If you are pricing a 409A valuation for the first time, the quotes you get back will confuse you. One provider bundles it into a software subscription for what looks like almost nothing. Another quotes $5,000 for what appears to be the same report. A Big Four firm quotes five figures and a six-week timeline. All three produce a PDF that says your common stock is worth some number of cents per share.
The reports are not the same, and neither are the situations that call for them. This guide breaks down what a 409A valuation actually costs in 2026, what drives the price, what you get at each tier, and how to figure out which tier you actually need. If you want the full background on what a 409A is and why it exists, start with our guide to what a 409A valuation is and come back.
The Short Answer
Typical market pricing in 2026 breaks into three bands by provider type:
| Provider type | Typical cost | Turnaround |
|---|---|---|
| Cap table platforms (bundled) | $1,000 to $2,500 per valuation | 2 to 4 weeks |
| Specialist independent appraisers | $3,000 to $7,500 | 3 to 6 weeks |
| Big Four and large CPA firms | $10,000 and up | 4 to 8 weeks |
Most venture-backed startups from seed through Series B land between $2,000 and $5,000 per valuation. That is the practical center of the market, and if a quote falls far outside it in either direction, you should understand why before you sign.
Two things matter more than the sticker price. First, whether the report qualifies you for safe harbor under IRC 409A, which shifts the burden of proof to the IRS. Second, whether the report will survive the scrutiny it is actually going to face, which for most startups means your own auditors and eventually an acquirer's diligence team, not the IRS.
Cost by Provider Type
Cap Table Platforms: $1,000 to $2,500
Carta, Pulley, and similar platforms offer 409A valuations bundled with cap table management, typically $1,000 to $2,500 per valuation depending on your subscription tier. Some tiers include one valuation per year in the subscription price, which makes the marginal cost effectively zero.
The price is low because the economics are genuinely different. The platform already holds your cap table, your option grants, your funding history, and your share classes. There is no data collection phase, which is where independent appraisers burn most of their hours. The valuation itself runs on standardized models applied by an in-house team at high volume.
For a straightforward company, a recent priced round, a clean cap table, no unusual securities, this is a perfectly defensible product. The reports qualify for safe harbor under the independent appraisal method, and the workflow integration with option grants is genuinely useful.
Specialist Independent Appraisers: $3,000 to $7,500
Standalone valuation firms charge $3,000 to $7,500 for a full 409A engagement. You are paying for analyst time: a human being collects your financials, builds the model, selects comparables, exercises judgment on methodology, and signs the report.
That judgment is the product. When your situation does not fit a template, a down round, a bridge that reset expectations, a secondary sale near your grant dates, revenue that inflected between rounds, an unusual preference stack, a standardized model can produce a number that is either indefensibly low or needlessly high. An experienced appraiser can document why your facts justify the conclusion, which is exactly what an auditor or diligence team will ask for.
Specialists also tend to be more responsive during audit support. If your Big Four auditor challenges the volatility assumption in your ASC 718 stock compensation work, you want the person who built the model on the phone, not a support queue.
Big Four and Large CPA Firms: $10,000 and Up
Big Four valuation practices and large regional CPA firms start around $10,000 and climb from there, with pre-IPO engagements running well beyond that. For most startups this is overkill. The circumstances that justify it are specific: you are inside two years of an IPO, you are being acquired by a public company whose auditors will re-examine your entire grant history, or your board includes investors who require a national firm's name on the report.
The report is not five times more accurate than a specialist's report. You are paying for the brand on the letterhead and the depth of the bench behind it, which matters in exactly those high-scrutiny situations and almost nowhere else.
What Drives the Cost
Within each band, four factors move your quote up or down.
Stage and size. A pre-revenue seed company with one class of preferred is a fast engagement. A Series C company with five share classes, warrants, convertible notes, and an option pool spread across hundreds of grants takes real modeling time. Later stage also tends to mean the income approach enters the picture, which requires financial projections and more analyst judgment than a straight market approach off your last round.
