MDR cost calculator: what would your own SOC actually cost?
Enter your device count and we'll model the real year-one and three-year cost of staffing and running an in-house SOC, side by side with Pulse MDR at our published rate. Every salary, tooling and discount assumption is editable, so the number reflects your environment, not a generic estimate.
Year-one cost, side by side
Over three years
| Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Build your own SOC | ||||
| Pulse | ||||
| Saving |
What goes into the number
The "build your own SOC" side models the full cost of 24/7 coverage: enough analyst headcount to staff a rotation around the clock, senior and incident-response engineers for escalations, a SOC manager and detection engineer, SIEM licensing sized to your device count's log volume, a SOAR and threat-intel budget, training, and the one-time cost of hiring and standing it all up. It also accounts for the roughly 25% annual attrition SOC teams typically see, since recruiting and retraining is a real, recurring cost most internal estimates leave out.
The Pulse side uses our published per-device rate and the same volume discounts shown on the Packages page, plus a small internal-oversight allowance, since even a fully managed service needs someone on your side to own the relationship and approve pre-agreed actions.
Every assumption, salaries, SIEM cost per gigabyte, your actual device count, is editable in the calculator. This is a planning model built on public pricing and reasonable market benchmarks, not a quote; see the FAQ below for what it does and doesn't cover.
Why the gap is usually bigger than people expect
Most in-house SOC cost comparisons only count analyst salaries, and stop there. That leaves out the senior staff who actually handle escalations, the manager and detection engineer roles a credible SOC needs regardless of size, the SIEM bill that scales with your device count, and the training and tooling budget that keeps analysts effective. It also leaves out attrition: security analysts have some of the highest turnover in IT, and every departure costs weeks of recruiting and months of ramp-up.
On the other side, MDR pricing is sometimes assumed to carry a premium for the 24/7 coverage. In practice, per-device MDR pricing is usually a fraction of the fully loaded cost of even a lean in-house team, because the fixed costs, SOC management, tooling, training infrastructure, are spread across every customer, not carried alone by your environment.
If the calculator's numbers don't match what you'd expect for your organization, that's worth a closer look either way, see the full methodology in the MDR pricing guide, or ask us directly.
Frequently asked questions
Is the number this calculator gives me an official quote?+
No. It's a planning model built from your inputs and our published Pulse pricing, not a quote. We'll check it against your real environment, tooling and team on a 30-minute call before any number becomes a quote.
What assumptions does the "build your own SOC" estimate use?+
US market salary benchmarks for SOC analysts, senior/IR engineers, a SOC manager and a detection engineer, with a 30% employer-cost loading, typical SIEM ingestion volumes, about 25% annual analyst attrition, and a one-time build-out cost for hiring and tooling setup. Every assumption is editable in the calculator itself.
Does the Pulse estimate include volume discounts?+
Yes. Pulse packages include volume discounts starting from 250 devices, and the calculator applies them automatically based on your device count, consistent with the pricing on our Packages page.
Which Pulse package should I select in the calculator?+
Core, Assured and Elite differ in how much response work Pulse carries for you, not in the published per-device rate. If you're not sure which fits, start with Assured, the package most customers choose, and compare the full feature differences on the Packages page.
Want us to check these numbers against your environment?
Tell us what you're running today and we'll turn this estimate into a real quote.