Startup Penetration Testing
Startup penetration testing that unblocks enterprise deals and SOC 2. Manual, fixed-price, with a free retest. Book a free scoping call.
Startup penetration testing is usually the thing standing between you and a signed enterprise contract, and most founders only discover that when a prospect’s security team sends over a 90-question vendor assessment. We run a manual test against your product, hand you a report your buyer’s CISO will accept, and confirm the fixes for free once your engineers ship them.
SafetyBis is a European offensive-security team. We work with seed and Series A companies across Europe and remotely worldwide, and a large share of the products we test are cloud-native SaaS applications built by small teams moving fast. You do not need a security department to get a serious test. You need someone who will actually break your app by hand and then tell you, in plain language, what to fix first.
What startup penetration testing actually covers
A test scoped for an early-stage company is not a watered-down enterprise engagement. It is focused on the surfaces that carry real risk for a young SaaS product: the web application, the API behind it, the authentication and tenant-isolation logic, and the cloud account it all runs in. We deliberately spend the budget where an attacker would spend their time.
If you sell to other businesses, the isolation question matters more than any single injection bug. A prospect’s security reviewer will ask, directly, whether one tenant can read another tenant’s records. We answer that with evidence, not assurances.
How we test
Every startup penetration testing engagement is manual and evidence-based. Scanners run in the background to catch the obvious, but the findings that block your deals come from an engineer sitting with your app in Burp Suite and thinking like an attacker who wants your customer list.
Reconnaissance and mapping
We start by mapping what you actually expose. That means enumerating subdomains, API endpoints, cloud storage buckets and any forgotten staging environments, using tooling such as nmap, ffuf and Burp Suite’s crawler alongside manual review. Fast-moving codebases leave debris: a demo tenant with production data, an old admin panel, a marketing subdomain pointing at a service you no longer own. We find those before someone else does.
Authenticated testing
We test with real credentials for each role you offer, from anonymous visitor to org admin. This is where multi-tenant SaaS bugs live. We create two tenants and systematically try to make one reach the other, walking object identifiers, tampering with tenant headers and replaying tokens across accounts.
Exploitation and chaining
A single low-severity issue is often uninteresting on its own. The report a buyer respects shows how findings chain: an information leak that reveals internal object IDs, an IDOR that turns those IDs into other customers’ data, a missing server-side check that lets a standard user promote themselves. We build the chain and score the real impact, not the theoretical one.
Reporting
You get the report within days of testing finishing, and any critical finding is flagged the same day we confirm it, not held back for the final PDF. Each issue carries a CVSS 3.1 vector, a reproduction that your engineer can follow without our help, and a prioritized fix.
Common vulnerabilities we find in early-stage SaaS
Young products fail in predictable ways, because the same features get shipped fast under the same pressure. Here is what recurs.
Broken object-level authorization (IDOR)
The single most common serious finding in SaaS we test. An endpoint like /api/v2/invoices/1042 returns the invoice, and nothing stops a logged-in user requesting 1041. It maps to the top of the OWASP API Security Top 10 for a reason, and for a multi-tenant product it is a data-breach-grade issue.
Broken authentication and session handling
Password reset tokens that never expire, JWTs signed with a weak or leaked secret, session fixation, and SSO integrations that trust an unvalidated email claim. We test these against OWASP ASVS verification requirements rather than guessing.
Server-side request forgery and cloud metadata
Any feature that fetches a URL you supply (webhooks, avatar imports, PDF renderers) can be pushed at internal addresses. On a cloud host, SSRF that reaches the instance metadata endpoint can hand an attacker temporary credentials to your whole account. We check for it deliberately.
Privilege escalation and missing function-level checks
Admin actions guarded only in the frontend, invite flows that let a member grant themselves owner, API routes that check authentication but never authorization. These are quiet until the day they are not.
Secrets in the browser
Founders ship fast, and API keys, third-party tokens and internal endpoints end up in the JavaScript bundle. We read it the way an attacker would.
Tools and techniques
Burp Suite Professional is our core web and API proxy. We pair it with nmap for network and service discovery, ffuf for content and parameter discovery, and a set of custom scripts for tenant-isolation and access-control testing. Cloud reviews use the provider’s own APIs to read IAM policies, storage permissions and network rules. Where relevant we map findings to MITRE ATT&CK so your report speaks the language a mature buyer already uses.
What we do not do is email you a scanner export and call it a penetration test. Automated tools are a starting point. The judgement about what actually matters is human.
Want this tested on your own systems?
Free 20-minute scoping call, a fixed price with no hourly surprises, and a free retest once you fix what we find.
