Your audit is in six weeks.
Your evidence is in twelve spreadsheets.
SimpleRisk Core is free to download and self-host. Paid tiers from $5K/yr. No six-figure implementation. No dedicated IT admin. No contracted PM.
Three reasons the risk program never gets built
47
Audit dread
The auditors arrive and your evidence lives in shared drives, inboxes, and the muscle memory of three people. Every cycle restarts from scratch.
SimpleRisk centralizes evidence collection, maps controls to your frameworks, and turns audit prep into a report you run, not a project you manage.
Board meeting: tomorrow, 9am
Board credibility
Your board asks for risk exposure in dollar terms. You have a heat map from last quarter and a gut feeling. Neither one belongs in the boardroom.
SimpleRisk's FAIR-based quantification puts financial risk estimates in front of your board. Defensible, live, and built without a BI team.
Enterprise GRC vendor quote: $214,000/yr
The company won't pay for it
You've known for years the spreadsheet isn't working. You've made the case. The answer keeps being no. Because every tool you've found costs six figures, or takes 18 months to deploy, or requires a procurement cycle that outlasts the problem it was supposed to fix.
SimpleRisk Core is free to download. The $5K Starter Package is the number that ends the internal approval loop. No dedicated IT admin. No contracted PM. No implementation partner. This is why SimpleRisk was built.
SimpleRisk compared to nine GRC platforms
| SimpleRisk | Archer | ServiceNow | Optro (formerly AuditBoard) | MetricStream | Vanta | LogicGate | Diligent | Riskonnect | Eramba | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Flat annual | Per module + user | Per persona tier | Enterprise custom | Per user + module | Per headcount | Per app + admin | Modular custom | Enterprise custom | Flat annual |
| User accounts | ✓Unlimited |
✗Per user |
✗Per persona |
✗Limited |
✗Per user |
✗Per employee |
–Admins paid |
✗Limited |
✗Limited |
✓Unlimited |
| Framework library | ✓250+ included |
✗Module add-ons |
✗Module add-ons |
–Audit-native |
–Enterprise config |
✗35 frameworks |
✗Bring your own |
–Acquired depth |
✓1,000+ regs |
–Community config |
| Time to value | ✓Hours to days |
✗6–18 months |
✗3+ months |
✗Weeks–months |
✗6–18 months |
–Days (SOC 2 only) |
–Weeks–months |
✗Weeks–months |
✗Months |
✓Days to weeks |
| Free trial | ✓Free Core + 30-day trial |
✗None |
✗None |
✗None |
✗None |
–Demo only |
✗Demo only |
✗Demo only |
✗None |
–Community free only |
| FAIR risk quantification | ✓AI Extra |
✓Available |
✗Not native |
✗Not native |
✓Monte Carlo |
✗Not available |
✓Risk Cloud Quantify |
✗Not native |
✗Not native |
✗Not available |
| No consultants required | ✓Self-service |
✗Required |
✗Required |
✗Required |
✗Required |
–Optional |
–Recommended |
✗Required |
✗Required |
✓Self-service |
| Pricing transparency | ✓Published |
✗Hidden |
✗Hidden |
✗Hidden |
✗Hidden |
✗Hidden |
✗Hidden |
✗Hidden |
✗Hidden |
–Enterprise unpublished |
| Entry price point | ✓From $5K/yr |
$55K–$300K+/yr | $50K–$500K+/yr | $30K–$150K+/yr | $75K–$1M+/yr | $10K–$80K+/yr | $25K–$150K+/yr | ~$15K–$150K+/yr (est.) | ~$283K/yr | Free / from €2.5K/yr |
Pricing sources & citations
GRC vendor pricing is largely unpublished. Figures below are the vendors' own published pricing where available, otherwise third-party marketplace and analyst estimates, cited as such. SimpleRisk pricing is published at simplerisk.com/pricing.
- Archer — publishes no pricing; third-party estimates put the basic suite near $55K/yr, enterprise in the low to mid six figures. Sources: 360Quadrants, eSecurityPlanet (2026).
- ServiceNow — GRC/IRM is custom, headcount-based; contracts reported at $50K to $500K+/yr. Source: 6clicks ServiceNow GRC pricing analysis (2025).
- Optro (formerly AuditBoard) — custom pricing; Vendr buyer data shows a median near $46K, range roughly $21K to $111K, most contracts $40K to $150K/yr. Sources: Vendr, Sprinto (2026).
- MetricStream — third-party bands: $75K to $150K small, $250K to $500K mid, $750K to $1M+ large enterprise. Sources: Changeflow, PricingNow (2026).
- Vanta — no published list price; Vendr median $20K, range roughly $7.5K to $57K, Enterprise at or above $80K/yr. Sources: Vendr, ComplyJet (2026).
- LogicGate — Risk Cloud, priced per application and power user; Vendr median near $53K, range $25K to $150K+/yr. Source: Vendr marketplace data (2026).
- Diligent — no published list price; Vendr data (blending board and GRC) reports roughly $15K to $150K+/yr, median near $25K, from 70 purchases. Source: Vendr (2026).
- Riskonnect — one documented customer paid about $283K/yr in licensing in a Forrester Total Economic Impact study; a single case, not a published minimum. Source: Forrester TEI via Riskonnect.com.
- Eramba — Community edition free and open source; Enterprise from €2,500/yr self-hosted, about €5,000/yr Eramba-hosted SaaS. Sources: eramba.org, GRC-Review (2026).
"The problem with many GRC tools is that they overreach their mission and become incredibly complex. SimpleRisk gives you exactly what you need without all that overhead. And the best part is you can download it and get started for free."
Allan Alford, CISO
"We estimated saving 900 hours of labor in the first 12 months. During our 30-day pilot alone, we calculated 84 hours saved ($4,200). Remediation time for critical findings dropped from 16 days to 9 days."
Information Security, Data Privacy & Compliance Officer, Fortune 500 Technology Company
"I have implemented Archer, Lockpath, and RSAM at my previous employers. They all require armies of people or professional services to manage. There is no way my current employer could afford the previously mentioned apps."
Nick Waringa, Information Security and Risk Manager
Everything your risk program needs. Nothing it doesn't.
SimpleRisk was built for security leaders who are accountable for risk outcomes but can't justify an 18-month implementation or a per-user licensing negotiation every time the team grows.
"Your budget is $0. Go figure it out." That's what SimpleRisk founder Josh Sokol was told in 2013 after presenting a $500K GRC quote to his VP. He built SimpleRisk because nothing existed for the practitioner who knew what they needed and couldn't get the budget to buy it. That gap is still what SimpleRisk is designed to close.
You get a live risk register, centralized evidence management, FAIR-based quantification, and a framework library that covers what your auditors actually ask for.
- Risk register with real-time status, no spreadsheet reconciliation
- Evidence management tied to controls, not shared drives
- 250+ frameworks: NIST CSF, ISO 27001, HIPAA, SOC 2, PCI DSS, NERC-CIP, and more
- FAIR-based risk quantification for board-level reporting
- AI Extra for accelerated control mapping and risk narrative
- Free Core download (open source). Self-host at no cost. Paid Extras from $5K/yr.
- Unlimited users: your whole team, your vendors, your auditors
- No dedicated IT platform admin or contracted PM for audit programs. Ongoing staffing is a fraction of a FTE, not a full headcount line.
Your risk program starts free. Extras when you're ready.
Free Core to download and self-host. 30-day hosted trial, no credit card. Running in hours, not months.
Start free: 30-day trialFree Core always available · 30-day hosted trial, no credit card · Paid Extras from $5K/yr