Capital structure complexity. Every additional security type adds work. SAFEs and convertible notes need conversion assumptions. Multiple preferred series with different preferences change the allocation math. Secondary transactions near the valuation date have to be weighed as market evidence. Each wrinkle is billable time at an independent firm and a potential template mismatch at a platform.
Cap table cleanliness. This is the cost driver founders control most directly. If your cap table lives in a well-maintained system with every grant, amendment, and conversion recorded, the data collection phase is short. If it lives in three spreadsheets and a lawyer's inbox, you will pay for the reconciliation one way or another, either in fees or in a valuation built on wrong inputs. Our guide to cap table management covers how to keep it clean before it becomes expensive.
The scrutiny the report will face. A 409A that only ever needs to satisfy the IRS safe harbor standard is a different product from one that will be re-performed by a Big Four audit team during your first financial statement audit, or torn apart by an acquirer's diligence advisors. If you know heightened scrutiny is coming, buying the cheaper report first and the defensible one later means paying twice.
Expedited turnaround is the other common line item. Standard delivery across the market is measured in weeks; compressing it to days typically carries a rush premium at independent firms.
Related work is often quoted a la carte and worth watching in comparisons. If you need ASC 718 stock compensation schedules for an audit, support for 83(b) filings, or a valuation of a specific security rather than common stock, some providers fold these into the engagement while others bill them separately. Two quotes that look $1,500 apart can converge once the extras are priced, so compare the full scope, not the headline number.
What You Are Actually Paying For
A 409A engagement, at any tier, should include four things. If a quote is missing any of them, it is not comparable to the others.
Safe harbor qualification. The report must come from a qualified independent appraiser applying reasonable valuation methods, so that it qualifies under the independent appraisal presumption of IRC 409A. This shifts the burden of proof: the IRS can only overturn the valuation by showing it was grossly unreasonable. This is the single most valuable thing you are buying. A number without safe harbor is just a number.
A complete written report. Not a one-page certificate. The report should document the methodologies applied, the comparable companies or transactions selected, the allocation method (OPM or PWERM), the discount for lack of marketability, and the reasoning connecting your facts to the conclusion. This document is what your auditors and future diligence teams will read.
A defined validity window and refresh terms. The valuation covers grants made within 12 months of the valuation date, unless a material event invalidates it earlier. Good providers are explicit about what happens at refresh time and what a refresh costs.
Audit support. When your auditors review stock compensation expense under ASC 718, they will have questions about the 409A inputs. Find out before you sign whether answering those questions is included, capped at a number of hours, or billed separately. Audit support is where cheap engagements quietly become expensive ones.
When a Bundled Platform 409A Is Fine, and When It Is Not
The honest answer for most seed-to-Series-B startups: the bundled platform valuation is fine. If you have a recent priced round, a conventional preference stack, no secondaries, and no audit on the calendar, a platform report qualifies for safe harbor and the integration with your option grant workflow is worth more than the marginal defensibility of a boutique report.
The calculus changes when any of the following is true:
- A financial statement audit is coming. Your first audit will re-examine stock compensation, and auditors apply more skepticism to high-volume templated valuations. An independent report with documented judgment is easier to defend.
- You are heading into an acquisition or IPO process. Acquirer diligence teams review the entire option grant history. Weak valuations get flagged, and remediating them mid-deal is painful and expensive.
- Your structure is unusual. Down rounds, pay-to-play recaps, cross-border entities, large secondary transactions, or heavy warrant coverage all sit outside the standard template.
- The number matters strategically. If you are recruiting a senior executive and the strike price is a real negotiating variable, you want an appraiser who will engage with your specific facts rather than run the default model.
A reasonable pattern many companies follow: platform valuations while young and simple, then a deliberate switch to an independent appraiser one cycle before the first audit or the first serious exit conversation, so the defensible valuation history exists before anyone asks for it.
The Hidden Costs of a Cheap 409A
The sticker price of a 409A is the smallest number in the analysis. The costs of a valuation that fails are carried by other people, mostly your employees, which is why underspending here is a quiet form of borrowing against their trust.
