CertiK Audit Cost: What CertiK Charges and What You Get

By the Guardian team Updated November 2026 5 min read

Quick answer. CertiK publishes no prices and quotes each audit after scoping. Its clearest public price is its 2024 proposal to Venus: $420,000 for 24 months, or 50 hours a month at $350 an hour.

Watch: CertiK Audit Cost: What CertiK Charges and What You Get 1:40

Video transcript

CertiK publishes no prices and quotes after scoping. Guardian, which competes with CertiK, checked public records for what it charges.

One-off quotes may differ. CertiK's 2024 renewal proposal to Venus Protocol set $420,000 for 24 months, or 50 hours a month at $350 an hour.

Unused hours roll over until the term ends, extra work is paid upfront, and each engagement gets two auditors and a security engineer.

The audit pairs expert manual review with AI and mathematical techniques. Formal verification is optional, reports are public, and no timeline is stated.

We found no CertiK price for team KYC, Skynet features or bug bounties, and nothing saying KYC comes with an audit.

Hours may count differently, but the rates compare. Quantstamp's Venus retainer works out to about $289 an hour. A 40-hour week at CertiK's rate is $14,000, inside the range an Arbitrum DAO proposal cites.

Before signing, ask for named auditors, whether a billed hour is one person's or the team's, how many fix-review rounds you get, and a written start date.

Guardian also quotes each engagement, but Vanguard's contents are public: two independent teams, one driven by Helix, Guardian's AI auditor, plus invariant fuzzing, a Defender contest and a hosted bug bounty.

Read the full article, then send your scope for a Vanguard quote at guardian.security and compare it line by line.

CertiK does not post a rate card. Its audit page sends buyers through a “Scoping & quote” step, with onboarding that varies by code size.

So public prices come from buyers that pay vendors through public governance. Venus Protocol, a lending protocol governed onchain on BNB Chain, is the clearest record we found.

Price ranges on comparison sites rarely cite a record, so we leave them out.

Disclosure: Guardian publishes this page and competes with CertiK. Guardian quotes each engagement and does not publish prices.

Public CertiK Prices

Venus pays vendors through onchain governance proposals (VIPs). Each payment names the vendor, the amount and the month covered.

Record	Period	Price	Status
Monthly retainer payments, VIP-138 to VIP-280	Jul 2023 to Apr 2024	19,000 USDT a month	Executed
Renewal proposal, posted by CertiK	Apr 17, 2024	$420,000 for 24 months	Forum proposal
Monthly retainer payments, VIP-297 to VIP-540	May 2024 to Sep 2025	17,500 USDT a month	Executed

The renewal spells out the terms:

Rate: 50 hours a month at $350 an hour, or $17,500 a month.
Rollover: unused hours carry over, then reset to zero at the end of the term.
Extra work: billed at the same rate, due within 24 hours and before work starts.
Staffing: two auditors and one staff security engineer per engagement, with at least two returning auditors.
Start dates: within 7 business days for 40 hours or less; 14 above that.
Exit: 10 business days' written notice, effective the next month.

At $350 an hour, a 40-hour week of billed time is $14,000. That is our arithmetic. The proposal does not say how hours are counted across staff.

The payment proposals from July 2023 to April 2024 also listed the audits CertiK had scheduled. July 2023's covered an oracle upgrade, the Diamond Comptroller and an Isolated Pools RewardsDistributor.

We could not verify a public price for a one-off CertiK audit. A retainer rate may differ from a single-audit quote.

What the Audit Includes

CertiK's audit page sets out five steps: code submission, scoping and quote, security analysis, remediation guidance and the final report.

Methods: expert manual review on every audit, with AI and mathematical techniques.
Formal verification: optional, against custom function specifications.
Severity: findings graded Critical to Informational, each with suggested remediation.
Fix status: issues fixed before launch are marked resolved.
Open issues: acknowledged findings carry their potential impact and the team's reasoning.
Languages: Solidity, Rust, Move, Vyper, Python, Go, C/C++ and Haskell.
Visibility: “Smart contract audit reports are freely available to the public.”

The page gives no timeline, and does not say how many fix-review rounds a quote covers. Ask.

