Who Can Audit and Fix Your App Before a Security Review? Firms Compared (2026)

If a customer just sent you a security questionnaire, or your launch depends on passing a security review, the firms that can audit and fix your app before a security review come in three kinds, and most founders call the wrong one first. A penetration testing firm finds problems. A development firm fixes them. A SOC 2 platform, and the CPA auditor behind it, checks whether your process holds up over time. This roundup compares six, says which job each one does, and gives a price only where the firm publishes one. Razoyo is listed first because this is Razoyo’s blog, so every other entry says where that firm beats us.

How we picked

1. The firm does one of the three jobs today. Testing, fixing or compliance, checked on its own live website in October 2026.
2. The mix covers the whole review. One penetration testing platform, one SOC 2 compliance automation vendor, three development firms that publish production-readiness or hardening work, and Razoyo.
3. You can see what you are buying before a call. A published scope, a published exclusion list or a published price ranks above “talk to sales.”
4. There is a real buyer for whom this firm beats the others. A roundup where one firm wins every row is an ad.

We did not rank by headcount, revenue or awards.

At a glance

Razoyo, if you want one team to find the gaps and then close them

Disclosure: this is Razoyo’s blog, and we are biased.

Razoyo is a software engineering firm in The Colony, Texas (Dallas-Fort Worth), serving clients US-wide since 2011. We take prototypes and constrained systems into production. So, plainly: Razoyo is not a penetration testing firm and not a SOC 2 auditor. We read the code, tell you what a tester or reviewer will find, and then fix it.

The first paid step is an AI-generated code audit, delivered as a Production Spec: $2,500 fixed, with audit findings, a risk ranking and a remediation plan. It checks seven dimensions every time: security and access, data integrity, architecture, test coverage, observability and alerting, a real deploy path, and documented ownership. If the honest answer is three fixes rather than a rebuild, that is what you hear. The fix work runs on the published price list: a production build from $10,000, support from $1,500 a month. Before any work above the Spec, a business analyst puts a level of effort and a budget on each piece of work and gets your confirmation first. No approval, no work.

The proof that matters here: Spider, the hotel business intelligence platform now part of Lighthouse, went from an internal tool that emailed reports to a self-service platform used by more than 10,000 people a day, with role-based access at hotel, portfolio or system level. And Matrix, an internal hotel sales CRM that was not multi-tenant, rebuilt for M1 Intel into multi-tenant SaaS with proper data isolation.

Ideal for

• Founders with an AI-built or inherited app and a security review on the calendar
• Internal tools that now have paying customers and need real tenant separation
• Teams that want the findings and the fixes from the same accountable engineers

Why they stand out

Razoyo publishes its price ladder and its production standard, so you can hold any vendor here, including us, to the same seven dimensions. And because the Spec price is fixed, nobody has a reason to sell you the bigger job.

Pros

• A published, fixed first step. $2,500 for the Production Spec, before any build decision.
• The same team audits and fixes. No handoff between the people who found the gap and the people closing it.
• Every piece of work is estimated and approved first. And every change lands on staging before production.
• Proof at production scale. More than 10,000 daily users on Spider, and multi-tenant SaaS on Matrix.

Cons

• Not a penetration testing firm. If the customer wants a third-party pentest report, you still hire a tester, ideally after we have fixed the obvious fails.
• Not a CPA firm. We can get your access, change and monitoring controls into shape, but only an independent CPA firm can issue a SOC 2 report.
• Build prices are ranges until the Spec is done. “From $10,000” is a floor, not a quote.
• Not built to put dozens of engineers on a project next month. A large bench is a different purchase.

Verdict: pick Razoyo when you need someone to tell you what the review will find and then close it, and pair us with an independent tester when the customer wants a pentest letter.

Cobalt, if a customer or auditor is asking for a pentest report

Cobalt sells penetration testing as a service (PTaaS). You scope the test on its platform, and Cobalt says you can “go from scope to active pentest in hours.” Testers come from the Cobalt Core, a network of 500+ vetted security experts, working with AI-powered automation across web apps, APIs, networks, cloud configuration and AI and LLM features. Findings post to the platform as they are found, and Jira, GitHub and Azure DevOps integrations put them in your developers’ queue.

