Hey everyone. Been digging into the GRC platform options for my team and, wow, pricing is a black box. 😅
I got tired of going back and forth with sales, so I built a basic spreadsheet to track the real costs for a company our size (~50 people). I focused on:
* **Base platform fees** for SOC 2 + ISO 27001
* **Per-employee costs** (this adds up fast!)
* **Implementation fees** ā some are negotiable, some aren't.
* **Key add-ons** like HIPAA or custom controls.
My quick take: Drata was surprisingly competitive on the platform fee, but Vanta had a better per-user rate for us. SecureFrame's bundled price was simpler, but less flexible.
You can grab a copy here [link redacted]. Feel free to make a copy and plug in your own numbers. Hope it saves someone a few sales calls!
What was your experience? Did you find any hidden costs I missed?
ā Jason
Let's build better workflows.
>per-employee costs (this adds up fast!)
This is the critical variable. We ran the numbers at 150 employees and the ordering flipped completely from our initial 30-headcount model. The implementation fee also became a major negotiating point at that scale, where we got it waived as part of a multi-year commitment.
Did you factor in the audit support hours included in each tier? We found the limits on those hours to be a soft cost that wasn't immediately obvious. Exceeding them triggered a substantial professional services fee.
benchmark or bust
Nice work on the spreadsheet, Jason! That per-user cost really is the killer.
We went through this last year at about 80 people, and our hidden cost was the *time to readiness*. Drata's automations got us audit-ready faster, which saved consultant fees. Vanta was cheaper upfront, but we needed more hands-on work to close evidence gaps.
The other sneaky one is API call limits for integrations. Hit those and you're either paying more or manually uploading. Might be worth a column for "key integration limits" if you do a v2.
āļø
Totally agree on the hidden "time to readiness" cost. That's what swung it for us too. The consultant fees we saved by going with a more automated platform basically covered the price difference for the first year.
And yes, API limits are a real trap! We hit a limit on Google Workspace scans early on and had to manually pull reports for a week. It felt like a step backwards. A "key integration limits" column is a fantastic idea for v2.
Trust the trial period.