Badges, KYC and Skynet

Skynet listing and score

Projects that complete a CertiK audit “earn a spot on the Skynet Leaderboard,” CertiK says.

The Skynet Score rates projects in six categories: Code Security, Fundamental Health, Operational Resilience, Governance Strength, Market Dynamic and Community Trust.

Code Security carries the most weight. It draws on “all publicly available audit reports from established security providers,” not only CertiK's.

KYC badges

CertiK's team KYC awards a Gold, Silver or Bronze badge in four steps:

A background investigation of core team members.
A video call with key members.
Due diligence and a risk assessment.
A badge and a listing on the KYC Leaderboard.

Badges are re-assessed every 90 days. They show geographic risk, the number of verified core members and the project's inception date.

What the add-ons cost

None of the CertiK pages we read list a price for KYC, Skynet features or CertiK Hunt bug bounties. None says KYC comes with an audit.

Asked in the Venus thread about Venus's security score, CertiK said a team KYC, a bug bounty setup and Skynet monitoring “would all have a positive impact” on it.

Skynet's methodology also credits team verification “through trusted vendors,” so compare each add-on with other providers.

How It Compares

Venus also published a Quantstamp retainer, a rare comparison from the same buyer.

Firm	Record, year	Price	Per unit
CertiK	Venus retainer, 2024	$420,000 for 1,200 hours	$350 an hour, stated
Quantstamp	Venus retainer, 2025	$130,000 for 450 hours	About $289 an hour, our math
Halborn	Arbitrum DAO bid, 2024; not elected	$500,000 per six months	$20,833 per engineer-week, stated
Typical range	Arbitrum Audit Program proposal, 2025	Not a quote	$10,000 to $40,000 per auditor-week

The packages differ, and an hour may not mean the same thing at each firm:

CertiK: start dates agreed in writing; two auditors and a security engineer per engagement.
Quantstamp: fix reviews and three auditors by default, but no guaranteed start date.

For more firms, see what top auditors charge. For other options, see CertiK alternatives.

Questions to Ask Before Signing

How many hours or engineer-weeks does the quote buy, and who are the named auditors?
Is a billed hour one person's hour, or the team's?
How many fix-review rounds are included?
Is formal verification in the price, or extra?
What does extra work cost, and when is it due?
What start date is guaranteed in writing?
What notice ends a retainer, and when do unused hours expire?
Are KYC, Skynet features or a bug bounty priced separately?
Is the report public by default?
Who reviews offchain systems and changes after launch?

How Guardian Quotes an Audit

Guardian quotes each engagement and publishes no prices. What a Vanguard audit includes is public:

Two independent teams on one scope, one of them driven by Helix, Guardian's AI auditor.
An invariant fuzzing suite that stays with you as a regression harness.
A $100,000 Guardian-funded Defender contest for Critical findings.
A hosted bug bounty with $50,000 in Critical matching.
Half the package cost back as credits toward offchain assessments.
Six months of update review, up to 2,500 onchain or 10,000 offchain SLOC.

Send your scope for a Vanguard quote and compare it line by line. Teams can also apply to the Guardian Security Fund, which offers $1,000,000 in audit grants.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does a CertiK audit cost?

CertiK publishes no prices, and one-off quotes follow a scoping step. Its 2024 renewal proposal to Venus set $420,000 for 24 months: 50 hours a month at $350 an hour. Venus's executed payments match that rate.

Does CertiK publish its prices?

No. CertiK's audit and pentest pages list no prices and route buyers to a quote. Its audit page says onboarding options vary with the project's code size.

Is CertiK KYC included in an audit?

The CertiK pages we read do not say KYC comes with an audit, and list no price for it. Badges come in Gold, Silver and Bronze and are re-assessed every 90 days. Ask for it as a separate line item.

How does CertiK's rate compare with other firms?

At Venus, CertiK's rate is $350 an hour; Quantstamp's 2025 retainer works out to about $289. Hours may count differently. A 40-hour week at $350 is $14,000, within the $10,000 to $40,000 per auditor-week an Arbitrum DAO proposal cites.

Sources

Compare a Vanguard quote line by line

Send us your scope, and we will show what a two-team Guardian audit covers before and after launch.

Talk to Guardian Get a Vanguard quote