How Much Does a
Managed SOC Cost?
A managed SOC in the UK costs from £900 per month for a small organisation to £12,000 or more per month for a large enterprise, billed as a fixed monthly subscription. Entry-level managed SOC starts from £900/month for 50 to 100 users, standard cover runs £3,000 to £4,000/month, and enterprise cover runs £8,000 to £12,000+/month. Building an equivalent in-house SOC costs upwards of £210,000 per year in salaries alone. Precursor Security provides fixed monthly managed SOC pricing after a free scoping call.
A managed SOC in the UK costs from £900 per month, billed as a fixed monthly subscription. Here is the full pricing breakdown by tier, what drives the cost, and how it compares to building an in-house SOC. No POA.
A managed SOC costs from £900/month.
Managed SOC pricing is billed as a fixed monthly subscription, scaling with the number of users and endpoints, the volume of log sources, and the service tier. Every tier includes 24/7 UK-based monitoring and incident response, with no POA and no per-incident fees.
First managed SOC?
The Essential tier (from £900/month) is the most common starting point for small and mid-size organisations. It gives you 24/7 UK-based monitoring and satisfies most cyber insurance and Cyber Essentials monitoring requirements. Prefer per-endpoint billing? See SOC as a Service from around £4 per endpoint.
Managed SOC cost by tier
Three tiers covering every organisation size. Each is fixed monthly pricing, includes 24/7 UK-based monitoring and incident response, and is scoped on a free call before you commit.
Essential Managed SOC
50-100 users | Core log sources
- 24/7/365 monitoring
- SIEM management + rule tuning
- Confirmed-threat alerting
- Monthly reporting
- Email and portal escalation
Best for: First SOC, small teams, satisfying cyber insurance and Cyber Essentials monitoring requirements.
Standard Managed SOC
100-500 users | EDR + cloud logs
- Everything in Essential
- Proactive threat hunting
- Dedicated analyst support
- Incident response included
- Cloud and identity log coverage
Best for: Mid-market and regulated organisations that need active hunting and human-led response, not just alerts.
Enterprise Managed SOC
500+ users | Multi-cloud estates
- Everything in Standard
- Dedicated analyst team
- Custom detection engineering
- Compliance evidence packs
- Named service manager
Best for: Large or complex estates and DORA / FCA-regulated firms needing dedicated resource and bespoke detections.
SOC as a Service
14-day deploy | Same SOC, per-endpoint commercial wrapper
Best for: organisations that prefer to scale spend linearly with device count rather than a fixed monthly tier.
- Same 24/7 UK-based SOC and analysts
- Priced per endpoint per month
- Deploys in around 14 days
- Incident response included
- Scales up and down with your estate
What does this cover?
Organisations with 50 to 500 employees typically spend from £900/month (Essential) up to £4,000/month (Standard) for fully managed 24/7 detection and response. That is a fraction of the £210,000+/year an equivalent in-house team costs in salaries alone, and it is operational in weeks, not months.
Managed SOC vs in-house SOC cost
The reason most UK organisations outsource: an in-house SOC costs six figures a year before it detects a single threat.
| Option | Typical cost |
|---|---|
| Managed SOC (Precursor) | From £900 per month |
| SOC as a Service | From around £4 per endpoint / month |
| In-house SOC (3-5 analysts) | £210,000+ per year (salaries alone) |
An in-house build also carries SIEM/EDR licensing, threat intelligence, training, and management overhead on top of salaries. A managed SOC folds all of that into one fixed monthly fee.
What the monthly fee includes
One price covers the platform, the tooling, and the team. There is no separate incident-response retainer and no per-incident charge.
What drives managed SOC cost
Four factors set where your price lands. We confirm all four on a free scoping call before quoting.
Compare across the closed loop
Most UK mid-market organisations pair a managed SOC with an annual penetration test, feeding test findings straight into SOC detection rules. See the related pricing.
