SOC 2 compliance software for fintech, and the framework ladder that follows it

What is the best compliance software for fintech companies?

There is no single best platform, because the question changes depending on where a fintech sits on its own compliance timeline. A neobank doing its first SOC 2 audit and a payments company eighteen months from an S-1 type the same query into a search bar and need two different products. Both face a layered set of demands a generic SaaS company never sees: the SEC, the CFPB and state financial regulators each run their own information-security expectations, sponsor banks add their own vendor-management audits on top of whatever certifications a fintech already holds, and none of them treat a SOC 2 report from last year as a complete answer.

The stakes are concrete and worth stating precisely rather than rounding up. IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report 2025, published with the Ponemon Institute in July 2025, puts the average breach cost in financial services at $5.56 million, second only to healthcare’s $7.42 million and well above the $4.44 million global average. That is the number worth remembering. An earlier version of this page cited a different figure from an older report cycle, and we have corrected it here rather than carrying the stale number forward.

What we are not going to do is repeat the "70 to 85 percent of enterprise RFPs require SOC 2" or "98 percent of Fortune 500 procurement teams mandate Type 2" figures as if they were survey data. Several compliance-industry blogs cite similar ranges and none traces to one named study we could verify. What we can say plainly is that SOC 2 Type 2 is close to a universal gate in enterprise fintech procurement, and that it sits underneath PCI DSS, state exams and sponsor-bank reviews rather than replacing any of them.

Which platforms handle SOC 2 and PCI DSS together?

The base of the ladder is broad by design. Seventeen of our nineteen core profiles claim PCI DSS coverage on top of SOC 2; only Hyperproof and OneTrust do not. That is why the eligible set here is nearly identical to our PCI DSS listing, and it is deliberate rather than an accident of two pages sharing a filter: what makes a company a fintech for compliance purposes is that it touches cardholder data, so a platform that cannot do PCI DSS was never a candidate for a fintech’s first audit either.

PCI DSS depth varies far more than SOC 2 status does. Thoropass, Vanta, Drata, Secureframe, Carbide and Scrut run PCI DSS off a native control set. Scytale, Sprinto, Oneleet and TrustCloud map it from other frameworks instead. A wider group, including Anecdotes, Apptega, Comp AI, ComplyJet, Trustero and Delve, claims PCI DSS support without a documented depth we could independently verify. Those are three genuinely different products sold under one phrase.

The full breakdown, checked against each platform’s own PCI documentation on 2026-07-24, lives on our PCI DSS compliance software page, and we have not repeated that work here. A fintech that only expects to run SOC 2 and PCI DSS in parallel and nothing more will get more from that page. This one exists for the fintech that expects to keep climbing.

Can compliance software handle SOX controls for a public fintech?

SOX Section 404 internal controls over financial reporting are usually the first rung a fintech hits after SOC 2 and PCI DSS, typically twelve to eighteen months ahead of an S-1. Of the seventeen platforms eligible for this page, exactly two claim SOX ITGC coverage in our registry: Anecdotes and Scytale, both sourced to their own framework pages. Every other platform here, Drata and Vanta included, offers SOC 2 change-management evidence that overlaps with SOX ITGC testing, but neither claims to cover the SOX framework itself.

The platform actually purpose-built for this stage is not on the eligible list at all. AuditBoard renamed itself Optro on 9 March 2026. It is an internal-audit and enterprise-risk platform bought by internal audit teams, not a SOC 2 automation tool, which is why our registry marks it out of scope rather than core: it is not what a fintech buying its first SOC 2 platform is actually evaluating. It is real, and it is the right tool once a company has a VP of Internal Audit weighing SOX 404 workpapers, with observed contracts reported at a median around $45,895 a year.

The practical read: budget for a second, purpose-built system when SOX arrives rather than expecting a SOC 2 vendor to absorb it. Anecdotes and Scytale are the two names worth a direct conversation before assuming that. Every other vendor’s SOX-adjacent language in a sales call is describing control overlap, not a SOX 404 module.

What is NYDFS Part 500, and why does almost nothing claim it?

23 NYCRR Part 500 is the New York Department of Financial Services cybersecurity regulation, in force since March 2017. It applies to entities licensed under New York Banking, Insurance or Financial Services Law, and it requires a covered entity to run a risk-based cybersecurity program and file an annual certification, signed by a senior officer, confirming compliance or acknowledging where it falls short. That filing goes to the DFS directly. It is not a report an outside CPA firm issues the way a SOC 2 or SOC 1 report is.

A fintech does not need its own DFS license to be pulled into Part 500. Section 500.11 requires a covered entity, a sponsor bank in a typical banking-as-a-service relationship, to impose baseline cybersecurity requirements on its own third-party service providers, and a BaaS fintech is exactly that to its bank partner. That flow-down obligation is separate from direct licensure and can arrive earlier.

Of the seventeen eligible platforms, three carry a NYDFS Part 500 claim in our registry: Anecdotes, Vanta and Drata. Vanta publishes a dedicated Part 500 product page and Drata announced support on 20 November 2025, both mapping the regulation onto existing SOC 2 and ISO 27001 controls. We verified both directly on 2026-07-24. The scarcity beyond those three is not because the regulation resists mapping: Part 500 shares real overlap with SOC 2 and ISO 27001 on access control, encryption of nonpublic information, incident response and a written cybersecurity program. It is that most platforms have not built or marketed a dedicated module.

Read all three claims as vendor-claimed rather than verified. None has been independently tested control-by-control, and no platform issues the Part 500 certification: that filing is signed by a senior officer of the covered entity and goes to the DFS directly. What a platform can do is carry the evidence and the reporting up to that signature, which is worth paying for and is not the same thing as compliance.

What the ladder costs, and what it does not buy you

Platform fees for the names most fintechs actually shortlist, current as of 2026-07-24: Drata runs $9,649 to $60,000 a year with a $24,869 median, Vanta $7,500 to $56,781 with a $20,000 median, and Secureframe $7,500 to $80,000, all from observed contract data rather than published rate cards. Thoropass is the outlier because it bundles the audit: its marketplace floor is $14,500 a year for platform and SOC 2 audit subscription combined, with real contracts commonly landing between $20,000 and $45,000 once company size and scope are added.

None of those figures includes the SOC 1 report, the SOX 404 attestation or the NYDFS certification. A platform fee buys evidence automation, not the professional-services work layered on top at each rung. Neither our registry nor any platform’s own pricing page prices a SOX 404 attestation or a NYDFS examination, both of which run through your outside auditor and counsel rather than your compliance vendor.

The honest cut against the category: a wider framework list does not buy a shorter runway. A platform that claims SOX ITGC or NYDFS Part 500 today is not the same as one whose claim has been independently tested. Ask whichever vendor is climbing this ladder with you to show the evidence behind the claim, not the framework logo on its pricing page.