Managed SOC cost: in-house vs outsourced (SOCaaS) and how to budget

In this blog, we will explore typical SOC cost drivers, the price impact of having 24/7 cover for your environment, compare managed SOC pricing models and how Evalian’s co-managed SOC gives organisations a practical middle ground; complete visibility and control without the overhead of running a SOC internally.

Why are SOC costs increasing?

Cybersecurity budgets are at an all-time high, yet breaches are more frequent, increasingly sophisticated, and quite frankly, downright scary when it comes to the impact on your organisation’s assets and reputation. In fact, IBM’s 2025 Cost of a  Data Breach Report states the average global cost of a breach is $4.4M, and when you take into account the losses that reach beyond an IT department, it’s not hard to see why.

The worrying truth is, in-house security and IT teams are saturated with opaque tools, overlapping products and solutions, and telemetry scattered across multiple SaaS platforms. Logs disappear into vendor dashboards and data continually leaves the business with little understanding of how it is used, who it is exposed to, and where it is stored, reducing both visibility and control, and ultimately, security.  

To regain control, organisations are throwing more money at the problem by attempting to build a fully functional SOC internally. It’s a logical reaction, but security leaders often underestimate the true cost of building and maintaining their own SOC and, as a result, are achieving less.  

So where is it all going wrong? And how can you make sure your organisation is getting the best SOC support possible, without the escalating costs of trying to do it all in-house?   

What a SOC actually does and why it drives cost 

We’ve covered what SOC and SOCaaS are in depth in our Guide to SOSaaS, but for a quick recap: 

While the term SOC encompasses everything from the methodology, people and processes within it, ultimately, it’s the function responsible for detecting and responding to cybersecurity incidents. It acts as the on-call guardian of your digital environment. 

As you will have gathered by now, that can look different from business to business – some may have a fully in-house SOC, others outsource their SOC, and we’ve seen many with a hybrid setup.  

• Some organisations build a fully in-house SOC
• Some outsource everything
• Many operate a hybrid or co-managed model

An in-house SOC can give you better control, but at a much higher cost, whereas SOCaaS is a more cost-effective solution. But if you’re still weighing up your options, you need to consider the benefits of each, understand the up-front cost and the ongoing investment required to make it the most effective use of your budgets.  

SOC cost breakdown: 8 items to budget for 

There are a number of aspects that drive the cost of a SOC, whether developing this capability in-house or working with an outsourced security partner like Evalian. Pricing fluctuations are usually driven by people coverage and data ingestion volume. Most of the other factors are negotiable with scope.  

The items below highlight the operational and financial factors that shape SOC cost in any model.

Download your copy of the SOC costs breakdown table (click the image to download).

When reviewing SOCaaS proposals, it’s worth keeping an eye on the fine print. Most unexpected costs stem from data ingestion overage and incident response hour spikes, so make sure both are clearly capped in your contract.  

Be wary of offers that claim 24/7 coverage; true round-the-clock protection isn’t just having someone on call; it means having experienced L2 and L3 analysts with eyes on screen round the clock, backed by measurable MTTR targets.  

In-house SOC cost vs outsourced (SOCaaS): what changes the balance sheet 

As we mentioned earlier, outsourcing SOC services is more budget-friendly than maintaining an in-house SOC. Building an internal SOC brings with it operational costs like facilities and infrastructure, the technology used, recruitment and ongoing training and retention goals.  

It’s a huge investment and one which can take months, often years, to get to a mature state of day-to-day operations. Complexity can come from basic things that are overlooked, like staff turnover, shift gaps, false positives, and for those organisations that use multiple tools and supply chains, it can become messy and hard to manage.  

In contrast, organisations using SOCaaS save on infrastructure and technology costs while maintaining an enterprise-level security.  You can choose when to scale it as you grow, and costs generally tend to be based upon endpoints, users or log sources.  

Not to mention the fact that there’s no hardware to maintain in-house, you don’t have to worry about salaries, holidays, pensions and other “people” factors rocking your “security boat”.  

Rather than investing hundreds or thousands of pounds into an internal SOC team, an organisation can pay a recurring subscription fee and still get that 24/7 coverage. This is the game-changer for many organisations, it’s that reassurance that comes from the predictability of a subscription fee.  

To read more on the benefits of SOCaaS, visit the Guide we mentioned earlier in this blog.  

The true cost of 24/7 SOC coverage 

You’d be wise to be wary of claims of 24/7 coverage. So how do you know if a provider truly does offer real-time coverage? Refer to our SOC provider checklist for the ultimate guide on choosing your SOC provider.  

A legitimate provider of 24/7 SOC will have L1, L2, and L3 analysts working in shifts, not a single person on standby. You should ask whether they run a follow-the-sun model (multiple regional SOCs handing over) or a single-region shift rotation. Both can work, but coverage gaps shouldn’t exist. 

To be sure that alert notifications aren’t just being queued up until office hours, you need to confirm that their SOC uses automated alerts with SOC analysts’ review and action. True coverage means your environment is being actively monitored and triaged in real-time.  

Look for contractual SLAs that apply 24/7, and be sure to look out for wording like “during business hours only”. The SOC provider should provide Mean Time To Respond (MTTR) and Mean Time To Detect (MTTD). This is proof that “real-time” isn’t just a marketing gimmick.  

