vCISO Cost & Pricing (2026): Retainers, Rates & Projects

Provider guides put a virtual or fractional CISO at $3,000 to $15,000 a month on retainer, with some stretching the ceiling to $20,000. Hourly advisory is quoted at $200 to $500, and fixed projects such as a readiness program at $5,000 to $50,000 or more.

Those ranges come from firms that sell vCISO services or the software behind them. The price a firm prints on its own page shows what that firm charges.

What do vCISO firms publish as their prices?

Firms in our directory that publish a vCISO price mostly start in the low thousands of dollars a month, in the currency they quote.

Prices are in US dollars unless the firm names another currency. They are starting or example prices the firms publish, not quotes, and some firms list other services in the same price note. Firms without a published price are on the vCISO firm list.

A starting price is not a quote for your scope. At vCISO.com and CITSAP the entry tier is advisory only, and Axipro’s $500 monthly figure bundles ongoing compliance work with the vCISO. Cybersecurity Expert On Tap’s lowest tier is a compliance gap assessment and roadmap, with the vCISO added in the tier above. traztech quotes in Canadian dollars, Cybersecurity Expert On Tap in pounds, and Bedel Security publishes annual example costs for community banks and credit unions instead of a monthly retainer.

Archlight prices by hours and sits higher: $7,500 a month for a remote quarter-time vCISO (about 10 hours a week), with a full-time onsite tier that reaches the top of the range the guides describe. Most other entry prices sit near the $2,000 to $3,000 floor those guides name. For the firms themselves, see the vCISO firms directory.

How much does a vCISO cost per month?

Provider guides put vCISO retainers at $3,000 to $15,000 a month, and five of the eight guides in the table at the end put the top of the range at $20,000 or more.

Hours drive much of the spread in the guides that break it out. Atlant Security’s guide ties $3,000 to $5,000 a month to 10 to 20 hours, $5,000 to $10,000 to 20 to 40 hours, and $10,000 to $15,000 to 40 to 60 hours. Breach Craft’s guide has 10 to 20 hours at $3,500 to $7,500, rising to 30 to 45 hours at $10,500 to $15,000. Both firms sell vCISO services, so read these as price lists, not surveys.

The guides disagree on what a mid-market company pays, partly because they define mid-market differently.

How much does a vCISO cost per hour, or for a project?

Most guides quote $200 to $400 an hour for vCISO advisory, and two, Atlant Security and Essendis, top out at $500.

Hourly billing suits a board briefing, a policy review or a second opinion. Atlant Security’s guide shows why it stops making sense for ongoing work: at $350 an hour, 10 hours costs $3,500, the same as its foundational retainer, which includes 10 to 20 hours plus structured deliverables. Fixed projects are quoted at $5,000 to $50,000 or more by Cynomi, Workstreet and Atlant Security, while SideChannel puts them at $10,000 to $75,000 and Essendis at $15,000 to $75,000 or more. A project that builds a SOC 2 program is separate from the independent audit, which is priced separately (see SOC 2 audit cost). For readiness work on its own, see SOC 2 compliance consultants.

What makes one vCISO quote higher than another?

Scope, environment complexity and company size set the price, according to Fractional CISO’s own pricing page, which prices by fixed retainer rather than hours.

The same scope can still produce different invoices. SideChannel’s and Atlant Security’s guides both warn that some providers require specific GRC or SIEM tools, which they put at $500 to $5,000 a month on top of the retainer. Atlant Security adds that retainers with hour caps can bill overages of $250 to $500 an hour, and that penetration tests and formal audits are usually billed separately. Ask each finalist for the same three numbers: the one-time build, the steady-state monthly fee, and the first-year total.

How does a vCISO compare with a full-time CISO’s pay?

A retainer of $3,000 to $15,000 a month is $36,000 to $180,000 a year. In IANS Research and Artico Search data on 566 CISOs in the US and Canada, most earn $250,000 to $700,000 in total compensation (IANS, November 2025; data collected April to October 2025).

IANS reports that CISOs who lead teams of more than 100 people on budgets above $50 million typically land in the top percentile, so a first security hire at a startup may be paid less than that range. The comparison is also part-time against full-time: a vCISO splits time across clients and works to an agreed availability. For how the two roles differ on authority and independence, see the vCISO firms directory.

Is a vCISO worth it for a startup?

A vCISO is worth it when nobody inside the company owns security after the initial push, and not worth it when an engineering or operations leader can run remediation and keep evidence current.

In the second case a fixed readiness project or a few advisory hours costs less. In the first, a retainer keeps the cadence going through customer security reviews and the Type 2 observation period. Keep the independent CPA audit on its own line: the vCISO prepares the program and does not issue the SOC 2 report. To compare providers, start with the best vCISO providers shortlist, and see SOC 2 compliance for startups for the wider budget.

Where do the guide ranges come from?

The ranges above are the figures each provider printed in its own pricing guide, read on 20 October 2026 and reported as stated, not averaged. All of them sell vCISO services or software for vCISOs, so they are market claims, not independent statistics.

The prices in the directory table come from each firm’s own published pricing, with the date we last verified the firm shown beside it.