Is Cyber Essentials free?
No - Cyber Essentials certification is not free. The cheapest published UK price is £299.99 + VAT for the Micro tier (Fig Group). However, the bundled free £25,000 cyber liability insurance for organisations under £20m turnover often offsets the certification cost on a notional-exposure basis.
Is Cyber Essentials free?
No - Cyber Essentials certification is not free. The cheapest published UK price is £299.99 + VAT for the Micro tier (Fig Group). However, the bundled free £25,000 cyber liability insurance for UK organisations under £20m turnover often offsets the certification cost on a notional-exposure basis.
Why isn't it free?
Cyber Essentials is delivered by IASME-licensed certification bodies - around 290 private-sector assessment organisations accredited by IASME on behalf of the NCSC. Every certificate involves:
- Time from a qualified IASME-licensed assessor reviewing the self-assessment submission
- Peer review from a second qualified assessor before the certificate is issued
- An IASME licensing fee paid by the certification body
- The cost of maintaining the assessment platform, feedback mechanism, and IASME directory listing
The scheme is not a taxpayer-funded service - it is a commercial certification operated under NCSC scheme rules.
What is free inside Cyber Essentials?
The bundled cyber liability insurance. Every valid Cyber Essentials certificate held by a UK organisation under £20m turnover includes free cyber liability cover arranged by IASME through its underwriting partner. Up to £25,000 of indemnity, 12-month policy term aligned to the certificate validity. No additional cost.
For most small UK organisations, the market value of £25,000 of cyber liability cover exceeds the cost of the certificate itself - so the net cost is often negative on a notional-exposure basis. See Cyber Essentials and cyber insurance.
What's also free
- The self-assessment questionnaire itself. You can review it on the IASME site before paying; the fee is for the assessor's review of the submission, not the questionnaire access.
- Fig Group's free readiness check. A free 10-minute evaluation against the five controls, produced as a scored report.
- Public resources from the NCSC and IASME. NCSC guidance is freely available.
How cheap can Cyber Essentials legitimately be?
The IASME-set baseline for the Micro tier is around £320–£350 + VAT. Fig Group publishes £299.99 + VAT as the lowest UK price (subsidised by the platform economics described on the pricing page).
Anything substantially lower than this is worth checking against the IASME directory - certificates that cannot be verified on the IASME directory are not valid Cyber Essentials certificates. See How to verify a Cyber Essentials certificate.
Are there free alternatives?
No valid equivalent. Self-attesting cybersecurity controls to a client without an IASME-licensed body's verified certificate does not meet Cyber Essentials requirements for tender, insurance, or supplier-onboarding purposes. Some free cyber-hygiene assessment tools exist (NCSC's Cyber Action Toolkit, for example) but they do not produce the scheme's recognised certificate.
Bottom line
Cyber Essentials is not free - but at £299.99 + VAT for the Micro tier with Fig Group, plus free £25k bundled cyber liability insurance, the real cost for most UK SMEs is negligible on a risk-adjusted basis. Certify in 6 working hours.
Start Cyber Essentials from £299.99 + VAT | All pricing tiers | Free readiness check
About the author
Jay Hopkins
Managing Director, Fig Group
Jay Hopkins is the Managing Director of Fig Group and an IASME-licensed Cyber Essentials assessor. He was previously Head of Technology for a global regulated firm. He works with UK organisations across regulated sectors on baseline compliance, supply-chain assurance, and AI-augmented security tooling.
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