How Much Does FedRAMP Certification Cost? [Updated for 2025]

Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) certification is costly. For organizations offering cloud services to the federal government, FedRAMP compliance will cost $250,000 to $750,000 — though it can go as high as $1.5m.

The cost of FedRAMP compliance falls into two areas:

• Initial Authority to Operate (ATO) costs
• Ongoing authorization or continuous monitoring costs

In this guide, we'll break down the various FedRAMP compliance costs, including engineering, consulting fees, 3PAO assessment, and continuous monitoring.

What is FedRAMP?

The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) is a government program designed to ensure cloud service providers meet the needed IT and security standards to protect sensitive data on behalf of federal agencies.

FedRAMP certification is essential for all cloud providers that work with government contracts.

What Are The FedRAMP Levels?

FedRAMP has three impact levels: Low, Moderate, and High:

• Low Impact is for data that “would result in limited adverse effects on an agency’s operations, assets, or individuals.”
• Moderate Impact (the most common level) is for data isn’t public but also not considered national security sensitive.
• High Impact is needed for systems that process highly sensitive information, usually related to law enforcement and emergency services systems, financial systems, or health systems.

What You Need to Know About FedRAMP Certification Costs

The cost of FedRAMP certification is generally split into four buckets:

1. 3PAO (Third-Party Assessment Organization) Fees ($50k - $400k+)

This is the non-negotiable "auditor" fee. FedRAMP doesn’t allow self-attestation and in order to achieve FedRAMP certification your organization will need to pass an audit from a FedRAMP-accredited 3PAO.

The 3PAO fee covers both a Readiness Assessment (RAR), where they tell you if you're even close to ready, and the full Security Assessment, which results in the Security Assessment Report (SAR) that gets submitted to the FedRAMP PMO.

The 3PAO fee is driven almost entirely by the number of controls at your target impact level (Low, Moderate, or High). More controls means more testing, more documentation review, more interviews, and ultimately, a higher bill.

2. Consulting & Advisory Fees ($100k - $500k+)

Unless you have a team of ex-federal compliance officers and technical writers on staff who have been through this exact process before, you likely need expert consultation to help you prep for FedRAMP compliance.

External consultants can help with projects like gap analysis, creating documentation (like the System Security Plan/SSP) and also with helping you submit your authorization package and managing interactions with the FedRAMP Program Management Office (PMO).

3. Remediation & Engineering ($10k - $100k+)

FedRAMP is brutally prescriptive and there is absolutely no wiggle room. This isn't like a SOC 2 audit where you can explain an alternative control to your auditor. If the control requires FIPS 140-2 validated cryptography, you must implement FIPS 140-2 validated cryptography.

Remediation work will likely take up time from your best engineers and this is where the bulk of the expenses ramp up here.

4. Continuous Monitoring ($50k - $100k+ annually)

FedRAMP is not a one-time audit you pass and forget about for a year. Alongside annual assessments, FedRAMP requires a continuous monitoring program. Once you’ve achieved FedRAMP certification, you have to continually prove your compliance through vulnerability scans and a Plan of Action & Milestones (POA&M) updates to keep your ATO.

Continuous monitoring will add a permanent line item in your OpEx budget that will exist as long as you want to sell to the government.

Factors That Inflate (or Reduce) Your Total Cost

The fedramp authorization process is a large expense, but it’s an essential cost if your organization sells into the government. Here are some factors that can impact the overall cost of the certification process.

Your Impact Level

This is the #1 driver of cost. Moderate is the most common (accounting for nearly 80% of CSP applications).

Moderate is for cloud service providers (CSPs) handling controlled unclassified information that’s not public and where the loss of confidentiality could result in significant operational disruption for the agency or its assets. The FedRAMP moderate impact level requires CSPs to implement 325 security controls.

The High impact level is reserved for systems touching law enforcement, healthcare, emergency services, or national security, and the cost and complexity are exponentially greater.

System Complexity

What, exactly, is inside your authorization "boundary"? A single, modern, containerized application is one thing. A complex, multi-tenant platform with 15 micro-services, legacy monoliths, and a dozen third-party data integrations is an entirely different animal. A smaller, cleaner boundary is a cheaper, faster audit.

Existing Compliance Posture:

Are you starting from a messy, undocumented "move fast and break things" culture, or do you have a mature SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001 certification and experience with NIST controls? If you already have a strong, provable control environment, your gap analysis and remediation will be much smaller.

Your Timeline

Trying to rush FedRAMP is like trying to rush building a house. In the long run, it just costs more. You'll pay "surge" pricing for consultants, burn out your engineering team, and make costly mistakes that need to be fixed later. A realistic 12-24 month plan is almost always the best path.

Budgeting for the Hidden Costs: 3 Things That Sink FedRAMP Projects

Remediation Overruns

You will find something during the gap analysis that will result in significant work to align with FedRAMP requirements. A core service that doesn't log properly. An open-source library with a critical vulnerability that requires a major refactor.

If you’re not careful with your planning, a three-month remediation plan will take six. As the old saying goes ‘plan for the worst hope for the best’ — try to build in buffers for unforeseen work and delays. If you don’t need it, great. But if you do, at least you’d built it into your timeline.

Tooling & Infrastructure Uplift

You'll need to budget for a government-approved cloud-based environment (e.g., AWS GovCloud or Azure Government), which carries a ~20-30% cost uplift over standard commercial costs. You'll also need a Security Information and Event Management(SIEM) that can handle federal logging requirements and dedicated vulnerability management tools that meet agency standards.

The "Sponsor Search"

This is the go-to-market cost no one tracks. It can take a full year of a senior sales executive's time (plus travel, conferences, and demos) just to find an agency sponsor. That's a huge, un-costed resource drain that happens before you even spend your first dollar on a consultant.

How to Tame the Cost Before You Start

You can't escape the FedRAMP process, but you can make it dramatically cheaper and faster. The secret is to not start from a dead stop.

The foundation of FedRAMP is the NIST framework, and a huge number of the NIST 800-53 controls overlap with common industry frameworks like SOC 2 and ISO 27001. The work you do to level up your security posture and stay compliant with those is also preparing your business for FedRAMP prep.

This is where we see the smartest companies win. Before they start the FedRAMP ATO process they already have world-class and rigorous security foundations covering areas like penetration testing, incident response, and continuous monitoring in place.

How Workstreet Can Help

Workstreet's AI-Powered Continuous Compliance Services gets you 100% audit-ready for 20+ frameworks like FedRAMP, SOC 2, ISO 27001, and HIPAA. Our approach uses a combination of AI and human experts to handle the entire process for you from drafting policies and implementing controls to automating evidence collection — helping you to accelerate timelines and reduce financial and time burdens on your team as you work towards FedRAMP certification.

We get you from 0-to-1 on the compliance maturity scale, so your FedRAMP journey is a 1-to-10 sprint instead of a grueling 0-to-10 marathon.

Final Thoughts

The cost of FedRAMP compliance is significant, there’s no way around that. The FedRAMP ATO process is designed to be brutally hard, so that only organizations that meet the strictest cybersecurity practices are eligible to work with government agencies.

If you're standing at the bottom of this mountain, the single best thing you can do today is build build the foundation of a mature security program. When you're ready to make the climb, you'll be starting from a position of strength, not scrambling from a dead stop.

Learn more about how Workstreet can help your business work towards FedRAMP certification today.