Seed to Series B
Penetration Testing for Startups
Startups get asked for a penetration test the moment a serious customer, auditor, or investor shows up, usually with a deadline attached. Invadel scopes to what you have built, fixes the price in writing, starts within a week, and delivers a report that closes the review.
The stakes
Why startups get tested differently
Attackers do not wait for product-market fit. A startup’s exposure is usually a single web application and API built quickly by a small team. Add a cloud account where everyone is an administrator and a handful of laptops with access to all of it. The findings we see most are authorization flaws between customers, secrets committed to repositories, and cloud roles wide enough that one leaked key exposes the whole company.
The pressure arrives as a deadline. An enterprise prospect’s security questionnaire asks for a recent third-party test before procurement will sign. The SOC 2 auditor’s evidence list includes one. Investors run technical diligence before a round closes. Customers in regulated industries pass down PCI DSS, HIPAA, or GDPR obligations with the contract. None of these wait for the security hire the plan says comes next year.
Platform vendors sell startups credits, seats, and rotating testers, and consultancies sell enterprise scopes and enterprise timelines. Neither fits a company with one product and a deadline. What a startup needs is a scope matched to what exists, a price fixed in writing with no sales call required, and a start date inside the week. The report has to satisfy the customer’s security team and the auditor without translation.
What we test
The systems attackers go after first
The product web application
The application customers log into, tested across every role and tenant. Authorization flaws, account takeover, and the business logic gaps that ship when the team is moving fast.
The API and integrations
The endpoints behind the product and the third-party integrations it depends on, tested for broken object authorization, excessive data exposure, and over-scoped API keys.
Cloud account and infrastructure
The AWS, Azure, or GCP account the company runs on. Tested for IAM escalation, exposed storage, and the blast radius of one leaked credential from a laptop or repository.
Source code and CI/CD
Repositories, pipelines, and secrets handling, reviewed for hardcoded credentials, dependency risk, and the paths from a compromised developer account to production.
AI features
LLM-powered features and agents shipped ahead of any threat model, tested for prompt injection, data leakage across customers, and tool calls that exceed the user’s permissions.
Founders and the first hires
Phishing and pretexting against a small team where everyone holds administrative access, including the finance and payroll workflows attackers target first.
Compliance
The frameworks that usually apply
- SOC 2
The penetration test your first Type I or Type II auditor expects, mapped to the Trust Services Criteria and formatted for your compliance platform.
- GDPR
Article 32 testing evidence for the data processing agreements EU customers sign with you as their processor.
- HIPAA
Security Rule technical safeguard evidence for health startups asked for testing in their first business associate agreement.
Services
What startups usually buy
- From $5,200
Web Application Penetration Testing
Manual testing of your web application across the OWASP Top 10, business logic, and all user roles, with a free retest included, from $5,200.
- From $4,000
API Penetration Testing Services
REST, GraphQL, and SOAP testing for broken authorization, token flaws, and data exposure, with every endpoint in scope, from $4,000.
- From $6,800
Cloud Penetration Testing
Configuration and exploitation testing across AWS, Azure, and GCP: identity, storage, network paths, workloads, and Kubernetes, from $6,800.
- From $4,200
Cloud Security Assessment
A read-only cloud security assessment of one AWS, Azure, or GCP account: identity, network exposure, storage, logging, and data stores, benchmarked against CIS and reported by hand. From $4,200.
- From $4,800
Secure Code Review
AI-assisted static analysis paired with expert manual review of your source code, with each finding traced to file and line, from $4,800.
- From $4,500
AI & LLM Penetration Testing
LLM and AI system testing: prompt injection, jailbreaks, data leakage, and unsafe tool use, mapped to the OWASP LLM Top 10, from $4,500.
How it runs
Typical engagements
Illustrative scopes for this industry, written to show what a test covers and what you walk away with.
They are not client stories; our anonymized engagements are on the case studies page.
Typical engagement
Seed-stage startup with its first enterprise deal on hold
A seed-stage startup selling to a large enterprise has its first significant contract held up by a security questionnaire asking for an independent penetration test. We scope the web application and API in a single call, fix the price in writing, and start testing within the week. Two authorization findings are fixed and retested inside the engagement. The founders return the questionnaire with an attestation letter and executive summary, and the contract moves to signature.
Typical engagement
Series A company preparing for its first SOC 2 Type I
A Series A company preparing for its first SOC 2 Type I has a compliance platform showing the penetration testing control as unmet. We test the product with two tenants and every role, the API, and the AWS account behind them, and map findings to the Trust Services Criteria. The report and retest evidence upload directly into the compliance platform, and the attestation letter goes to the auditor with the rest of the evidence set.
Typical engagement
Series B platform before technical diligence
A Series B platform preparing for a growth round expects technical diligence from the lead investor and wants findings fixed before the data room opens. We run a web application test, a cloud test, and a secure code review of the authentication and billing services. Findings include an overprivileged deployment role and a secret committed to the repository. Both are fixed and retested, and the executive report goes into the data room with the retest evidence.
FAQ
What startup founders ask
01When should a startup get its first penetration test?
When something depends on it: a customer questionnaire, a SOC 2 audit, an investor diligence request, or a launch into a regulated market. Testing before then is rarely wasted, but the trigger usually sets the scope and the deadline. Our guide to scoping your first penetration test walks through what to include.
02What scope does a startup with one product need?
Usually the web application and its API, because that is what customers and auditors examine. Cloud testing is added when the environment holds customer data and every engineer is an administrator. When the account only needs a configuration check before an audit, a read-only cloud security assessment from $4,200 covers identity, storage, and logging without exploitation. Internal network testing matters less for a fully remote, cloud-based company. We confirm the scope in one call and quote one fixed number.
03How fast can you start?
Onboarding begins within 24 hours of a signed proposal and testing typically starts within a week. If a contract or audit has a hard date, tell us and we schedule around it. The senior testers who scope the engagement are the ones who run it, so there is no handoff to lose time on. If you are weighing a security hire against a test, our guide on when to outsource penetration testing compares the cost of each.
04Our investor wants a pentest report before the round closes. How fast can you deliver?
Tell us the closing date on the first call and we plan backward from it. Scoping takes about a day, onboarding begins within 24 hours of a signed proposal, and testing typically starts within a week. A small web application runs about a week of testing, followed by the report. Critical findings are shared the day we confirm them, so fixes can start before the report lands. The executive summary and attestation letter go into the data room. For larger scopes, see how long a penetration test takes. If you are preparing for a sale or a large raise, our guide to cybersecurity due diligence covers what buyers and lead investors check before close. If the investor is a venture or private equity fund, our page on portfolio penetration testing shows the testing standards funds set for the companies they back.
05How much does a startup penetration test cost?
Web application testing starts at $5,200, API testing at $4,000, cloud testing at $6,800, and a validated vulnerability scan from $1,500. Each is fixed in writing before work starts. Penetration tests include a free retest of remediated findings, and the findings platform is included at no extra cost. Most startups begin with the application and API.
06Will the report satisfy our customer’s security team and our SOC 2 auditor?
Yes. You receive an executive summary for the buyer or auditor and a technical report with reproduction steps for engineering. The attestation letter confirms scope, dates, and outcome without exposing the detail. Findings are mapped to SOC 2 controls and upload cleanly into Vanta, Drata, or whichever compliance platform you use. If you are comparing firms, our list of SOC 2 pentest providers covers what auditors accept.
Get a fixed price for your startup scope
Tell us what needs testing. You get a written fixed price within one business day, with the compliance mapping your auditors and customers expect.
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