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What software audits actually cost

When a publisher opens a licence review, the figure that arrives at the end is rarely the one anybody budgeted for.

What the research shows

The 2026 State of ITAM report surveyed more than 500 IT organisations worldwide. Three of its findings set the scale:

  • 48% were audited by a software publisher in the past year.
  • 44% spent more than $1 million on software audits over three years — a figure essentially unchanged across three consecutive annual reports.
  • 64% of those audited named the same publisher: Microsoft.

Two things follow from that. An audit is a routine event rather than an unlucky one — and the cost of answering it has not fallen as organisations have got better at IT. It has stayed flat for three years running.

Why the bill surprises people

The instinct is to price the shortfall: count the copies deployed beyond what was purchased, multiply by the licence price, and treat that as the exposure. It is a reasonable guess, and it is usually the smallest of the three numbers that end up in the settlement.

The shortfall. Deployments beyond the entitlements on record. This is the part organisations expect, and the part they can estimate for themselves.

Back-dated support and maintenance. Publishers commonly price the period over which the shortfall existed, not the position on the day of the review. This is why exposure grows with time rather than with headcount — a title deployed sixteen months ago and never recorded costs more than the same title deployed last month, even though nothing about the machine has changed.

List price, rather than your price. Settlements are generally calculated against published rates, not the discount negotiated at purchase. The rate you bought at is a commercial arrangement; the rate you are assessed at is the published one.

Why preparation matters more than size

Put together, the cost of being unprepared is not proportional to how much software an organisation runs. It is proportional to how long it has gone without knowing. An estate of forty machines that has been measured is a smaller problem than an estate of fifteen that has not.

That is the whole argument for looking first, on your own timetable, rather than assembling the picture under a deadline set by someone else.

Sources: State of ITAM Report, 2026 (global survey of 500+ IT organisations), for the three figures above. Publisher audit practice, for the composition of a settlement — the general pattern reported across publisher reviews, indicative rather than a statement about any particular publisher, programme or organisation.