Penetration Testing Cost for UK Energy and Renewables Businesses (2026)

A penetration test for a UK energy or renewables business typically costs £2,200 to £36,400 in the UK market. The low end is a short test of the remote-access services on the perimeter. The high end covers customer and trading portals, market APIs and the perimeter together. The price is the number of testing days multiplied by a day rate of £1,100 to £1,400.

What does a penetration test cost for an energy business?

Most suppliers, network operators, generators, charge point operators and renewable asset managers fall into one of five scopes, typically costing between £2,200 and £36,400 in the UK market. What you pay depends on how many systems are tested and how many accounts, devices and partners each one serves, because that sets the number of testing days.

Scope	What is tested	Days	Typical UK cost
Remote-access perimeter	VPN gateways, vendor remote-access services, exposed management interfaces and cloud consoles supporting control-room and back-office work	2 to 3 days	£2,200 to £4,200
Trading or market API	The API behind a trading platform, market-data feed or aggregator integration, including object-level authorisation and rate limits	4 to 5 days	£4,400 to £7,000
Customer or trading portal	A portal with one role, covering meter-to-account separation, billing and tariff changes	5 days	£5,500 to £7,000
EV charging platform	A charge point operator platform and its driver app, including charger enrolment, session billing and remote-command authorisation	10 days	£11,000 to £14,000
Portals, market API and perimeter	Multi-role customer and trading portals, the market API behind them, and the external perimeter	17 to 26 days	£18,700 to £36,400

These are market ranges, worked out from typical engagement lengths and UK day rates of £1,100 to £1,400. They are a guide for budgeting. The pricing page shows the engagement lengths for each type of test, and the quote form gives an exact fixed price for your scope.

What drives the price?

The number of testing days drives the price, and the scope drives the number of days. In energy, the day count moves with how many separate customer and device populations are in scope, how many roles and partners touch each system, and how much of the work has to be planned around operational continuity.

• Customer and meter data. A portal that shows usage, billing and tariffs has to keep one customer away from another’s records. Domestic and business accounts, and any agent or broker roles, each add boundaries. See customer portal penetration testing.
• Trading and market integrations. Trading portals, market-data feeds and aggregator or grid-operator connections are tested for authorisation, rate and quota abuse, and the trust boundary to the systems they connect to. See API penetration testing.
• Device fleets. Charge points and solar, wind or battery assets are tested from the cloud side: device enrolment, per-device identity and keys, fleet ownership and remote commands. A larger fleet model with more device types means more days.
• Perimeter size. The number of internet-facing addresses, remote-access services and sites sets the length of the external infrastructure work.
• Operational continuity. Where a system supports live operations, testing is planned against non-production environments or a defined safe-test window, and that planning is part of scoping.

Tester grade is not a pricing factor, and neither is the size of the testing company. Two quotes for the same scope should differ mainly in the number of days. If one quote is much lower, compare the day counts first.

How is scope set where IT meets operational technology?

Scope starts on the IT side of the IT/OT boundary: remote-access services, privileged command interfaces, authentication, portals, APIs and the perimeter. Live control systems are not tested, and work that reaches towards operational technology is priced separately, after a safe test plan is agreed with your engineers.

For budgeting, this means two things. The IT-side rows above can be priced now from the table. Any plant-side work needs a scoping call with your engineering team, with defined change windows and a kill switch, and it is quoted on its own once the safe test plan is known. See what OT security leads ask SCADA suppliers.

What is included, and what costs extra?

A quote should cover scoping, testing, the report, a walkthrough of the findings and a retest. Ask every company you approach to confirm each of those in writing, because retests and out of hours work are the two items that most often appear later as extra charges.

With EJN Labs, the quote is a fixed price for a defined scope. It includes:

• Testing by UK-based, CREST-certified testers.
• Findings in a client portal as they are confirmed, each with a CVSS score.
• The report on the last day of testing, and a walkthrough call.
• Free retests until findings are resolved.
• Out of hours slots, with no out-of-hours, callout, cancellation or rescheduling fees.

What changes the price is a change of scope: a portal or integration added after the quote, extra user roles, or a larger perimeter than the one described. If the scope grows, you get a new fixed price before any extra work starts.