Pricing runs on credits: one Cobalt Credit is the equivalent of 8 hours of offensive security testing, sold in annual packages that do not roll over. Retesting is unlimited during the contract term, which matters: the test after your fixes is the one a reviewer wants to see. Cobalt also issues “audit-quality letters of attestation” for compliance. What it does not do is change your code: it tells your developers, precisely, what is wrong.

Ideal for

• SaaS teams whose customer contract or auditor asks for a third-party pentest
• Teams that already have developers who can fix findings fast
• Companies that will test more than once a year, around releases

Why they stand out

Speed and retesting. A test can start in hours rather than weeks, and unlimited retests during the term let you prove a fix instead of promising one.

Pros

• Fast to start. Scope to active test in hours, by its own account.
• Unlimited retesting during the contract. Fix, retest, show the clean result.
• Findings land in your tools. Jira, GitHub and Azure DevOps integrations.
• Compliance-ready reporting. Reports aimed at PCI DSS, HIPAA, SOC 2 and ISO 27001, plus audit-quality attestation letters.

Cons

• Finds, does not fix. Someone on your side, or a firm you hire, closes every finding.
• Annual packages, use-it-or-lose-it credits. Credits are specific to each contract year.
• No public price, and testing an app with obvious gaps burns paid hours. Hardcoded keys and missing access checks are cheaper to find yourself.

Verdict: pick Cobalt when a customer or auditor wants an independent pentest and you already have someone to fix what it finds.

Vanta, if the review is a SOC 2 requirement or a stack of questionnaires

Vanta is compliance automation software. It covers SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA and what it calls 35+ frameworks, pulls data from 400+ tools, and collects the evidence a SOC 2 auditor will ask for. The part buyers miss: Vanta is not the auditor. A SOC 2 report is issued by an independent CPA firm, and Vanta’s own FAQ says it “introduces you to vetted, independent auditors” who review your evidence in a dedicated portal. It lists 100+ auditors. After the report, Vanta keeps monitoring, alerts you when a control fails, and its AI “generates remediation snippets so developers can resolve failing tests fast.” It also automates security questionnaire responses and runs a Trust Center for sharing your SOC 2 report and policies with prospects.

There is no dollar price on its plans page, and on audit cost it says pricing “depends on scope, company size, and whether you’re doing Type I or II.” It reports more than 16,000 customers.

Ideal for

• Startups whose first enterprise customer requires a SOC 2 report
• Teams answering the same security questionnaire every week
• Companies that will need more than one framework, such as SOC 2 and ISO 27001

Why they stand out

It turns SOC 2 from a folder of screenshots into connected evidence, with questionnaires and the auditor introduction in the same place.

Pros

• An auditor network built in. 100+ auditors, working in the platform.
• Evidence collected from your tools. 400+ integrations, by Vanta’s count.
• Questionnaire automation. Drafted answers for the questionnaires that slow down deals.
• Evidence reuse. SOC 2 work carries over to ISO 27001, HIPAA and GDPR.

Cons

• Not the auditor. The CPA firm’s fee is a separate line in your budget.
• No public price, and no code fixes. A failing control still needs an engineer.
• SOC 2 is about process. A customer may still ask for a pentest of the application itself.

Verdict: pick Vanta when the review is a SOC 2 requirement or a stack of questionnaires, and budget separately for the CPA audit and for the engineering fixes.

Saritasa, if you want a US firm to audit, harden and launch an AI-built app

Saritasa is a US software development firm with offices in Irvine, California and Tampa, Florida. Its “vibe to viable” service names one of this post’s buyers directly: businesses that need to stabilize an internal tool created through vibe coding. It starts with a code audit and production readiness assessment, reviewing “your AI-generated or vibe-coded codebase to identify blockers that can prevent a viable production launch.” Then it fixes them: architecture review and refactoring, bug fixing, CI/CD with release controls, testing, launch support and ongoing maintenance. On security it says it will “identify and patch exposed secrets, unsafe integrations, insecure authentication flows, unprotected endpoints, and other security risks.”

