Penetration Testing
Penetration testing scoped for startups, not procurement departments.
Penetration testing for a startup means a skilled person attacking your app the way a real intruder would, then handing you the fixes. You do not need the six-week, five-figure enterprise engagement. You need the attack, the findings and the fixes.
From $750, fixed quote, report in about a week. See full pricing
Enterprise pentests answer a compliance question. Yours is different.
A full enterprise penetration test exists to satisfy auditors, and it is priced accordingly. A startup's question is more direct: if someone competent spent a day trying to break in, what would they get? The honest answer usually involves your API, your database rules and your keys, not exotic exploits. We run that day, document what fell, and show you how to close it.
What you get.
External attack pass
Unauthenticated probing of every reachable surface: pages, APIs, database endpoints, storage and functions.
Authenticated attack pass
From an ordinary account, we escalate: other users' data, admin functions, forged writes and broken flows.
Exploit-what-we-find
Findings are demonstrated, not speculated. If a table is writable, we write to it in a marked, reversible way and show you.
Report you can act on
Each finding with impact, evidence and the exact fix, ordered by what an attacker would do first.
Re-test
After your fixes, we attack the same paths again. Included in the price.
The kind of thing we find
One app's security_events table, the audit log meant to record suspicious activity, was itself writable by anyone. An attacker could overwrite the record of their own break-in. The pentest that only checks the front door never sees this; the one that reads the database rules does.
How it works.
- 01
Scope
What is in bounds, what is not, and the fixed quote. Signed authorisation before anything is touched.
- 02
Attack
External and authenticated passes against the live app, by hand.
- 03
Report
Demonstrated findings with fixes, in about a week, plus a walkthrough call.
- 04
Re-test
We verify the fixes stopped the attacks that worked.
Common questions.
- How is this different from a full penetration test?
- Scope and price. We concentrate on the attack surface that actually gets startups breached: access control, auth, APIs and platform configuration. You get demonstrated findings and fixes, not a compliance artefact. If you specifically need a certified report for an auditor, we will say so and point you to the right kind of firm.
- Is penetration testing safe to run on production?
- The way we run it, yes. Reads are harmless, and anything state-changing is done with marked test data and told to you in advance. We never run denial-of-service testing against live systems.
- Do we need to prepare anything?
- A signed authorisation, a couple of test accounts if you want the authenticated pass to start faster, and a contact for the walkthrough. That is all.
- What does penetration testing for a startup cost?
- From $750 as a fixed quote depending on the size of the surface, with the re-test included. You know the full price before anything starts.
Related services.
Let's build something real.
Tell us about your app or idea. You'll get a clear plan and a fixed quote back within 24 hours.