Anti-phishing software costs $2.08 to $2.40 per user per month at published rates in 2026, ranging from free open-source tooling (GoPhish) to enterprise suites that quote custom prices. The sticker rate excludes the add-ons most buyers end up paying for: KnowBe4's Compliance Plus, SecurityCoach, PhishER Plus and AIDA are all priced separately on top of the headline per-seat figure, and Huntress's per-learner rate only applies from the 50-99 learner band upward.
How much does anti-phishing software cost in 2026?
Published pricing in the category spans four models:
| Platform | Pricing model | Published rate | What the rate excludes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cyber Aware | Per-seat | Quote-based, no seat minimums | Nothing forced — training, simulations and reporting included |
| KnowBe4 | Per-seat, banded | From $2.40/user/month, 25-seat bands, 3-year terms | Compliance Plus, SecurityCoach, PhishER Plus, AIDA |
| Huntress SAT | Per-learner | $2.08/learner/month | Tiers start at 50-99 learners; standard 12-month term |
| GoPhish | Free (MIT licence) | $0 | Training content, hosting, SMTP relay, vendor support |
Two of the four publish numbers. The other two quote. That split is itself the first pricing lesson in this category: the platforms that sell to enterprises quote per deployment, and the platforms that sell to SMBs and MSPs publish per-seat rates or keep pricing deliberately flexible.
What drives the price
- Band minimums. KnowBe4's published bands start at 25 seats on 3-year list terms; Huntress's tiers start at the 50-99 learner band. A 12-person business on either is paying for seats it does not fill.
- Term length. KnowBe4's list pricing assumes a 3-year term, and its MSP agreement adds auto-renewal with 30-day notice and 48-hour seat true-ups. Shorter commitments are quoted, not listed.
- Add-on stack. The headline rate is the floor, not the bill. KnowBe4's Compliance Plus, SecurityCoach, PhishER Plus and AIDA are separately priced; AIDA is a Diamond-level add-on.
- Fully managed vs self-serve. Huntress SAT at $2.08 includes Huntress researchers running the campaigns end to end. GoPhish at $0 includes nothing — your team owns the infrastructure, the sending domains and every report.
- Framework evidence. Australian framework mapping (Essential Eight, SMB1001) is a capability, not a line item, on most platforms — which means it is either included or absent, and absence is discovered at audit time.
Per-user vs per-client vs bundled
Per-seat pricing charges per enrolled user, so cost tracks headcount. Per-client pricing (Breach Secure Now uses it) charges a flat rate per client organisation regardless of employee count — it favours MSPs with a few very large accounts and punishes them on many small ones. Bundled pricing (Hornetsecurity's Security Awareness Service inside 365 Total Protection) hides the training cost inside a wider suite, which is convenient and opaque at the same time.
For a 50-person business, the published rates imply roughly $1,250 a year at Huntress's rate and roughly $1,440 at KnowBe4's — before add-ons, before term terms, and only if you meet each platform's band minimums.
The hidden costs to check before you sign
The published rate is rarely the invoice. Four places the real cost hides:
- Seat true-ups. Some MSP agreements true up seat counts within days of a client adding staff. A 48-hour true-up window turns every mid-month hire into an immediate billing event.
- Auto-renewal notice periods. A 30-day notice clause on a 3-year term means the difference between renewing on your schedule and renewing on the vendor's is one missed calendar reminder.
- Remediation tooling. PhishER Plus (triaging reported emails) and SecurityCoach (real-time nudges) solve problems the base platform creates — the simulation generates reports, the add-on processes them.
- Your own admin hours. Self-hosted or self-managed tooling trades licence fees for labour. Budget the hours the same way you budget the subscription.
Ask every vendor the same three questions: what is excluded from this rate, when does the true-up trigger, and what does the notice period for non-renewal look like. The answers separate a $2.40 rate from a $4 reality faster than any comparison table.
What Cyber Aware costs
Cyber Aware prices per seat with no seat minimums, and current rates come via the vendor rather than a public price list. What the platform bundles into that seat matters for the comparison: security awareness training with 120+ story-driven modules, phishing simulations from a 100+ template library with automatic remediation on every click, human risk reporting per learner, and gap-assessment tooling mapped to Essential Eight and SMB1001 — none of which sits behind a separate add-on tier. See how that stacks up feature by feature on the platform comparison page.
FAQ
How much does anti-phishing software cost in 2026? Published rates run $2.08 to $2.40 per user per month (Huntress SAT and KnowBe4 respectively), with GoPhish free and enterprise suites quoting custom prices. Add-ons, seat bands and term lengths push the real figure above the headline rate.
Is there a free anti-phishing tool? Yes — GoPhish is a free, open-source phishing toolkit under the MIT licence. You self-host it, provide the SMTP infrastructure, and get no training content or support.
Why don't some platforms publish pricing? Enterprise vendors quote per deployment because their pricing scales with modules, seats and term. It is a sales motion, not a hidden fee — but it does mean you cannot benchmark them against a published rate.
Does the published price include training? On dedicated platforms, yes — training and simulations are one product. On suite vendors, training is often a bundled service or an add-on library (Compliance Plus, for example), so check what the rate actually covers.
What about seat minimums? KnowBe4's published bands start at 25 seats and Huntress's tiers start at the 50-99 learner band. Below those thresholds you are buying unused seats or need a custom quote.
How much should a small business budget? For a 50-staff team, published per-user rates imply roughly $1,250-$1,450 per year before add-ons. Budget the add-on question separately — it is where the category's cost surprises live.
One last thing
The cheapest published rate in this category is free, and it is the most expensive to run: GoPhish's $0 hides the cost of your team's time, hosting and every report you build by hand. The number to compare across vendors is not the monthly rate — it is the rate plus the add-ons plus the admin hours, on your actual seat count. The per-seat figures above come from Huntress's published pricing and KnowBe4's published rate card as of 2026.