Two honest details: it says it may sometimes recommend building from scratch, and it offers “basic compliance support, if applicable to the project,” which is accurate scoping for a development firm. No price is published; the page promises a reply within 24 hours.

Ideal for

• US founders with an AI-built MVP heading for its first real users
• Internal tools built by prompting that the business now depends on
• Teams that want launch support and maintenance from the same firm

Why they stand out

It names the internal-tool case explicitly and covers the whole path from audit to maintenance, with a specific list of what it patches.

Pros

• Two US offices. West and East coast coverage.
• Audit, fix, launch and maintain. One firm for the whole path.
• A concrete security list. Secrets, integrations, authentication flows and unprotected endpoints.
• Willing to say “rebuild.” The page says so in writing.

Cons

• No published price. Ask what the audit costs before the code is read.
• Compliance support is basic. Fine for preparation, not a substitute for an auditor.
• Not a penetration testing firm. A third-party test is still a separate purchase.

Verdict: pick Saritasa when you want a US firm to audit, fix and launch an AI-built app or internal tool, and you are comfortable getting the price after a call.

WZ-IT, if you want a fixed audit price with the exclusions in writing

WZ-IT is an engineering firm in Werl, Germany, that designs, develops and operates infrastructure and software, and its homepage says you work directly with the founders. Its Production Readiness Audit covers MVPs, internal tools and AI-generated applications before go-live, investment or a takeover. It reviews sign-in, roles, tenant isolation and session handling; the data model, input validation, keys and environment variables; dependencies; tests; and CI/CD, logging, monitoring, backup and rollback. Findings come back as blockers, high risks and later improvements, each with an effort range. Two prices are published: a Compact Audit at €1,490 excluding VAT, with a results workshop within 5 business days, and an Architecture Audit at €4,900 for apps with several services or heavier scaling needs.

It also publishes what the audit is not: no “penetration testing with exploitation, social engineering or assessment of third-party infrastructure,” no remediation of every finding, and no formal certification under GDPR or ISO 27001. If you want them to keep going, WZ-IT says it can take over hardening and operations.

Ideal for

• European buyers who want a compatible time zone
• One small, clearly bounded codebase that needs a go-live answer
• Teams that want the audit independent of whoever does the fixes

Why they stand out

It is the only firm here that publishes both a price and an exclusion list for its audit, including the plain statement that a pentest is a separate purchase.

Pros

• Published prices. €1,490 and €4,900, excluding VAT.
• Fast. Results workshop within 5 business days on the Compact Audit.
• Tenant isolation is in scope. The issue that matters most when an internal tool gets customers.
• Exclusions in writing. No surprise about what was not checked.

Cons

• Based in Germany. Limited working-hours overlap for a US team.
• Not a penetration test, and prices exclude VAT. Its own page says both.
• Founder-led. Ask about capacity before handing over a large hardening project.

Verdict: pick WZ-IT when you are in Europe, your app is one bounded codebase, and you want a fixed audit price with the exclusions in writing.

Cleveroad, if you want a big team running a fixed rescue sequence

Cleveroad is a large custom development company with offices in Claymont, Delaware and Tallinn, Estonia, delivering software since 2011. Its vibe coding rescue service starts with read-only repository access under NDA and returns “a severity-ranked report on the security and scaling risks already in your app.” Scanners cover known vulnerability classes, senior engineers review the logic scanners miss, and every finding gets a severity score and an effort estimate. The report stands alone, so it keeps its value if you fix things yourself.

The fixes follow a fixed order. Broken access control, exposed credentials, unvalidated inputs and shared environments go first. Then a regression suite around sign-up, authentication and payments, with payments tested against the provider’s live webhooks. Then CI/CD with rollbacks, monitoring and handover documentation. Cleveroad says the riskiest fixes “ship within days of the audit.” It cites 280+ in-house engineers and ISO 27001-certified security processes. No price is published.

Ideal for

• Teams that need a large bench to start within days
• Apps with payments and subscriptions that must not fail quietly
• Buyers whose customers ask about a vendor’s ISO 27001 status

Why they stand out

Scale plus a published sequence: you know what gets fixed first, and security holes come before features.

