FedRAMP Cost and Timeline: Where the Real Numbers Come From
There is no official FedRAMP price list. The program does not publish a cost schedule, and the estimates you find range from $150,000 to $3 million and from a few months to three years. Most of those numbers describe the old path. The 2026 class system changed both variables: you can now enter at Class A with a SOC 2 you may already hold, and the program states a goal of deciding your application within 30 days. Here is what the published estimates actually say, who published them, what drives the spread, and what changed.
Key takeaways
- Nobody official will quote you a price. FedRAMP publishes requirements, not fees or cost estimates. Every dollar figure you see is a vendor's or practitioner's estimate, ours included.
- The published ranges, with their sources: $250,000 to $3 million or more for certification depending on class (Paramify, 2026), $250,000 to $750,000 for a Rev5 Moderate including documentation, assessment, and remediation (Secureframe), roughly $470,000 to $1.26 million on the legacy Rev5 path (Quzara), and a practitioner thread reporting about $150,000 for documentation work before the independent assessment even starts (Reddit's r/FedRAMP).
- Maintenance is a second budget. Published annual-maintenance estimates for a Moderate run $75,000 to $200,000 (Secureframe), and the old continuous-monitoring work is now Collaborative Continuous Monitoring: quarterly review meetings and the Ongoing Certification Report (what changed).
- The 2026 rules compress the entry, not the whole ladder. Class A accepts a SOC 2 Type II or a recent readiness report, and the government's stated review goal is an initial decision in 30 days. Higher classes still demand more preparation, automation, and assessment depth.
- Timeline estimates mostly measure preparation, not review. The old 10-to-19-month figures describe evidence-building and remediation. The 30-day goal covers only the decision on a complete application.
What FedRAMP itself costs
The program's provider pages describe the application process without listing a federal application fee. Your money goes to your own work: readiness and remediation before you apply, the independent assessor who must assess you, the automation you build to keep evidence current, and your team's time. If a consultant quotes you a figure, that is their price, not the program's.
The published estimates, sourced
These are other parties' estimates, quoted with attribution, not ours:
| Source | The estimate | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Paramify (2026) | $250,000 to $3,000,000+ | Certification cost by class; Class B at the low end |
| Secureframe | $250,000 to $750,000 | Rev5 Moderate: documentation, 3PAO assessment, remediation |
| Secureframe | $75,000 to $200,000 per year | Ongoing maintenance at Moderate, depending on automation |
| Quzara | ~$470,000 to $1.26M+ | The legacy Rev5 path, low end to high |
| Vanta | $150,000 to $1M | The audit and authorization work itself |
| r/FedRAMP thread | ~$150,000 | Documentation, interviews, and the package, before the assessor |
The spread is the story. Nobody is wrong on their own facts: the range depends on class, your starting maturity, how much you automate, and whether remediation uncovers real gaps.
What drives the number
- Starting maturity. A commercial product with a current SOC 2 Type II and real security engineering enters the ladder at Class A cheaply. A product that has never been assessed pays to find and fix its gaps first.
- Class. The government's class table lists six dials that all rise together: preparation, federal process maturity, automation, verification and validation, agency assurance, and cost. Class A minimizes all six.
- The independent assessor. Every provider works with an A2LA-accredited independent assessor, and assessment scope scales with class.
- Remediation. Whatever the assessment finds, you fix. This is the least predictable line and the reason no honest estimate is a promise.
- Automation. The 2026 rules push hard toward machine-readable evidence, published schemas, and tooling (the rules say modern services should not hand-craft reports). Teams with automated compliance evidence pay less, month after month, than teams paying humans to assemble packages.
Timeline: what changed and what did not
The pre-2026 guides quote 10 to 19 months (IDGA's beginner's guide), 12 to 18 months for Moderate (Vanta), and 8 to 24+ months overall (Paramify). Those numbers were mostly preparation and remediation time, plus a review backlog the program itself acknowledges used to run a year or more.
Two 2026 changes attack the review side, not your side:
- The 30-day decision goal. The Getting Certified page states it as a goal, explicitly not an SLA, with the honest note that the review clock stops while the team waits on you.
- The class ladder. You no longer package everything for one giant authorization. Class A gets you listed and marketable with evidence you may already have, then you climb as demand arrives.
The part that did not change: your preparation is the timeline. Nobody can estimate it for you without looking at your system.
What this means for your budget conversation
- Ask for a class-scoped quote, not "FedRAMP pricing." A Class A readiness-plus-assessment quote and a Class C program quote are different products.
- Ask assessors and advisors what they charge, separately. The documented directory lists the government-registry firms; pricing is the conversation you have with them, and the structured RFP below makes their answers comparable.
- Budget maintenance as a first-class line. The quarterly meetings, the Ongoing Certification Report, and the incident reporting clocks are not optional extras. They are the certification.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a fee to apply to FedRAMP? The program's provider pages describe applying without listing a federal fee. Your costs are your own preparation, your assessor, your tooling, and your team. Verify current terms on the rules pages before budgeting.
What does Class A cost? No official figure exists. Class A accepts a SOC 2 Type II or a recent readiness report, which is why entrants with a current SOC 2 report the lowest figures in the published ranges.
How long until we are listed? The program's goal is an initial decision within 30 days of a complete application, with no SLA. Your preparation is the variable; published full-journey estimates still run from several months to two-plus years by class and starting maturity.
What does ongoing certification cost per year? Published maintenance estimates run $75,000 to $200,000 at Moderate (Secureframe), scaling with how much of your evidence is automated. The quarterly review cadence and the Ongoing Certification Report replaced the old monitoring packages.
Did the 2026 rules make FedRAMP cheaper? They made the entry cheaper and the ladder explicit: Class A is a real on-ramp, and the government describes investment scaling with agency interest. The higher classes still cost what they cost, because they demand more assurance.
Compare real quotes from the firms the government itself lists. New to the whole program? Start with the 2026 path, class by class.
The figures here are other parties' published estimates, quoted with attribution as last reviewed; there is no official FedRAMP cost schedule, and the 2026 rules carry a public changelog, so verify current requirements before relying on anything here. Last verified: October 2026. Have a correction or addition? Request inclusion or a correction →
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