirty of these a year is often faster than a national one. The guide to choosing between firms covers how to tell the three cases apart.
What the audit fee does not include
| Item | Typical range | Who provides it |
|---|---|---|
| Readiness and gap remediation | $15,000 to $60,000 | A separate consultant. The auditor cannot do this for you |
| Compliance platform subscription | $8,000 to $30,000 | Vanta, Drata, Sprinto or similar |
| Penetration test | $8,000 to $40,000 | A testing firm, annually |
| Your own team's hours | Several hundred hours | Nobody quotes this and it is often the largest number |
| Everything except the examination, first year | $31,000 to $130,000 | Which is why the audit fee alone answers the wrong question |
The readiness line is separate for a reason that is not commercial. Independence means the firm issuing your opinion cannot have designed the controls it is examining, so readiness is a different engagement with a different provider. That is set out on the consulting page, and SOC2Prep covers the preparation work if you plan to do it in house. The lowest total a Canadian company can reach, counting every line rather than the fee alone, is on the cheapest honest way to get SOC 2. If somebody has offered you all of it as a single figure, read what a bundled price has to guess before you compare it to anything.
Get an estimate for your own scope
The SOC 2 cost calculator asks about headcount, cloud footprint, criteria and timeline, then splits the estimate into audit fee, readiness and platform so you can see where the money goes.
Get audit fees quoted on your scope
Send one written scope to several Canadian CPA firms and compare quotes that price the same engagement.
Get matchedCommon questions
How much does a SOC 2 audit cost in Canada?
The examination fee alone is $20,000 to $60,000 CAD for a first Type 2 at a company under 100 staff with Security criteria only, and $12,000 to $30,000 CAD for a Type 1. Counting readiness support, a compliance platform and a penetration test, a first year lands between $35,000 and $90,000 CAD.
Why is one audit quote double another?
Almost always because the two quotes cover different scopes. Different criteria, a different observation window, a different number of production environments, or one firm including the readiness work and the other not. Send every firm the same written scope and the spread narrows to something reasonable.
Is the audit fee cheaper in year two?
Usually, by roughly 15 to 25 percent, because the firm rolls forward its working papers and your system description rather than building both from nothing. That saving disappears if you changed auditors, added criteria, or materially changed your architecture during the year.
Can we pay the auditor to help us get ready?
No, not for the controls they will examine. Independence rules prevent the firm issuing your opinion from having designed or operated those controls. Auditors can answer scoping questions and tell you what evidence they will want, and that is where the line sits.
Do Canadian firms charge less than American ones?
Often somewhat, and the bigger saving is that you are billed in Canadian dollars with no exchange exposure on a multi-year engagement. A report from a Canadian CPA firm is accepted by American buyers without argument, so paying in United States dollars buys nothing on its own.