Pros

• 280+ in-house engineers. Capacity to start fast and scale.
• ISO 27001 and ISO 9001 certified. Useful answers for your own security questionnaire.
• A standalone, severity-ranked report. Yours whether or not you continue.
• Security first, by design. Access control, credentials and inputs lead the sequence.

Cons

• No published price. Ask for the audit price before you grant repository access.
• Distributed across time zones. Ask where the engineers on your project sit and what hours overlap with yours.
• A large company, and not a pentest firm. Ask who the named senior engineer on your project is.

Verdict: pick Cleveroad when you need a large team to audit and fix quickly, especially around payments, and you want the order of work written down before it starts.

What is the difference between a penetration test, an audit and a fix?

A penetration test attacks the running app the way an outsider would and reports what worked; an audit reads the code and setup and reports what is missing; a fix is engineering work that changes the code. Testers and auditors find. Developers fix. The vendors draw the same line: WZ-IT lists penetration testing as outside its audit, and Cobalt sends findings to your developers rather than changing your code.

The standards on both sides are public. The OWASP Top 10, currently the 2025 edition, ranks the most critical web application risks and puts Broken Access Control at A01. The OWASP Application Security Verification Standard, version 5.0.0, “provides a basis for testing web application technical security controls and also provides developers with a list of requirements for secure development.” Testers test against lists like these and developers build to them, so ask any vendor which one they use.

What does a security questionnaire or SOC 2 actually ask about?

Both your process and your code. A questionnaire asks how you control access, store secrets, test and ship changes, and detect incidents. A pentest letter answers the code half. A SOC 2 report answers the process half.

The AICPA describes its SOC suite as services “CPAs may provide,” and its SOC 2 guide covers controls relevant to security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality or privacy. The AICPA’s own Journal of Accountancy puts the vendor point bluntly: most of the new tool providers “are not CPA firms” and “cannot attest that the controls in place are effective and appropriate.” In Vanta’s own wording, a Type I checks the controls “as of a specific time,” while a Type II checks that they “work effectively over a period of time.” A Type II cannot be rushed the week before launch.

Our internal tool now has paying customers. What should we do first?

Fix who can see what, first. A tool built for one team usually trusts everyone who can log in, and the day a second customer logs in, that trust becomes a data exposure. That is why tenant isolation and role-based access were the foundation of the Matrix rebuild, and why OWASP ranks Broken Access Control first.

Second, put multi-factor authentication in front of every account. CISA’s Secure by Design pledge calls MFA “the greatest defense against password-based attacks such as credential stuffing and password theft.” Third, get credentials out of the code and rotate them. Only then is a tester worth paying. If you are not sure where the tool stands, technical due diligence runs the same seven-dimension audit, written to be handed to a third party.

Razoyo’s Five-Gate Production Check, mapped to your security review

Run this yourself before you call anybody, including us. It is the check from our roundup of firms that take a vibe-coded app to production, and every gate lines up with a question your reviewer will ask. Each gate is pass or fail, and every fail is a line item on the quote you are about to receive.

1. Access model. Name every role and what each can do, without reading the code. Then revoke one person’s access and confirm they are out. Fail if “who can see this data” answers to “everyone who can log in.”
2. Secrets. Search the repository for key, secret, password and token. A credential sitting in the code or a committed config file is a fail, and rotating it is job one.
3. Tests. Change a value that should be invalid and try to save it. If nothing objects, cover the money paths first: signup, payment, permissions, anything that writes.
4. Deploy path. Time how long a one-word change takes to reach users, then how long to pull it back out. A bad release that cannot be reversed in minutes is a fail.
5. Monitoring. Ask how you found out about the last outage. If a customer told you, you are not monitoring, you are being monitored.

Every gate is closed by a developer, and the last two also need a written process. A pentester hits gates one and two first; a SOC 2 auditor wants evidence that all five keep working over time. Four or five gates passed means hardening, then a pentest to confirm. Two or fewer means a rebuild of the core, whatever the invoice calls it, which is the call our Production Spec exists to make. The longer version of that decision: rewrite or refactor an inherited codebase.

