Best Penetration Testing Companies in 2026

NCC Group was founded in 1999 and describes itself as a global cyber security and business resilience company with more than 25 years of history. Its team of more than 1,800 experts works across the UK, Europe, North America and Asia Pacific, the largest published headcount among the firms in this list.

Penetration testing is one of its core services, alongside technical assurance, digital forensics and incident response, embedded systems and hardware security, network infrastructure and container security, and managed services. The firm also sells continuous penetration testing, intended to replace point-in-time tests with ongoing assessment, and managed scanning through a customer portal.

NCC Group's size allows it to staff large multi-country programmes and specialist work such as hardware and embedded testing that smaller boutiques cannot cover. Its breadth also means that engagements are delivered by many different teams, so buyers often specify the consultants or practice they want. Prices are quoted per engagement.

Optiv is a US cyber security solutions and services company that says more than 6,000 clients use its services and that it works with more than 450 technology partners. It provides 24/7/365 global security operations centre coverage alongside its consulting services.

Its Security Attack and Penetration practice delivers penetration testing as part of a broader portfolio that includes third-party risk management and threat management. Because Optiv also resells and integrates security technology, clients can combine testing with remediation projects and managed services from the same supplier.

Optiv suits organisations that want testing within an ongoing services relationship. Buyers seeking a boutique research-led team may prefer smaller specialists, and those concerned about independence may want testing separated from the firm that sold and deployed the controls being tested. Prices are quoted.

Bishop Fox is an offensive security firm headquartered in Tempe, Arizona, citing more than 20 years of experience. It reports working with 70% of the Fortune 10, one in three of the Fortune 100, 80% of the top ten global technology companies, more than 15 Fortune 500 financial services firms and seven of the top ten manufacturers.

Services include penetration testing, red team services, social engineering, ransomware readiness and incident response tabletop exercises. Its Cosmos platform, formerly called CAST, provides continuous offensive security testing of an organisation's external attack surface, combining automation with Bishop Fox's testers.

Bishop Fox has also positioned itself in AI security testing, including a partnership described as OpenAI Daybreak. It publishes open-source tools on GitHub and reports a Net Promoter Score of 72, a company figure. Pricing is quoted.

Mandiant Cybersecurity Consulting is part of Google Cloud and is best known for incident response; it sells the Mandiant Retainer, a flexible retainer that gives organisations immediate access to incident responders and other services without reworking contracts.

Its offensive services include penetration testing and red team assessments that emulate a goal-oriented adversary pursuing custom objectives, going beyond standard testing to reveal complex attack paths. Testing is informed by what Mandiant's responders see in real breaches, which is the main reason organisations choose it for adversary emulation. Mandiant also provides crisis communications and offensive testing across an organisation's cloud estate.

Mandiant's pricing is quoted and its rates are generally at the top of the market. Engagements suit large organisations that want testing tied to incident response readiness rather than routine compliance tests.

NetSPI sells penetration testing through the NetSPI Platform, which supports penetration testing as a service (PTaaS), attack surface management and breach and attack simulation as a service. It positions its PTaaS as shifting penetration testing from one-off projects to programmes, with human-delivered, contextualised testing.

The firm says its customers include large cloud providers, top US banks, large healthcare companies and major technology companies, and shows logos including Microsoft, Chubb and Broadridge. Its service catalogue covers application, cloud, network and other assessments, delivered by dedicated security experts using a process it calls the NetSPI Advantage.

NetSPI combines a platform with in-house testers rather than a crowd, which suits regulated buyers that require vetted employees. It runs a partner programme for channel and technology partners. Pricing is not published.

TrustedSec was founded in 2012 by David Kennedy and is based in Fairlawn, Ohio. It reports having completed 7,400 custom security engagements, holding 207 industry certifications across its team and publishing 52 open-source tools.

Services span building, testing and hardening security programmes, including CREST-certified penetration testing, AI security consulting and remediation services, alongside defensive work. Its public research and tooling are widely used by other testers, which lends the firm credibility in offensive security circles.

TrustedSec reports a Net Promoter Score of 92%, a company figure. It is a mid-sized, consultancy-style provider rather than a platform, and prices engagements individually.

IOActive has been independent since 1998 and says its researchers have spent nearly 30 years testing everything from cloud stacks to connected cars and integrated circuits. It serves clients from top-tier Fortune firms to small and mid-sized businesses.