What you get
Two documents and a follow-up. An executive summary written for a non-technical reader (your co-founder, your board, your prospect’s procurement team) that states the risk in business terms. And a technical report where every finding has an impact statement, a CVSS score, step-by-step reproduction and a concrete fix.
That attestation letter is often the real deliverable. It is the artifact you attach to a security questionnaire or hand to an auditor to show the test happened and was independent.
Compliance, SOC 2 and investor due diligence
The reason a startup books its first test is rarely fear. It is a gate. A large customer will not sign until you show a recent independent penetration test. A SOC 2 Type II audit expects one. And in a funding round, technical due diligence increasingly asks whether the product has ever been tested by someone outside the team.
SOC 2 and ISO 27001
Our reports are structured to drop straight into a SOC 2 evidence package, and they map cleanly to ISO 27001 Annex A, including A.12.6 on technical vulnerability management. If ISO 27001 certification is your goal, the attestation and remediation evidence support the control your auditor is looking for.
GDPR and other frameworks
If you process personal data of people in Europe, GDPR expects appropriate technical measures and regular testing of them. A penetration test is direct evidence of that. Where a customer contract names PCI DSS, our report addresses the external-testing expectation in requirement 11.4.
Why manual testing beats a scanner for a startup
A scanner is very good at telling you that a library is out of date. It is close to useless at telling you that a user in tenant A can read tenant B’s invoices, because that requires understanding what your application is for. Business-logic flaws, broken authorization and tenant-isolation gaps are exactly the issues that fail a startup’s first enterprise security review, and they are exactly the issues automated tools miss.
There is also the false-positive problem. An engineering team of five does not have time to triage 400 scanner alerts, most of which are noise. We hand you a short list of things that are real, ranked, so your limited engineering hours go to fixes that matter.
Who books this and when
Founders come to us at three moments. Before a big deal, when a prospect’s security questionnaire has stalled the contract. Before or during a SOC 2 or ISO 27001 audit. And ahead of a raise, when the diligence checklist appears. As startup cybersecurity teams get built out, the first hire often inherits our report as their baseline. If any of those is on your horizon, earlier is cheaper than later, because fixing a design-level authorization flaw is far easier before you have a hundred customers depending on it.
Pricing
Startup penetration testing cost depends on scope: how many roles your app has, whether there is an API and third-party integrations, and how much cloud infrastructure sits behind it. Every engagement is fixed-price, so a small team can budget it with confidence.
| Engagement | What’s included | Timeline | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seed / MVP | Single web app, one or two roles, core API, OWASP Top 10 and tenant-isolation checks, full report and free retest | 3–5 working days | from €2,500 |
| Growth SaaS | App with multiple roles, REST or GraphQL API, SSO and third-party integrations, business-logic and access-control testing, exec plus technical report | 5–8 working days | €3,500–€8,000 |
| Scale-up | Complex product, deep auth, billing and payment flows, multi-tenant isolation at depth, attack-chaining, plus a light cloud configuration review | 8–12 working days | €8,000–€20,000 |
| Compliance add-on | Mapping and attestation letter for SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR or PCI DSS to attach to your audit or customer review | with any tier | from €800 |
| Custom / larger estate | Several apps, a mobile client or a full cloud environment, scoped to your product | on scoping | custom |
Every engagement is fixed-price, quoted after a free 20-minute scoping call, and a retest is included. Get a fixed quote
FAQ
How much does startup penetration testing cost?
We are a tiny team. Is a real pentest overkill for us?
Will this satisfy our SOC 2 audit and a customer security review?
How long does it take to get results?
Do you test our staging or our production environment?
Is the free retest really included?
What makes SafetyBis a good startup penetration testing provider?
Is our code and data kept confidential?
Related services
Seed and Series A SaaS founders facing an enterprise buyer’s security questionnaire, a SOC 2 or ISO 27001 audit, or technical due diligence in a funding round, who need a credible, fixed-price test and a report an outside CISO will accept.
Security you can prove
The same standard on every engagement, big or small.
Evidence, not opinions
Every finding ships with a reproduction and proof of concept — no vague "maybe vulnerable".
Humans over scanners
Certified engineers find the logic flaws and chained attacks automated tools walk straight past.
Fixed price, free retest
You know the cost up front, and verifying the fix is part of the deal — not a second invoice.
Ready to lock this down?
Free scoping call, fixed price, free retest. Tell us what you're running and we'll take it from there — usually within one business day.
Tell us what you're running
Scoping is free. We reply within one business day, and under 30 minutes for active incidents.