How much does Cyber Essentials cost in 2026?

The certification fee

For the Cyber Essentials self-assessment, IASME sets the fee by the number of people in your organisation:

Organisation size	Fee
Micro, 0 to 9 employees	£320 + VAT
Small, 10 to 49 employees	£440 + VAT
Medium, 50 to 249 employees	£500 + VAT
Large, 250+ employees	£600 + VAT

Fees are set by IASME and were correct in October 2026. The certificate lasts 12 months, so it's a yearly cost.

Cyber Essentials Plus

Plus adds a hands-on technical audit of a sample of your devices and cloud services. It's priced by the certification body rather than set centrally, and depends on how many devices and sites need testing, so expect it to cost noticeably more than the basic certificate. It builds on a current Cyber Essentials certificate.

The cost of getting ready

This is where budgets go wrong. The five controls sound simple, but common gaps include:

• Old laptops, phones or servers that no longer get security updates and need replacing.
• Multi-factor authentication missing on some cloud services. Since April 2026 that's an automatic fail wherever it's available.
• Routers, firewalls and apps that haven't been patched within 14 days of a critical update.
• Staff using admin accounts for everyday work.

Fixing these is often a few days of work, sometimes a hardware purchase. The expensive version is failing, fixing in a hurry and paying again.

How to keep the total down

1. Get a gap review before you apply, so you only submit when you'll pass.
2. Fix the gaps in one go, rather than as surprises.
3. Keep it maintained through the year, so renewal is quick.

What I charge

It depends on your size and starting point. After a 30 minute call I'll send a fixed quote for getting you ready, so there are no surprises. Read more about how I help with Cyber Essentials.