What managed cybersecurity costs
in the UK
UK SMEs typically pay £8 to £40 per user each month for managed cybersecurity, with a baseline package at the lower end and 24/7 monitoring and incident response at the top.
The short answer
Managed cybersecurity for a UK SME typically costs £8 to £40 per user per month on the open market, or about £400 to £3,500 a month for a firm of 20 to 80 people. That's the going UK market range, not a Wanzo price. Baseline cover sits at the lower end. Round-the-clock monitoring, incident response and regular testing sit at the top. Cyber Essentials is a separate annual certificate, usually £300 to £500, and it doesn't replace the monthly service.
What the market charges
Baseline cover
£8–£15 per user per month
Suits a firm of about 10 to 30 people that needs a defensible floor for insurance or a first buyer check.
- •Endpoint protection, MFA and patching
- •Business email filtering
- •Managed firewall policy
Managed cover
£15–£28 per user per month
Fits professional services and similar SMEs that hold client data and want monitoring plus a named response path.
- •Shared alerting and triage
- •Vulnerability scanning on a schedule
- •Incident response hours in the retainer
Advanced cover
£28–£40 per user per month
For firms with regulated work, several sites or a board that wants 24/7 detection, testing and a named security lead.
- •24/7 SOC or MDR coverage
- •Planned penetration testing
- •Named security lead each month
These are typical UK market ranges, not a Wanzo quote. Our own plans are here.
What moves the price
Headcount and devices
Each extra user and laptop adds an endpoint licence plus the time to patch, monitor and support it. A 20-person firm and an 80-person firm rarely sit in the same monthly band, even on the same product set.
Hours of monitoring
Business-hours alerting is cheaper because an analyst isn't watching overnight. Round-the-clock SOC or MDR cover lifts the monthly fee sharply, which is why advanced packages cluster at the top of the per-user range.
What you put in scope
Covering Microsoft 365 and laptops costs less than adding servers, multiple sites, guest Wi-Fi and cloud admin accounts. Every extra system needs logging, patching and a response play if something looks wrong.
Testing and response
A yearly health check is one price. Quarterly testing, a retained incident responder and tabletop exercises sit on top of the monthly monitoring fee, and they're often invoiced separately.
What people get caught by
- Endpoint, email and firewall licences are often billed on top of the management fee, so the headline retainer is not the full monthly cost.
- Cyber Essentials is an annual certificate, typically £300 to £500, plus any fixes. It does not replace month-to-month monitoring.
- Penetration testing is usually a project invoice of £2,000 to £8,000, not a line inside the monthly cybersecurity retainer.
- Out-of-hours incident work, onboarding and VAT frequently sit outside the quoted per-user rate. Ask what the first 90 days actually cost.
Questions people ask
How much does managed cybersecurity cost in the UK?
UK SMEs typically pay £8 to £40 per user per month for managed cybersecurity. A 25-person firm often lands between £400 and £1,000 a month on baseline cover, and £1,500 to £3,500 once 24/7 monitoring and incident response are in. Those are typical market figures rather than a Wanzo quote. Licence fees, testing and Cyber Essentials sit on top unless the supplier says otherwise. Wanzo's published AI + Managed IT plan starts at £1,250 a month, excluding VAT, and includes a managed firewall and endpoint protection as part of that retainer.
What sits in a baseline managed cybersecurity package?
A baseline UK package usually covers endpoint protection, multi-factor authentication, email filtering, a managed firewall and routine patching. You're paying for those controls to be kept current, not only installed. Shared alerting during business hours is common at this level. It does not usually include a 24/7 security operations centre, retained incident response or a yearly penetration test. Those sit in managed or advanced cover and they move the monthly figure up. Cyber Essentials can be prepared from a baseline estate, but the certificate fee is still a separate annual cost.
Does Cyber Essentials replace managed cybersecurity?
No. Cyber Essentials is a UK government-backed annual certificate against five control areas: firewalls, secure configuration, access control, malware protection and patching. The self-assessment typically costs £300 to £500 in certification fees. Cyber Essentials Plus adds a technical audit and usually costs £1,500 to £3,000, scaled to size. Managed cybersecurity is the monthly work that keeps those controls live and responds when something gets through. The certificate doesn't watch your systems overnight. Buyers and insurers often want both.
Is managed cybersecurity charged per user or monthly?
Both models are common in the UK. Per-user pricing, typically £8 to £40 a month, makes sense when most of the cost is licences and endpoint work. A monthly package with a floor, often £400 to £800 even for a small firm, covers shared monitoring that will not shrink below a certain analyst cost. Ask which licences are inside the figure, how incidents after hours are billed, and whether testing is extra. Wanzo doesn't publish a standalone cybersecurity price. It sits inside AI + Managed IT from £1,250 a month, excluding VAT.
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