How much does SOC 2 cost in Canada?

A first SOC 2 Type 2 in Canada lands between $35,000 and $90,000 CAD once you count everything, and the audit fee is rarely the biggest line.

Last reviewed 2026-08-16Written by Jacob Masse, TrazTech Inc.

For a Canadian software company under 100 staff, a first SOC 2 Type 2 report costs $35,000 to $90,000 CAD in year one. A very small company that does the preparation internally and skips a compliance platform can land near $25,000 CAD. A company with several products, multiple cloud accounts and three or four Trust Services Criteria in scope will pass $150,000 CAD. If the number matters more than the detail, the cheapest honest route strips the same project back to what cannot be removed, and is SOC 2 worth it at our size sets it against the revenue that is genuinely blocked.

The audit fee itself is usually only a third of the total. Below is the full picture in Canadian dollars, line by line, with what moves each number.

Total first-year cost, all in

Lean means the Security criteria only, one production environment, readiness done internally, and either no platform or the cheapest tier. Heavy means multiple criteria, more than one environment or product in scope, and a consultant running the program.

Line one: the audit fee

This is what the CPA firm charges to perform the engagement and sign the opinion. It is the only line you cannot avoid. It is priced on partner hours, and more controls, more systems and less internal order all mean more hours. The audit fee page takes that line apart on its own, and the cost calculator estimates all four lines against your scope.

Two things push this number up that companies do not expect. Each Trust Services Criteria beyond Security adds roughly 10 to 25 percent in controls and evidence. And a Type 1 followed by a Type 2 in the same year costs more in total than going straight to a Type 2, because you pay for two engagements. That is worth it only if the Type 1 unblocks revenue.

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.

Line two: readiness support

Readiness is writing policies that describe what you actually do, setting up access reviews, fixing logging, building a vendor register, and collecting the first round of evidence. Engagement models and day rates are on the SOC 2 consulting page, and what readiness costs on its own breaks this line down further.

Doing readiness internally works, and for a small engineering-led company with no deadline it is what we would suggest. The cost is elapsed time and the learning curve of knowing what an auditor accepts. If a signed contract is waiting on the report, pay for speed. SOC2Prep covers the work in detail, and HireACISO covers the fractional model.

Line three: the compliance platform

Vanta, Drata, Sprinto and their competitors price per employee with a floor, and they discount hard on multi-year commitments. Which one to buy for a first audit, and when to buy none, is on the SOC 2 platform page. List prices are rare. What you are quoted depends on headcount, framework count and how close it is to the end of their quarter.

Price this over three years, not one. The subscription renews, it rises with headcount, and the switching cost climbs as your evidence history accumulates inside it. A two or three year term buys a discount. Take it only if you are sure about the framework and the vendor. Our Vanta and Drata comparison covers where each one earns the money and where neither does.

This is the one line of the five that can be zero in year one. A company under about thirty people can run the program on a spreadsheet and a calendar, or on a free workspace that supplies the mapped control set, evidence register and policy templates. What $8,000 CAD and up buys is breadth: hundreds of pre-built integrations, an endpoint agent, HR system evidence and an alert on the morning a control drifts. What a free workspace covers and what it does not is the page to read before you zero out this line.

Line four: the penetration test

SOC 2 does not name a penetration test in the criteria. Auditors expect one anyway, and buyers reading your report look for it. Price tracks scope and days of tester time.

Book this early in the window. Findings need remediation, remediation needs a retest, and a critical finding two weeks before fieldwork is a bad week for everyone. GetPentest covers scoping.

Line five: your own team, the one nobody quotes

A first SOC 2 consumes 200 to 500 hours of internal time for a company under 100 people. That is spread across an engineer or two, someone in operations, and a manager who chases people for evidence. At a loaded rate of $80 to $150 CAD an hour, that is $16,000 to $75,000 CAD of real cost that appears on no invoice.

Renewal years drop to perhaps a third of this if you kept the program running rather than restarting it each audit. Companies that let evidence collection lapse between windows pay the first-year number again.

What actually moves the price

• Criteria count. Security only is the cheapest report anyone issues. Each added category adds controls, evidence and fee.
• Systems in scope. One product on one cloud account is cheap. Two products, a legacy environment and an acquired team's infrastructure is not.
• Observation window length. A three month window costs less to audit than a twelve month one, because there is less evidence to sample.
• Headcount. Onboarding, offboarding, access review and training evidence all scale with people, and so does sample size.
• Subservice organizations. Carving out AWS is normal and free. Carving in a subprocessor you control adds work.
• Your starting state. A company with no logging, shared admin accounts and no ticketing system pays for remediation before it pays for an audit.
• Deadline. Compressed timelines cost more everywhere, from auditor scheduling premiums to consultant rush rates.

That list, ranked by effect on the fee, is on what drives a SOC 2 quote. Read it before you send a scope to three firms. Most of the spread between quotes is a scope difference, not a price difference.

Where to save, and where not to

Worth doing: run the readiness internally if you have an engineer who will own it, take the Security criteria only unless a buyer named another, choose a three month first window, and get renewal-year pricing in writing before you sign year one.

Not worth doing: choosing the cheapest auditor you can find. The report carries the firm's name, and a report from an unknown firm gets read more sceptically. A firm that has never audited a company with your architecture will spend your hours learning it. Also not worth doing: skipping the penetration test to save $10,000 CAD. A buyer who reads the report will ask about it.

What year two costs

Renewals run 60 to 80 percent of the first-year audit fee. The platform subscription repeats and rises with headcount, the penetration test repeats annually, and internal hours drop sharply if the program stayed alive. Budget $30,000 to $60,000 CAD a year ongoing for a company under 100 staff, excluding internal time. SOC 2 is a subscription, not a purchase. Companies that budget it as a one-time project are surprised in month thirteen.

Where TrazTech sits in these five lines

TrazTech operates this site. It sells line two, readiness support, and line four, the penetration test. It does not sell line one. Independence rules stop a readiness firm from also issuing your report, so your auditor is another firm.

Line three can be zero with us. TrazTech runs a free compliance workspace called traztech Workspace: 10 frameworks, an evidence register mapped to controls, 40 policy templates with approval history, a risk register, and daily scheduled checks against AWS, Okta, Google Workspace, GitHub, GitLab, Cloudflare and Jira. No credit card, no paid tier, no seat limit, no export fee. If you hire TrazTech it is included and still costs nothing, because you were going to need a workspace either way.

Spend the $8,000 and up anyway when your estate needs hundreds of integrations, an endpoint agent or HR evidence. The workspace has seven connectors, no endpoint agent and no HR integration, and we will help you set the platform up. On line two, get quotes from other firms as well. The directory is there for that.

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