Get your fixed monthly SOC price
A 20-minute scoping call establishes your users, log sources, and coverage. You get a fixed monthly quote, no POA, with 24/7 UK-based monitoring and incident response included.
Get a Fixed Monthly QuoteManaged SOC pricing questions
A UK managed SOC costs from £900 per month for a small organisation to £12,000+ per month for a large enterprise, billed as a fixed monthly subscription rather than a day rate.
- Entry-level (50-100 users, basic log sources): from £900/month, including 24/7 monitoring and incident alerting.
- Standard (100-500 users, EDR plus cloud logs): typically £3,000-£4,000/month with threat hunting and dedicated analyst support.
- Enterprise (500+ users, multi-cloud): £8,000-£12,000+/month with a dedicated analyst team.
Precursor provides fixed monthly pricing after a free scoping call, with no POA and no per-incident response fees.
An in-house SOC costs far more: even a small three-analyst team runs upwards of £210,000 per year in salaries alone, before tooling. A managed SOC delivers the same 24/7 capability from £900/month.
- True 24/7 cover needs at least five analysts on a rotating rota (£40,000-£70,000 each), not three.
- On top of salaries: SIEM/EDR licensing, threat intelligence feeds, training, and management overhead.
- An in-house build takes 6-12 months to stand up; a managed SOC is operational in 2-3 weeks.
The monthly fee covers the platform, tooling, and the 24/7 analyst team as one price, with no separate incident-response retainer.
- SIEM platform (Microsoft Sentinel or Elastic) management, log ingestion, and detection-rule tuning.
- 24/7/365 monitoring and triage by UK-based, CREST-accredited analysts.
- Threat hunting, confirmed-threat escalation, and incident response, included as standard.
- Monthly reporting mapped to ISO 27001, NIS2, and DORA evidence requirements.
Pricing scales with the size and complexity of what we monitor: the number of users and endpoints, the volume and variety of log sources, and the service tier. Our SOC as a Service option is priced from around £4 per endpoint per month. Larger environments move to a fixed monthly fee based on scope, confirmed on a free scoping call before any commitment.
A legitimate 24/7 managed SOC with human analysts starts around £900/month. Anything advertised far below that is almost always automated-only alerting with no analyst investigating your alerts.
- Under ~£500/month: typically a reseller SIEM dashboard with no human triage, so alerts pile up unactioned.
- No named response SLA or unclear analyst-to-client ratio: a sign the monitoring is tooling, not a staffed SOC.
- Incident response billed as a separate retainer: watch for hidden per-incident fees on top of the headline price.
Ask any provider three questions: is it staffed 24/7 by humans, is incident response included, and are the analysts UK-based and CREST-accredited.
No. Precursor managed SOC is fixed monthly pricing with incident response included as standard, not billed as a separate retainer. There are no per-incident fees and no per-report charges. If you lack an existing SIEM we can deploy and manage one as part of the service, which is quoted transparently up front.
It can. If you already run Microsoft Sentinel or Elastic, we manage your existing licence and your ingestion cost is billed at cost or through your own tenant. If you have no SIEM, we deploy and manage one as part of the service. Either way the SIEM cost is set out transparently in your quote, never buried.
Most UK mid-market organisations find managed SOC costs a fraction of both an in-house build and the cost of a single unmonitored breach. Cyber insurers increasingly require 24/7 monitoring by qualified analysts, and documented SOC coverage supports premium reductions at renewal, so the service frequently offsets part of its own cost through insurance and avoided-incident savings.
Yes. Co-managed SOC lets your internal team keep daytime control while we provide the 24/7 night, weekend, and holiday coverage plus deeper detection engineering. It is priced on the same tier model, scoped to the hours and log sources you want us to own, and is often the most cost-effective route for organisations that already have some in-house capability.
Managed SOC is a monthly subscription, typically on a 12-month term so detection tuning has time to mature to your environment. There is no long lock-in beyond that, and pricing is fixed for the term so your budget is predictable.