IRC 409A penalties land on employees. If options were granted below fair market value and the valuation does not hold, the affected employees owe ordinary income tax on the spread at vesting, a 20 percent federal excise tax on top of it, interest charges on the deferred tax, and equivalent state penalties in most states. They can owe this before selling a single share. In practice, companies then pay taxable gross-ups to make people whole, turning a $2,000 savings into a five- or six-figure remediation.
Audit challenges cost more than the valuation did. If your auditors conclude the 409A inputs are not supportable, you may need to re-perform the valuation with a new provider mid-audit, restate stock compensation expense, and absorb both the new valuation fee and the extra audit hours. Rush pricing applies, because it always does.
Diligence discounts are real. In an acquisition, a shaky option pricing history becomes an indemnification item, an escrow holdback, or a demand that the company fix grants before close. None of those outcomes is cheaper than a good valuation would have been.
Cheap and low are not the same thing. Founders sometimes shop for the provider who will deliver the lowest strike price. A defensibly low price is a genuine benefit to employees. An indefensibly low one is a liability with their name on it. The goal is the lowest number the facts support, fully documented, not the lowest number a provider will sign.
Refresh Economics: What 409A Compliance Costs Per Year
A 409A is not a one-time purchase. Safe harbor lasts at most 12 months, and a material event, a priced round, an acquisition offer, a transformative contract, ends it early. Budget for a recurring cost, not a single line item.
The annual math looks like this:
- Steady state: one refresh every 12 months. On a platform, $1,000 to $2,500 or included in your subscription tier. With an independent firm, refresh engagements often run 30 to 50 percent below the initial fee, since the model, comparables set, and company background already exist.
- Fundraising years: add one valuation per priced round. A company that raises a Series A mid-cycle does two valuations that year.
- Event-driven refreshes: an acquisition offer or a sudden revenue inflection triggers an off-cycle refresh. These are unplanned by nature, so leave room in the budget.
A practical planning number for a seed-to-Series-B company is $1,000 to $7,500 per year depending on provider tier and how eventful the year is. Against the cost of a single blown grant cycle, it is one of the cheapest pieces of compliance infrastructure a startup buys.
The more common failure is not overpaying but lapsing. A 14-month-old valuation does not qualify for safe harbor, and options granted against it are priced against nothing. Put the refresh date on the same calendar as your board meetings and treat it as immovable, especially in active hiring periods.
How to Evaluate a 409A Provider
Price bands narrow the field. These questions separate providers within a band:
- Who signs the report, and what is their background? Safe harbor requires a qualified appraiser with significant experience. Ask about the credentials and deal history of the person actually responsible for your valuation.
- What is included in audit support? Get the answer in writing: included, capped, or hourly. A provider confident in its work supports it.
- What is the real turnaround, and what does rush delivery cost? If you are granting options to a new hire in three weeks, a six-week standard timeline is a problem regardless of price.
- How do they handle your specific complexity? Describe your actual structure, the SAFEs, the secondary, the down round, and listen for whether the answer is a methodology or a shrug.
- What do refreshes cost? You will buy this product every year. Price the relationship, not the first engagement.
- Will they walk you through the draft? A provider who explains the conclusion, the discount from preferred, the marketability discount, the allocation method, is one whose report you can defend when someone else asks you to.
One caution: a provider who promises a specific strike price outcome before doing the work is telling you the analysis is theater. That is exactly the report that fails under scrutiny.
The Bottom Line
Expect $1,000 to $2,500 for a bundled platform valuation, $3,000 to $7,500 for a specialist independent appraiser, and $10,000 and up for a Big Four or large CPA firm, with most venture-backed startups paying $2,000 to $5,000. Match the tier to the scrutiny the report will face, keep your cap table clean to keep the price at the low end of the band, and never let the 12-month clock lapse while you are hiring.
At StartupCFO, we provide independent 409A valuations that are built to be audit defensible, with fast turnaround, as an add-on to our fractional CFO service. Because we already work inside our clients' financials and cap tables, the data collection phase that drives up independent appraisal fees mostly disappears. Plans start at $179 per month; see pricing for details, or book a free consultation if you are not sure whether your current valuation still qualifies for safe harbor.