To understand whether a true 24/7 SOC wil contain or isolate a system that has been affected immediately, you should check that they don’t just “notify” overnight, and not take action until the next day. 

How SOCaaS providers price 

SOCaaS pricing is usually built around a framework of three factors: scope, volume of data and assets and service depth. Providers like Evalian offer fixed subscription tiers that cover those aspects.  

As an example, the number of endpoints being monitored, log and data ingestion, 24/7 monitoring and incident containment. Some of these factors will be included, and some may only be included in higher subscription tiers. Make sure your provider provides transparent explanations of each subscription tier – no one likes hidden costs.  

A good example of this is Evalian’s SOCaaS subscription tier table that details everything included. This kind of pricing structure ensures that you feel confident you’re getting what you pay for and have complete predictability and control as you scale.  

Your provider should help you understand what coverage you need rather than quoting a “cost for all” by guiding you through those variables and making sure you choose the right tier to match the size and complexity of your digital environment.  

Implementation timeline and one-off costs 

Once you have a good understanding of how SOCaaS pricing tiers work, your next consideration is implementation. What do those initial set-up costs cover? While ongoing subscription fees are generally predictable, this early phase is where many providers hide costs – you need to make sure they’re clarified up front.  

Referring briefly to our Guide to SOCaaS, most providers’ onboarding looks similar to the following:

Weeks 0–2: Kick off and scoping, tolling deployment 

Weeks 2–6: Log ingestion, alert config and initial use-case tuning. The SOC team builds and tests runbooks, mapping out how specific incidents will be detected and escalated. 

Months 2–3: Transition to stable operations. Regular reporting begins, and KPIs are tracked 

These onboarding activities can often be billed as one-off costs. See what’s included in our SOC onboarding process to understand exactly how Evalian structures this phase for clarity and cost control. 

Compliance impact on SOC cost (ISO 27001, GDPR, NIS2, sector regs) 

Your organisation’s complexity, industry and the regulations it has to adhere to can mean that compliance obligations can significantly affect the cost of a SOC. This is especially true when considering ISO 27001 certification.  

To meet controls such as A.8.15 (Logging) and A.8.16 (monitoring), you must log data across your systems and cloud so that you can demonstrate compliance with the standard.  

As we discussed in our recent blog How a SOCaaS can accelerate ISO 27001 maturity, auditors can verify the measurable evidence-driven process that you’ve logged through your SOC.  

This activity can help your organisation move from simply being compliant to showing assurance in practice. Being able to outsource that function can make your compliance more predictable and is an investment that can move the needle for your business goals, albeit naturally adding to operational costs.  

How to reduce SOC costs without weakening protection 

Reducing SOC spend doesn’t mean you have to cut corners. In nearly all cases, cost efficiency can come from smarter configuration and truly understanding the scope, the complexity and the depth of your systems.  

Regularly tuning your alert systems can reduce noise significantly, saving you both time and data injection costs. Consolidate your tools; multiple systems that overlap in detection and logging can often increase costs with no additional value.  

What if you already have an internal security operations function? You could consider a hybrid SOC model, where your team handles office hours, and you outsource to a SOC team like Evalian to handle your night-time, weekend and holiday triage. This format would give you the coverage you need, without fully staffing a whole SOC in-house.  

Fully outsourcing your SOC can deliver everything with predictability and the best cost efficiency. A subscription means you can reduce unnecessary costs whilst maintaining that enterprise-level security. Not to mention the round-the-clock monitoring, audit-ready reporting and transparency.  

Co-managed SOC: The middle ground between control and cost 

A co-managed SOC lets organisations keep visibility and decision-making while offloading the operational and cost-intensive elements. 

Visibility remains central 

Your team retains access to logs, alerts, investigations, runbooks and case history. You stay in control of decisions and context. Evalian provides the operational monitoring, triage and response. 

Your managed SOC pricing remains predictable 

Evalian absorbs the most expensive elements of SOC operations: 

• Night, weekend and holiday coverage 

• L1/L2/L3 investigation and engineering support 

• Correlation, enrichment and tuning 

• Automation and SOAR runbooks 

• Reporting and audit evidence 

• Security tooling and platform maintenance 

This reduces staffing overheads, removes shift-pattern pressure and keeps ingestion costs under control through structured use-case-led onboarding. 

You retain control 

You define daytime security operations, business context and escalation decisions. Evalian provides the expertise and response capability to maintain visibility and protection 24/7. 

This model suits organisations wanting visibility and control without the overhead, recruitment burden and cost spikes of a full internal SOC. 

SOC Cost calculator

Get a tailored SOC cost estimate, using our SOC Cost Calculator or book a short discovery call to explore where efficiencies can be made. 

Go to the SOC Cost Calculator

Enquire about SOC pricing

Ready to implement SOCaaS, but don’t know how to go about choosing the best provider to suit your unique business operations? Our SOC team have put together this comprehensive Guide to Choosing a SOC Provider, complete with a free and thorough checklist for you to use as a benchmark when on your decision path.

This guide moves you from vague vendor promises to concrete, comparable evidence, ensuring you choose a SOC that can scale with you, adapt to your needs, and keep pace with modern threats.

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