How do you get a quote, and what will you be asked?

Send the list of systems you want tested and say who has asked for the evidence. A testing company needs a few facts about each system to count the days. Having them ready is the fastest way to get a firm price, and it makes quotes from different companies comparable.

1. Which systems are in scope: customer and trading portals, market APIs, EV charging platforms, asset-monitoring platforms, remote access and the perimeter.
2. For each portal, the number of user roles and whether customers, traders or brokers use it.
3. For device platforms, the types of device and roughly how many sites or chargers are enrolled.
4. For the perimeter, roughly how many internet-facing addresses and remote-access services you have.
5. Whether a non-production environment exists, or whether a safe-test window on production is needed.
6. Who asked for the test and the exact wording: a regulator, a licence condition, a customer or supplier review, or your own security programme.
7. Any dates to avoid, such as outages, tariff changes or trading peaks.

If the document that triggered the request names an accreditation, say so when you ask for the quote. EJN Labs is CREST-accredited.

Do the NIS Regulations decide what you pay?

Not directly. For designated operators, regulation 10 of the NIS Regulations 2018 requires appropriate and proportionate technical and organisational measures, judged against the state of the art. It does not name a penetration test or set a number of days.

The NCSC Cyber Assessment Framework is the guidance operators are usually assessed against. The framework is outcome-based and does not name a penetration test as a principle. It asks for objective evidence that you manage vulnerabilities effectively, and a scoped test is one way to supply it. Our guide to which energy companies are in scope of Ofgem NIS covers that in full.

How EJN Labs approaches pricing for energy and renewables

EJN Labs is a CREST-accredited UK penetration testing company with a dedicated energy and renewables service. We scope each system by what it does and who uses it, count the days, and give you one fixed price for the defined scope.

We test customer and trading portals, EV charging and charge point operator platforms, renewable and battery asset-monitoring platforms, trading and market APIs, the external perimeter, and SCADA and industrial remote-access portals from the IT side of the IT/OT boundary. We do not test live control systems. Work that reaches towards OT infrastructure only goes ahead against an agreed safe test plan, with your engineering team, defined change windows and a kill switch.

Testing is safe by default on production, with no denial of service. Retests are free until findings are resolved, so the price you agree covers the evidence that issues were fixed as well as the evidence that they were found.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does a penetration test cost for an energy business?

Typically £2,200 to £36,400 in the UK market. A remote-access perimeter test of 2 to 3 days is £2,200 to £4,200. A customer or trading portal at 5 days is £5,500 to £7,000. Portals, a market API and the perimeter together at 17 to 26 days is £18,700 to £36,400. These ranges use UK day rates of £1,100 to £1,400.

How much does it cost to test an EV charging platform?

Typically £11,000 to £14,000 in the UK market for a charge point operator platform and its driver app, at 10 days. The test covers charger enrolment, session and billing integrity and remote-command authorisation. A larger device fleet or more partners adds days.

Is testing near operational technology priced separately?

Yes. The IT-side test can be priced straight away from the table. Work that reaches towards OT needs a safe test plan agreed with your engineers first, so it is quoted after a scoping call. Live control systems are not tested.

Is a retest included in the price?

It depends on the company, so ask for it in writing. With EJN Labs, retests are free until findings are resolved, and there are no out-of-hours, callout, cancellation or rescheduling fees. The quote is a fixed price for a defined scope.

How long does a penetration test take for an energy business?

Between 2 and 26 testing days for the scopes in the table above. A perimeter test is typically 2 to 3 days, one portal is 5 days, and portals, a market API and the perimeter together are 17 to 26 days. EJN Labs delivers the report on the last day of testing.

Get a fixed price for your energy systems

Tell us which systems are in scope and who has asked for the evidence. Request a fixed-price quote and we will come back with the number of days, the price and the earliest start date.

Related: Best Penetration Testing Companies for UK Energy and Renewables, penetration testing for UK energy and renewables, Ofgem NIS and penetration testing, NIS Regulations penetration testing, penetration testing cost in the UK and web application penetration testing cost.