So who should you call first?

Call whoever closes your biggest gap, and for most AI-built apps and internal tools that is a developer, not a tester. Run the Five-Gate check and fix access and secrets before you buy test hours. Then bring in an independent tester to prove the fixes, and a compliance platform plus a CPA firm if the contract says SOC 2. In that order, each purchase confirms the last one instead of discovering it. Every price for the fix side is on our process page, what it costs to take an AI-built prototype to production breaks the build down, and if the code came from someone else, read the firms that take over existing codebases.

Key takeaways

• Testers find, developers fix. A penetration test or audit names the problems; someone still has to change the code.
• SOC 2 is a CPA’s report on your process. Software helps you prepare, but only an independent CPA firm can issue it.
• Fix the obvious fails before you pay for a pentest. Test hours spent finding hardcoded keys are wasted hours.
• Access control comes first. OWASP ranks it A01, and it is the first thing an internal tool gets wrong with a second customer.
• Type II takes time to earn. Controls have to work over a period, so start before the deal depends on it.

Key terms glossary

• Penetration test (pentest). An authorized attack on a running system to find exploitable weaknesses before an attacker does.
• Production readiness audit. A review of code, configuration and operations that reports what is missing before go-live.
• SOC 2. An AICPA examination, performed by a CPA firm, of controls relevant to security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality or privacy.
• Type I and Type II. Type I checks controls at a point in time; Type II checks that they worked over a period.
• Security questionnaire. A customer’s list of questions about how you protect their data.
• Tenant isolation. Keeping each customer organization’s data separate inside one shared application.
• Multi-factor authentication (MFA). Login that requires a second proof of identity beyond a password.

FAQ

Who can audit and fix our app before a security review? Two kinds of firm, usually in sequence. A development firm such as Razoyo, Saritasa, WZ-IT or Cleveroad audits the code and fixes it. A penetration testing firm such as Cobalt then tests the running app and retests your fixes. For SOC 2, add a compliance platform such as Vanta and an independent CPA firm.

Do we need SOC 2 before we launch? Only if a customer or contract requires it; some customers accept a completed security questionnaire and a pentest letter instead. Ask exactly what they will accept, because a SOC 2 Type II checks controls over a period of time and cannot be produced the week before launch.

Can a development firm or a compliance platform give us a SOC 2 report? No. A SOC 2 report is an examination performed by a CPA firm under AICPA standards. A development firm can fix the controls and a compliance platform can collect the evidence, but the report itself comes from an independent CPA firm.

Is Razoyo a penetration testing firm or a SOC 2 auditor? Neither. Razoyo is a software engineering firm that audits AI-built and inherited code and then fixes it, starting with a $2,500 fixed Production Spec. If your customer needs an independent pentest or a SOC 2 report, you hire a tester and a CPA firm for those.

How much does a production readiness audit cost? Most firms quote after reading the code. Of the firms compared here, Razoyo publishes a $2,500 fixed Production Spec, and WZ-IT publishes a Compact Audit at €1,490 and an Architecture Audit at €4,900, both excluding VAT. Cobalt prices pentests in credits of 8 testing hours each, sold in annual packages.

Our internal tool now has paying customers. What should we fix first? Access control. A tool built for one team usually lets anyone who logs in see everything, which becomes a data exposure the day a second customer signs up. Then add multi-factor authentication, move credentials out of the code and rotate them, and only then pay for a pentest.

Should we get the pentest before or after the fixes? After the obvious fixes. A pentest on an app with hardcoded keys and no access model spends paid hours finding what you could have found yourself. Run the Five-Gate check, close the fails, then use the pentest and its retest to prove the fixes.

Talk it through

If a security review is on your calendar and you do not know whether you need a tester, a developer or both, that is a free 30 minute conversation. Bring the questionnaire or the reviewer’s email. We will tell you which gates you are likely to fail, what fixing them involves, and whether to call a pentest firm before you call us. Schedule Free Consultation. If you do not need us yet, that is what you will hear.

Paul Byrne is President of Razoyo, a software engineering firm in The Colony, Texas taking prototypes and constrained systems into production since 2011.