What determines the cost of ISO certification

Key takeaways

1ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 — Global ACI TECH-3-004 (formerly IAF MD 5).
2ISO 22000 — ISO 22003-1:2022.
3ISO 50001 — ISO 50003:2021; ISO 22301 — ISO/IEC 17021-1:2015, clause 9.1.4.

The price of an accredited ISO certificate is set by one quantity: audit time. Audit time is not chosen by the certification body's sales team; it is calculated from rules that accreditation bodies publish, from facts about your organisation.

That is why two honest quotes for the same organisation should land close to each other, and why a price given over the phone, before anyone knows your headcount and your sites, is a guess.

Audit time comes from the standard's own rules

Each management-system standard has its own method for calculating how many auditor-days the audit needs:

ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 — Global ACI TECH-3-004 (formerly IAF MD 5).
ISO 22000 — ISO 22003-1:2022.
ISO 50001 — ISO 50003:2021; ISO 22301 — ISO/IEC 17021-1:2015, clause 9.1.4.

The inputs are facts, not negotiation: the effective number of personnel in the scope, the complexity or risk of your activities, and the number of sites.

Limits the rules place on the number

An audit day is normally 8 hours, and a calculated result is rounded to the nearest half day (TECH-3-004).
For ISO 9001, 14001 and 45001, reductions may not exceed 30% of the time in the standard's tables (TECH-3-004, clause 3.9).
Where several standards are audited together, the saving from integration may not exceed 20% (Global ACI TECH-3-008, formerly IAF MD 11).

The cost over three years, not one

Certification runs in a three-year cycle: the initial audit in two stages, a surveillance audit in each of the next two years, and a recertification audit before the certificate expires. Each surveillance year is about one third of the initial audit time, and recertification is about two thirds of the time an initial audit would need at that point (TECH-3-004).

What a CAS proposal includes

CAS proposals are fixed-cost and cover the audits of the initial certification, the certificate issue and the first surveillance audit; the full three-year schedule is set out in the proposal. Where travel and accommodation apply, CAS invoices them in writing — nothing is ever paid to an auditor or in cash (see our anti-bribery policy).

Ask any certification body for its audit-time calculation. CAS provides it with every formal proposal. More answers are on our FAQ.

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