IOActive is known for hardware and embedded research. Its published work includes analysis of attack paths to the avionics network of a commercial aircraft, airport industrial control system security, fault-injection attacks on drones and a vulnerability in digital licence plates.

Its research depth makes it a common choice for device makers and critical infrastructure operators that need testing beyond standard IT environments. Pricing is quoted.

Praetorian describes itself as helping customers minimise the likelihood of compromise by using an adversarial perspective to uncover material risks, and emphasises that its service staff are security engineers rather than consultants. Its team includes computer scientists, software engineers, researchers, open-source developers and peer-reviewed authors.

Services listed on its site include continuous penetration testing, breach and attack simulation, attack surface management and continuous threat exposure management, together with application, cloud, IoT, network, automotive and LLM penetration testing. A platform underpins its continuous offerings, with a demo available.

Praetorian suits technology companies wanting continuous testing from engineers who can also advise on fixes. Pricing is quoted.

Rhino Security Labs is a penetration testing firm that performs manual, deep-dive engagements and describes itself as a trusted security adviser to Fortune 500 companies. Its services cover web application, network and mobile application penetration testing, cloud penetration testing for AWS, Google Cloud and Azure, adversary simulation and red teaming, social engineering and phishing.

The firm is best known for cloud security research, particularly in AWS environments, and publishes vulnerability disclosures and research through its blog. Its manual approach suits organisations whose risk lies in complex cloud configurations that automated scanners miss.

As a boutique, Rhino has less capacity than large consultancies for multi-country programmes. Pricing is quoted.

Synack runs a security testing platform that combines on-demand researchers, vulnerability management, integrations and reporting. Its Synack Red Team unites more than 1,500 vetted security researchers who work with Synack's patented technology to deliver continuous offensive testing.

Unlike open bug bounty programmes, Synack vets its researchers, which makes it acceptable to many government and regulated customers. Sara, the Synack Autonomous Red Agent, identifies, validates and prioritises vulnerabilities using AI alongside human testers. Partners can resell Synack's Premier Security Testing to their own customers.

Synack publishes research and media series such as Exploits Explained and the WE'RE IN! podcast. Pricing is not published.

Cobalt sells penetration testing as a service (PTaaS) through its Offensive Security Platform and a vetted community of testers called the Cobalt Core. It describes its approach as human-led, AI-powered pentesting, with Cobalt Sage AI supporting each test.

Its pricing model is distinctive: a Cobalt Credit represents eight hours of offensive security testing, delivered through a mix of automation and human expertise, and credits are sold in annual packages that cover scoping, testing, retesting and platform access. Tiers differ in how fast a pentest can start and how long credits last: Standard starts within three business days with a six-month credit pool, Premium within two business days with credits valid for 12 months and a named customer success manager, and Enterprise within one business day with quarterly planning and up to 10% credit rollover.

All tiers include free retesting, Slack-based collaboration with testers and an insights dashboard; higher tiers add DAST, native integrations with Jira and GitHub, customisable reports and custom pentester requests. Dollar prices are quoted.

HackerOne operates a platform connecting organisations with security researchers, and says more than 1,300 companies use it and that more than 600,000 bugs have been found through it. It reported a 210% increase in AI vulnerability reports in 2025, and says 90% of customers have its Hai AI agent enabled.

Products include H1 Agentic Pentest, combining AI agents and human experts; H1 Bounty for ongoing bug bounty programmes; H1 Bounty Challenge for time-bound offensive testing; H1 Validation, which confirms exploitability; continuous testing; and remediation support. It also offers AI red teaming for testing AI systems.

Bug bounty programmes pay per valid finding rather than per tester-day, which can give broad coverage but less predictable scope than a structured pentest. Pricing is not published.

Bugcrowd was founded in Australia in 2012, moved its base to the United States in 2013 and is headquartered in San Francisco and Sydney. It curates a community of security researchers and matches them to customers' use cases.

Its penetration testing offerings include pen test as a service, AI pen testing, web application and mobile application pen tests, alongside bug bounty and vulnerability disclosure programmes. Its Savant products, including Savant Pathseeker and Savant Vista, add AI-driven capabilities to the platform.

Like HackerOne, Bugcrowd's crowd model provides scale and diverse skills, while structured pen tests give compliance-ready reports. Pricing is quoted.