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SOC 2 compliance software for fintech, and the framework ladder that follows it
Most SOC 2 platforms handle a fintech's first audit and its PCI DSS scope equally well. Far fewer are built for what comes next: only four vendors in our GRC software directory claim SOC 1, two claim SOX ITGC, and three claim NYDFS Part 500. A fintech should shop for that ladder before its first audit closes, not after.
This comparison covers core SOC 2 platforms with a documented PCI DSS claim, then distinguishes SOC 1, SOX ITGC, and NYDFS Part 500 coverage.
The pre-IPO framework ladder: who claims SOC 1, SOX ITGC and NYDFS Part 500 once PCI DSS is table stakes
PCI DSS is close to universal across this eligible set, so it decides nothing on its own. What decides the next three years of vendor selection is which platforms have built past it. We checked every eligible platform’s own framework claims for SOC 1, SOX ITGC and NYDFS Part 500 rather than its general multi-framework marketing, and reused the sibling PCI page for the PCI depth column so the two pages agree rather than re-deriving the same fact twice.
Featured firms pay to appear first. Every firm here cleared our fit bar first; payment cannot add a firm or change its facts. Sort any column to reorder.
| PCI DSS depth | SOC 1 | SOX ITGC | NYDFS Part 500 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Comp AI Sponsored Engineering-led teams that value inspectable code or the option to self-host | Vendor-claimed | Vendor-claimed | Not established | Not established |
| Anecdotes Multi-framework security and GRC teams with a dedicated compliance function and an enterprise budget | Vendor-claimed | Vendor-claimed | Vendor-claimed | Vendor-claimed |
| Scytale Startups without compliance expertise: software plus hands-on advisory in Build DFY or Build Stronger | Mapped from other frameworks | Not established | Vendor-claimed | Not established |
| Thoropass Teams wanting software and a connected audit process from the same provider | Native control set | Vendor-claimed | Not established | Not established |
| Trustero Multi-framework GRC teams or MSSPs that want a shared control library | Vendor-claimed | Vendor-claimed | Not established | Not established |
| Vanta Cloud-native SaaS teams on mainstream stacks that value a broad integration catalog | Native control set | Not established | Not established | Vendor-claimed, dedicated product page |
| Drata Growth-stage SaaS teams on mainstream stacks that expect to add frameworks over time | Native control set | Not established | Not established | Vendor-claimed, announced 2025-11-20 |
| Apptega MSSPs, MSPs, and consultancies running multi-client, multi-framework compliance programs | Vendor-claimed | Not established | Not established | Not established |
| Carbide Early-stage SaaS companies that want hands-on guidance for a first compliance framework | Native control set | Not established | Not established | Not established |
| ComplyJet Small B2B SaaS teams that want hands-on ownership of a first SOC 2 program | Vendor-claimed | Not established | Not established | Not established |
| Delve Very early-stage SaaS startups pursuing a fast, lower-cost first SOC 2 report | Vendor-claimed, thin | Not established | Not established | Not established |
| Oneleet Security-conscious startups wanting compliance, penetration testing, and light vCISO help together | Mapped from other frameworks | Not established | Not established | Not established |
| Scrut Automation Growth-stage tech teams managing SOC 2 alongside other frameworks | Native, mapped to v4.0 clauses | Not established | Not established | Not established |
| Secureframe Teams seeking expert guidance with a published Fundamentals starting price | Native control set | Not established | Not established | Not established |
| Sprinto Early- to growth-stage SaaS teams seeking a guided, lower-cost first audit | Mapped from other frameworks | Not established | Not established | Not established |
| Strike Graph Growth-stage teams wanting plan-based public pricing across several frameworks | Mapped, SAQ-oriented | Not established | Not established | Not established |
| TrustCloud GRC teams handling several frameworks, trust reviews, and security questionnaires together | Mapped via a common control framework | Not established | Not established | Not established |
| Zania Enterprise GRC teams using AI-assisted evidence testing across several frameworks | Mapped across frameworks | Not established | Not established | Not established |
PCI DSS depth reproduces the verified column from our PCI DSS compliance software page, sourced against each vendor’s own PCI documentation at the retrieval date in its directory record. The SOC 1, SOX ITGC and NYDFS Part 500 columns come from each platform’s framework claims in our GRC software directory. Every NYDFS claim here is vendor-claimed rather than confirmed: each vendor publishes its own mapping and none has been independently tested control-by-control, and the Part 500 certification is filed by the covered entity itself rather than issued by a platform. Optro, formerly AuditBoard, is the platform actually built for SOX Section 404 at public-company depth; it is tiered out of scope as an internal-audit tool rather than a SOC 2 buyer’s tool, so it cannot appear in this table and is covered in the prose instead.
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 GRC software directory: 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 GRC software directory 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 GRC software directory: 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 GRC software directory 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.
Frequently asked.
What is SOC 2 compliance software for fintech?
It is software that automates SOC 2 evidence collection and continuous control monitoring, then, for the platforms that support it, extends the same evidence base into PCI DSS, SOC 1, SOX ITGC or NYDFS Part 500. The fintech-specific requirement is not a longer feature list, it is which of those frameworks a platform has actually built rather than merely listed. Seventeen of our nineteen core platforms claim PCI DSS. Far fewer claim anything past it.
Do fintechs need SOC 2 or PCI DSS first?
If your platform stores, processes or transmits cardholder data, PCI DSS is mandatory regardless of your SOC 2 status, so the real question is sequencing rather than whether. Most fintechs run SOC 2 Type 1 while PCI DSS scoping is still in progress, then move to Type 2 once the observation period closes. The control overlap between the two is real, but neither satisfies the other on its own.
How often do fintechs need a SOC 2 audit?
At minimum annually. Banking partners and regulated enterprise customers typically require a current SOC 2 Type 2 report covering the most recent twelve months, and some sponsor-bank relationships add quarterly evidence pulls on top of the annual cycle. That is why continuous monitoring, rather than a once-a-year evidence dump, matters more for a fintech than for a SaaS company in a less scrutinised vertical.
What is different about SOC 2 for fintech?
Scope, scrutiny and what comes after. A generic SaaS company runs one SOC 2 Type 2 a year and stops. A fintech layers PCI DSS if it touches card data, then SOC 1 and SOX ITGC as it approaches an IPO, and NYDFS Part 500 if it or its sponsor bank is DFS-covered. Fintechs also more often add the Processing Integrity criterion to their SOC 2 scope to cover transaction accuracy, which most SaaS companies skip entirely.
Does NYDFS Part 500 apply to my fintech if my sponsor bank holds the license?
Possibly, even without a DFS license of your own. Section 500.11 requires a covered entity, your sponsor bank in a banking-as-a-service relationship, to impose baseline cybersecurity requirements on its third-party service providers, and your fintech is exactly that to your bank partner. That flow-down is separate from direct licensure and can arrive earlier. Confirm with your sponsor bank which Part 500 requirements they are pushing down to you contractually.
How should a fintech sequence SOC 2, PCI DSS, SOC 1, SOX ITGC and NYDFS Part 500?
By what is actually being asked of you, not by a fixed roadmap. SOC 2 Type 2 comes first because nearly every enterprise and banking-partner deal gates on it. PCI DSS follows immediately once you touch cardholder data. SOC 1 and SOX ITGC typically arrive twelve to eighteen months ahead of an S-1, once your finance function needs its own internal-controls attestation. NYDFS Part 500 arrives the moment you or your sponsor bank triggers DFS coverage, which can be earlier than the others. Confirm each trigger with your auditor rather than assuming this order applies to you.