Compliance software cost, stated plainly, for the team that owns the risk

Compliance software pricing, stated plainly: four planned tiers from $149 to $1,499 per month, yearly billing about 20 percent lower, Enterprise by agreement. These are the plans we intend to launch with. Nothing is on sale today; every button below joins the early-access list, and early users lock early-access terms.

Planned tiers · USD

Starter

One compliance owner, one or two frameworks

$149$119/mo

billed yearly

billed monthly

Continuous monitoring of your chosen frameworks
Plain-language regulatory change alerts
Policy gap checks against each change
Always-on audit trail

Growth

A growing regulated team, multiple frameworks

$499$399/mo

billed yearly

billed monthly

Everything in Starter
All seven frameworks, including AML/KYC monitoring
Unlimited policies and control mappings
Evidence export for auditors

Scale

Multi-entity and regulated fintech at scale

$1,499$1,199/mo

billed yearly

billed monthly

Everything in Growth
Priority regulatory coverage and custom controls
Multi-entity structure and API access
Dedicated compliance success manager

Enterprise

Large enterprise, custom regulatory regimes

Talk to sales

custom agreement, invoicing

SSO/SAML and role-based access control
SLA, security review and data residency
Invoicing and procurement support
Dedicated contact and onboarding

Planned scope per tier; the fine print stays this honest at launch. No free tier: the compliance scan is the free taste, and early-access members get launch terms before anyone else.

§ 05 Against the incumbents

Where the money goes today, and what it buys

Option	Public price picture	Built around	Regulatory change watch
Vanta / Drata	Sales-quoted; commonly reported thousands to tens of thousands per year	Control monitoring and audit readiness for security frameworks	Not the product; framework snapshots update, the rulebook watching stays yours
ServiceNow GRC / Archer	Six figures with implementation, plus the team to run it	Enterprise workflow: registers, assessments, issues	Possible to build, with consultants and content subscriptions
Consultant + annual audit	Commonly $30k+ per year for a mid-market team	Point-in-time review and remediation lists	Manual, between engagements it stops
Complianceofficer planned	$149 to $1,499 per month, published above	The regulations themselves, mapped to your policies and controls	The core of the product, across all your frameworks

Competitor figures are public ballparks stated in good faith, not quotes; their sales teams price per company. For the numbers buyers actually paid, we keep a compliance software pricing comparison with median annual contracts from recorded purchases across ten vendors. Fuller comparisons: Vanta alternative and Drata alternative.

§ 06 What the middle tier replaces

Growth at $499 does the watching a hire would

A dedicated compliance hire runs around $120k per year before tooling; a consultant retainer plus audit prep commonly adds $30k. Growth is planned at $5,988 per year for the watching, checking and evidence half of that work, so your existing team spends its time on judgment, not tracking. The enterprise page covers SSO, SLA and security review for larger teams.

§ 01 A compliance hire ~$120,000/yr
§ 02 Consultant + audit prep ~$30,000/yr
§ 03 Growth, billed monthly $5,988/yr planned
§ 04 The number that matters fines you never meet

§ 75 Cost drivers

What actually moves the price of compliance software

Almost nobody in this category publishes a price, which makes budgeting hard and makes the first quote feel arbitrary. It is not arbitrary. Four or five variables do nearly all the work, and knowing which one you are heavy on tells you in advance whether you are going to be quoted at the bottom or the top of a vendor's range.

Driver	Why it moves the number	Watch for
Number of frameworks	Most audit-readiness pricing is banded by how many frameworks you monitor	Adding a second framework mid-term is often repriced, not prorated
Headcount	Employee count is the most common billing unit, since it proxies for scope	Contractors and service accounts sometimes count toward the band
Connected systems	Evidence automation is priced on integrations, and the useful ones cluster in higher tiers	Check your specific cloud and HR systems are in your tier, not the next one
Implementation	A one-time onboarding or professional services fee on top of subscription	Frequently negotiable, and the first thing to trade against a longer term
The audit itself	The auditor is a separate firm and a separate invoice from the software	Bundled audit offers still bill the CPA firm's work somewhere

Our pricing above is deliberately banded on scope rather than headcount, because compliance work scales with how many rulebooks apply to you, not with how many people you employ. A 40 person bank carries far more obligation than a 300 person agency. If you want the market context rather than our plans, the compliance software pricing benchmark sets out median annual contracts from recorded purchases across ten vendors, and how much compliance software costs walks the arithmetic.

§ 76 Total cost

The subscription is not the whole bill

Buyers who compare only monthly subscription figures tend to be surprised in year one. The line items that get missed are predictable, so plan for them and the budget holds.

Implementation and data migration come first, usually a one-time fee and a few weeks of someone's attention on your side. Then the audit or examination itself, which is a separate professional engagement no software subscription includes. Then internal time, which is the largest and least tracked cost of all: someone still owns the program, reviews the exceptions and answers the auditor. Software changes how many hours that takes, not whether the role exists.

Where regulated obligations are involved, several rules require a named human regardless of tooling. 31 CFR 1020.210 requires a designated individual responsible for day to day compliance, and 45 CFR 164.308(a)(2) requires a named security official. Budgeting on the assumption that a platform removes that role produces a plan that does not survive contact with an examiner. Our compliance officer cost breakdown works through the loaded-cost arithmetic using federal compensation data.

§ 77 Questions buyers ask

Compliance software cost questions

How much does compliance software cost?

Most compliance software is sales quoted rather than published. Recorded buyer data puts median annual contracts near $20,000 for Vanta and about $24,601 for Drata, while enterprise GRC suites sit around a $45,900 median. Small teams under a single framework often land in the low thousands per year. Our own planned tiers run from $149 to $1,499 per month, published above.

How is compliance software priced?

Usually on a combination of employee headcount, the number of frameworks monitored and the number of connected systems feeding evidence. Enterprise GRC suites tend to price on named users or modules instead. Regulatory change feeds are the exception: they are priced on jurisdictions and regulators tracked, because that is what drives their cost, not your size.

What is included in compliance software pricing?

Typically the platform, a set number of frameworks, evidence integrations and support. Usually excluded: the audit or examination itself, which is a separate engagement with a licensed firm, plus implementation fees, premium integrations and any advisory hours. Read the order form for the framework count and the integration list, because those are where tiers actually differ.

Is compliance software worth it?

It pays when the alternative is real hours or a real deadline. If compliance is blocking deals, spanning more than one framework, or consuming a senior person for days each month, tooling is usually cheaper than the time. If you are one team under one framework and nobody is waiting on a report, a well kept spreadsheet and a good auditor genuinely can be enough for longer than vendors suggest.

How much of a compliance software quote is negotiable?

More than most buyers assume, and the flexible parts are predictable. Implementation and onboarding fees are the softest, followed by term length discounts and the framework count bundled into a tier. List price per seat moves least. Buying at a vendor quarter end and being willing to sign multi-year terms are the two levers that consistently move the number.

Does compliance software include the audit?

No. For SOC 2 the report must be issued by a licensed CPA firm, and for ISO 27001 by an accredited certification body, neither of which the software vendor can be. Vendors often introduce partner auditors and sometimes present a bundled price, but the auditor is billing separately for their own work. Budget the audit as its own line item.

§ 90

Related registers

§ 99 · Final entry

Lock early-access terms

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