What will compliance cost your business?
Customers, banks and regulators increasingly ask you to prove your business is secure. Answer three questions and see what that proof costs when you hire consultants — and what it costs on TruSecure.
Consultants vs TruSecure
For a company of 51 to 100 people that needs NIS2 and ISO 27001, the same proof has two price tags:
Consultants charge €129,000–€447,000 over 3 years — a new invoice every year.
TruSecure costs €17,400 — every framework, all 3 years, one license.
What you keep over 3 years, at the very least:
Save €111,600
and up to €429,600 — even the cheapest consultant quote costs 7.4× more.
a new engagement, billed again every year
one license — every framework, all 3 years
Their stack is higher: tools you'd still buy and your team's time are not in their column.
See how this is calculated
We left tooling and your team's time out of their column. Their real stack is higher. Your plan includes 3 named users and 75 AI credits per month; extra users cost €20/month and each adds 25 credits.
Every figure on this panel traces to a dated source — open "See how this is calculated".
| Consultants, 3 years | €129,000 to €447,000 |
|---|---|
| TruSecure, 3 years | €17,400 |
Same result on paper, very different a year later
Both routes get you compliant. The difference is what you're left with once the work is done.
| Hiring consultants | TruSecure | |
|---|---|---|
| What you end up with | A report that describes your business on the day it is signed. | A live overview that stays up to date as your business changes. |
| Next year | A new engagement, paid again in full. | The same yearly license. Nothing to redo from scratch. |
| Adding a requirement | Each one is a separate project with its own price. | Every requirement is included in one license. |
| Who does the work | Outside experts, on their schedule. | AI drafts policies and matches your controls; someone on your team approves each step. |
| Your team's time | The engagement ends, the work doesn't: evidence, policy upkeep and monitoring land on your FTEs, on top of their day jobs. | AI takes the repetitive work. Your team keeps the interesting part — and finally clears the backlog. |
| Surprise costs | Extra days and change requests are billed on top. | Nothing is billed automatically. Extra AI credits only when you choose to buy them. |
The line consultants never price: your team's hours
Compliance isn't a project, it's a workload. Someone gathers evidence, maps controls, drafts and refreshes policies, chases owners. Consultants hand that work straight back — and it lands on your FTEs.
The consultant route
After the invoice, the work is yours. Evidence collection, control mapping, policy upkeep, monitoring — the repetitive 80% of compliance quietly consumes your specialists, week after week. The interesting work, and the backlog, wait for a slot that never comes.
With TruSecure
The repetitive 80% runs on the platform — AI collects, maps and drafts; a person on your team approves each step. Your FTEs keep the interesting 20%: decisions, risk judgment, improvement. The internal effort drops accordingly, and the backlog you've been meaning to clear for years finally gets cleared.
AI credits, in plain words
An AI credit pays for one finished AI action a person on your team approves — mapping a control to a framework clause, drafting a policy, summarizing an evidence record. It meters the work that used to eat your team's weeks, and it's why the license runs your compliance every day instead of handing you a report.
Your license includes credits every month: 25 per named user. A 50-person plan comes with 3 named users and 75 credits a month; every extra user adds 25 more. If you run out, you buy more as needed — nothing auto-bills, and nothing runs without a named person approving it.
What's at stake
Why each requirement matters, in plain terms. Fines are the legal maximums set out in EU law.
Win deals with larger or US customers
Standard: SOC 2
Enterprise and US buyers routinely ask for a SOC 2 report during procurement. Without one, deals stall in security review or go to a competitor who has it.
Get a recognised security certificate
Standard: ISO 27001
European tenders and supplier checks increasingly demand ISO 27001. The certificate is what passes procurement — and what auditors ask for first.
We handle personal data of people in the EU
Standard: GDPR
GDPR applies to almost every organization processing EU personal data, customer or employee. Fines reach up to EUR 20 million or 4% of total worldwide annual turnover (Art. 83(5)).
We work in an essential sector in the EU
Standard: NIS2
Essential-sector entities answer to the EU's cybersecurity regime directly. Fines reach up to EUR 10 million or 2% of worldwide turnover for essential entities (Art. 34).
We're in finance, or we supply IT to finance
Standard: DORA
Financial entities — and the ICT providers they depend on — must prove operational resilience to supervisors: contracts, registers and incident clocks included.
We build or use AI in our product in the EU
Standard: EU AI Act
AI obligations bite by use case, and most companies are deployers. High-risk uses — hiring, credit, essential services — carry documentation and oversight duties from August 2026.
Show customers our AI is managed responsibly
Standard: ISO 42001
Customers increasingly ask how you govern AI. ISO 42001 is the certificate that answers the question before they ask it.
We want to work on US defence contracts
Standard: CMMC
US defence contracts require CMMC certification at the level the contract demands. No certificate, no bid.
Follow a respected security roadmap
Standard: NIST CSF
The CSF gives you the structure customers, insurers and auditors recognise — a roadmap, not a law.
Get a prioritised security checklist
Standard: CIS Controls
CIS Controls rank the measures that stop the most common attacks — the practical starting point when the to-do list feels endless.
+ More where this list doesn't stop. The framework library keeps growing, and whatever your customers, tenders or auditors ask for next runs on the same license.
Benchmarks and where the line ends
Consultant figures: market benchmarks (Kertos, ISO 27001 year-1; SaaSFort, NIS2 readiness) and the sourced engagement-class range, dated 17 August 2026. Consultants re-bill: each year of the 3-year view repeats the year-1 engagement. TruSecure figures are the approved rate card; a 50-person company runs TruSecure GRC continuously for €4,400 a year. We left tooling and your team's time out of the consultant column — their real stack is higher.
All prices exclude VAT and are billed yearly in advance. Onboarding is a fixed-scope project, quoted after a first call, and is not included in the comparison. TruSecure does not issue certifications. We run your GRC and make you compliant and audit-ready; the certificate itself is issued by an accredited auditor or certification body, whose fees apply to both routes and are not included.