The short answer
For most startups, ISO 27001 cost is not one number. It is a stack of costs:
- certification-body or auditor fees
- preparation and implementation support
- software or compliance platform fees
- penetration testing or technical remediation, if required
- internal founder, operations, and engineering time
Kantis separates these costs deliberately. Our preparation and managed certification support starts from a clear startup-friendly fee, while the auditor fee is separate and paid directly to the certification body or auditor. For many startups, the certification-body fee is the clearest external cost to budget first.
Typical certification-body audit fees
These ranges are for the external certification-body audit fee, not the preparation work, tooling, remediation, or internal time. Stage 1 and Stage 2 are the initial certification audits. Annual surveillance is the recurring audit fee in the years after certification.
| Company size | Stage 1 + Stage 2 | Annual surveillance |
|---|---|---|
| 1-10 employees | £3,000 - £4,000 | £1,500 - £2,500 |
| 10-50 employees | £3,500 - £6,000 | £2,000 - £4,000 |
| 50-200 employees | £7,000 - £15,000 | £4,000 - £8,000 |
The point is not to make ISO 27001 cheap at all costs. It's to make it credible to everyone who may evaluate it in the future: enterprise customers, investors, auditors, and hopefully even companies like Google.
What usually drives the cost
1. Scope
A five-person SaaS company with one cloud environment is very different from a multi-region, regulated company with multiple products, subsidiaries, and complex data flows.
The fastest startup audits usually have:
- one clear product boundary
- one primary cloud environment
- a small team with known system owners
- simple vendor and access structures
- a founder or CTO who can answer technical questions quickly
2. Internal time
Traditional ISO 27001 projects often look affordable on paper because they ignore internal time. The real cost shows up as engineering and founder hours spent collecting screenshots, adapting templates, chasing vendor evidence, and answering auditor requests.
This is the engineering tax Kantis is built to reduce.
3. Tooling route
Startups usually choose one of four routes:
| Route | What you buy | Where it works | Risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| DIY | Templates and internal effort | Very early teams with time and low urgency | Slow, high uncertainty |
| Consultant | Advisory and documents | Teams that want human support | Can become manual and expensive |
| Platform | Monitoring and evidence workflows | Larger teams needing many frameworks | Often still needs internal ownership |
| Kantis | Managed certification plus automation | Startups that need speed and hands-on execution | Best fit when the team wants help, not only software |
Cost scenarios for a startup
DIY or template-led
This can look cheap upfront, but the hidden cost is uncertainty. You still need to interpret controls, write policies that match the company, collect evidence, prepare for the audit, and coordinate the auditor. ISO 27001 also expects ongoing monitoring of your infrastructure, access, changes, and security signals, which means you need to build and maintain that monitoring layer yourself.
Best fit: a technical team with spare time and no urgent enterprise deadline.
Consultant-led
Consultants can help with interpretation and documentation, but they may still leave evidence collection and technical remediation to your team. Cost varies widely by scope and level of involvement.
Best fit: a company that wants advice but can run the project internally.
Platform plus auditor
Tools like Vanta, Drata, and Secureframe can be useful, especially for teams managing many controls and integrations. But software does not automatically remove the need for policy work, auditor coordination, and internal decisions. In practice, you usually still need a dedicated internal owner whose job is to run the platform, chase evidence, resolve alerts, and keep the audit process moving.
Best fit: companies with enough internal ownership to operate the tool.
If you are weighing mainstream platforms against Kantis, read the Vanta, Drata, Sprinto, Delve, and Kantis comparison for European startups. The useful cost comparison is total workload: software, auditor fees, internal time, and how much practical delivery support you get.
Kantis managed route
Kantis combines software, evidence workflows, policy preparation, gap assessment, and hands-on support. The goal is to keep founder and engineering involvement low while still producing audit-ready evidence.
Best fit: European startups that need certification to unblock enterprise sales and want a managed route instead of another dashboard.
How to budget before you start
Before you commit to any route, answer five questions:
- Which product and legal entity are in scope?
- Which customers or enterprise deals are driving the requirement?
- Do they require UKAS-accredited or otherwise credible certification?
- How much engineering time can you realistically spend each week?
- Is ISO 27001 enough, or do you also need GDPR, SOC 2, ISO 42001, or EU AI Act readiness?
If the answers are unclear, start with a gap assessment before buying tooling or booking the audit.
How Kantis helps
Kantis gives startups a clear route from gap to certificate:
- free gap assessment against ISO 27001 controls
- scoped remediation roadmap
- policy and evidence preparation
- automated evidence collection where possible
- auditor coordination
- renewal-ready documentation
- support across ISO 27001, GDPR, SOC 2, EU AI Act, and ISO 42001 where relevant
The goal is simple: get certified without turning your engineering team into a compliance department.