What penetration testing actually costs

There is no list price for a penetration test, and a provider who quotes one before scoping is selling something other than testing. The price is set by what is in scope, how deep the work goes, who performs it, whether retesting is included, and what evidence has to be produced. This page explains those drivers so that two quotes differing several times over stop being a mystery.

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For whoever has to defend the number to finance

Security leaders holding three quotes with a wide spread and no defensible way to explain the difference to a CFO.

Teams budgeting testing for a full year rather than for one engagement, who need retests and change orders in the number from the start.

Buyers who already paid once for an inexpensive engagement that turned out to be an automated scan with a cover page.

[ PRICING MODELS ]

Three ways to be charged, and what each one does to your budget

Before comparing numbers, compare structures. The same amount of testing costs very differently depending on whether you are buying days of someone's time, a per-asset fee, or a subscription. The structure decides how predictable your year is, what a mid-year change costs you, and whether the retest is a negotiation or a click.

What you should ask about the model

Per engagement or day rate

Per asset

PTaaS subscription

Predictability across a year

Good for one engagement, poor for a year with changes in it

Predictable while the asset count is stable

Predictable by design: one number for the period

Cost of an asset added mid-year

A change order, usually at a worse rate than the original

A new unit on the invoice

Absorbed by the subscription and tested when it appears

Cost of a retest

Often billed separately, sometimes at day rate

Depends on the contract, frequently capped

Included, on demand, with attestation

Coverage between engagements

None. The gap is the model

Whatever the cadence you paid for

Continuous, which is the point of the model

Fit with an audit calendar

Good, if the calendar never moves

Good, and rigid

Evidence available when the auditor asks, not when the window allows

Where the surprise comes from

Scope growth and retests billed after the fact

Asset counting disputes

Renewal scope, which is why the scope definition belongs in the contract

Strike does not publish a price list, and neither should anyone else: a number quoted before scoping is either a placeholder or a different service wearing the same name. What we can do is tell you exactly which variables move it.

What actually moves the price

Scope size, and the type of asset in it

Live hosts, applications, APIs, cloud accounts, mobile builds. Assets are not equivalent units: an application with dozens of roles and a complex authorization model takes far longer than a static marketing site, and a directory with decades of history takes longer than a flat network of the same size.

Depth of testing

Verifying known issues is cheap. Chaining findings, testing multi-role authorization, and reasoning about business logic is not, because it cannot be parallelized or automated away. Most of the price gap between two quotes lives here, and it is the variable buyers ask about least.

Who performs the work

Senior testers cost more per hour and usually cost less per finding, because the expensive part of an engagement is the time spent understanding your system rather than the time spent running tools. Ask who is assigned, not just what the firm's average looks like.

Whether retesting is included

This single line explains a large share of apparently identical quotes. Ask whether retesting is included, how many rounds, over what period, and whether it produces an attestation. If it is excluded, add its likely cost to the quote before you compare.

Evidence and reporting requirements

A report that has to satisfy an auditor takes longer to produce than a findings list. If you need per-finding evidence, an executive summary, tester qualifications and a retest record, say so up front — it is legitimate work and it is cheaper agreed than added later.

Remediation support

Whether your engineers can ask the tester questions while fixing, or whether the engagement ends at delivery. Support shortens time to fix, which is where the value of the whole exercise sits, and it is frequently the difference between a report that gets closed and one that gets filed.

The costs that live outside the quote

The retest you did not price

You will fix things, and someone has to prove the fixes work. If retesting is billed separately, the real cost of the engagement is the quote plus the retest, and that is the number to compare against a provider who included it.

Change orders for assets that appeared later

Scope is agreed at signature and reality moves during the engagement. A subdomain, a new service, an acquisition. In a point-in-time model each of those is a commercial conversation; the cheapest way to avoid the conversation is to agree the handling of new assets in the contract.

Triage hours on a noisy report

A report full of unvalidated findings transfers work to your team. Those hours are real money and they never appear on the invoice, which is why accuracy is a commercial argument and not only a technical one.

The cost of the wait

Weeks between booking and testing, and more weeks between testing and the report, are weeks in which a known-but-unreported issue stays open. Nobody invoices for this and it is often the largest number in the whole exercise.

Comparing two quotes apple to apple

Normalize the scope first

Write down the exact asset list each quote covers, including whether authenticated testing is included and how many user roles. Two quotes covering different scopes are not comparable at any price, and this is the most common reason a decision goes wrong.

Add the excluded items back in

Retests, out-of-hours testing, extra report formats, remediation calls, assets added later. Price each exclusion at whatever the provider says it costs and add it to their number. Cheap quotes usually stop being cheap at this step.

Compare the deliverable, not the label

Ask each provider for a redacted sample report. If one delivers a scanner export and the other delivers exploited paths with evidence, you are looking at two different products that happen to share a name.

Then compare a full year, not one engagement

Add up what twelve months costs under each model: the engagements you plan, the retests, the change orders you can reasonably expect, and the months left uncovered. Point-in-time and continuous stop looking similar as soon as the horizon is a year instead of a quarter.

Frequently asked questions

How much does a penetration test cost?

Honestly: it depends, and any single figure quoted without a scope is not information. What determines the price is the number and type of assets, the depth of the work, the seniority of the testers, whether retesting is included, and how audit-ready the evidence has to be. A useful way to get a real answer quickly is to write your asset list down and ask three providers to quote against that same list.

Why do two quotes for the same scope differ so much?

Usually because they are not the same scope, even when they look like it. One includes authenticated testing across several roles and the other tests unauthenticated. One includes retesting and the other bills it later. One produces an audit-grade report and the other produces a findings list. And in some cases one is manual testing and the other is an automated scan being sold under the same word.

Is a cheap penetration test worth it?

It depends on what you actually bought. If the low price comes from a tighter scope you agreed to, that is a rational trade. If it comes from replacing manual testing with a scan, you have paid for a control you already had, and you will find out during an audit or an incident. The diagnostic question is simple: ask what percentage of the effort is manual, and ask to see a sample report.

Does compliance force you into an expensive test?

It forces you into a defined one. Frameworks care that testing happened, that it covered the right scope, that it was performed by someone qualified, and that findings were remediated and re-verified. Those requirements raise the floor on evidence quality rather than on price. Testing evidence supports SOC 2, ISO/IEC 27001 and PCI DSS programs; nothing you buy certifies compliance on its own.

What does the retest cost?

Somewhere between nothing and a second engagement, depending entirely on the contract. Ask three things before signing: is retesting included, how many rounds and for how long, and does it produce a document you can hand to an auditor. A provider who cannot show you what their retest attestation looks like is probably not including one.

How do I budget penetration testing for a year?

Start from the calendar you cannot move — audits, certification cycles, major releases — and add the testing each one requires. Then add retests, a realistic allowance for assets that will appear during the year, and the internal hours triage will consume. Compare that total against a subscription covering the same estate. The comparison is only fair over twelve months, because that is the horizon where the gaps between engagements start to count.

[ RELATED RESOURCES ]

How to choose a pentest company Vulnerability assessment and pentesting Penetration testing services PTaaS Our methodology What is penetration testing

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Information Security Officer, Plum

"The management of communication channels and the centralization of interactions with the team made the experience much more agile and effective. Having everything in one place was a huge advantage and allowed us to complete the pentest within just a few weeks."

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“Working with Strike is extremely important to us, especially because they deliver quality work over our products in a continuous way, and provide constant follow-up when it comes to managing the already found vulnerabilities. Moreover, they are constantly making improvements in their SaaS platform so we can have the best experience possible. In case we have a problem, they listen and help us. That’s invaluable.”

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Sr AppSec Red Team, NaranjaX

“Working with Strike was an excellent experience for us. We were able to create our own pentests and change their scope each month. The Strikers are world-class professionals who provide us with relevant findings quickly and efficiently. Also, automated tools like Phishing Monitor are really interesting for our company, because they help us spot fake domains trying to impersonate PedidosYa.”

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CISO, Pedidos Ya

“For us at pier, security is the most important aspect, not only on the surface but throughout our entire product. When we reached out to Strike, we were looking for someone that could test & find vulnerabilities across our entire stack. We are very happy that we have found the right partner to achieve that, and we are looking forward to continuing this important work together.”

Andras Hejj

CEO & CTO, Pier

4.9/5

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What penetration testing actually costs

For whoever has to defend the number to finance