KnowBe4
Reduce human risk with security awareness training, email defense and AI defense agents.
By KnowBe4 · 4.3/5 Value-Position score (estimate)
Positioning guardrails
Best for
- Security and IT teams replacing check-the-box awareness training with continuous phishing, vishing and smishing simulation.
- Compliance and privacy groups that must evidence human-risk reduction for SOC 2, ISO 27001, FedRAMP and audit requests.
- Microsoft 365 organizations wanting layered email defense (Defend, Prevent) alongside user coaching.
- Enterprises with 500+ seats needing 1,000+ training modules, 35+ languages and automated campaigns.
- Teams that want AI agents to run phishing and training programs with minimal admin effort.
Ideal size: 250–5,000 employees people · Mid-market to enterprise with a named security awareness or compliance owner
Not for
- Small teams below 25 seats — list pricing starts at the 25–50 seat tier.
- Buyers looking for a standalone secure email gateway replacement rather than a human-risk platform.
- Organizations unwilling to run simulated phishing and coaching against their own staff.
- Companies that require on-premises-only deployment.
Value metrics scorecard
Time-to-Value
2–4 weeks to first campaign
~30 days to first production value
Total Cost of Ownership
$5,400/yr
Starts at $720 · Per seat, per month MSRP on a 3-year term; volume tiers from 25 to 1001+ seats (quote above 1000).
Implementation Friction
2/5
Engineering + admin effort required
Value-Position score
out of 5 · model estimate
Full cost breakdown
Mandatory implementation fee
None
Seat tiers
25-seat minimum; tiers 25–50, 51–100, 101–250, 251–500, 501–1000, 1001+ by quote.
Add-on costs
- Compliance Plus: $0.93/seat/mo (101–500) and $0.82/seat/mo (501–1000)
- PhishER Plus: $1.50/seat/mo (101–500) and $1.15/seat/mo (501–1000)
- KnowBe4 Student Edition: $0.17/seat/mo
- Unlimited third-party integrations for Real-Time Coaching: $1.20/seat/mo (101–500) and $1.10/seat/mo (501–1000)
- Additional multi-tenant consoles: additional fees apply per tenant
Company & support
Who is behind KnowBe4, and how your team gets help once it is live.
Company
- Founded
- Not recorded
- Headquarters
- Not recorded
How you get support
- PhoneNot listed
- EmailNot listed
- Live chatNot listed
- Support portal / ticketsNot listed
- Community forumNot listed
- Help centre / docsPlan not stated
- Dedicated account managerNot listed
- In person / on-siteNot listed
- Hours
- Not recorded
- Response time
- Not stated
Pricing page lists Global Technical Support in multiple languages (Cantonese, Mandarin, English, German, Japanese, Portuguese-Brazil, Spanish-LatAm); security page points to the Knowledge Base for documentation.
“Not listed” means the vendor’s public pages don’t mention that channel, not that it is unavailable. Ask about it during evaluation.
Market position
Where KnowBe4 sits against its closest alternatives. Pick any two of cost, speed, friction and buyer score, and up to 9 companies to compare.
Quadrant view
Typical annual cost × Time-to-value
The lines cross at the median of the solutions shown, so about half sit on each side of each line. A dashed ring marks an outlier pinned to the edge; hover for its value.
Companies on the chart 6 / 10
- KnowBe4
- Josys
- Reveal
- Invicti
- Bitwarden
- HYCU
Add or change companies
Up to 10 companies including KnowBe4. Listed closest first.
Stack fit signal
Compatibility with standard B2B ecosystems.
No supported MCP path today, so it cannot be driven from an AI client.
AI & MCP readiness
What KnowBe4 ships in AI, and what it asks of your ecosystem.
AI features shipped
AIDA (AI Defense Agents) runs orchestration, ongoing training, phishing, remedial training, template generation, policy quiz, deepfake training content and content creation agents, and is included with SAT Advanced. The SmartRisk engine scores human risk across 316 indicators. Sources do not name model providers, key ownership or AI-specific audit logging.
Your data & models
- Trains on your data
- Not recorded — ask the vendor
- Runs on
- Not recorded
- AI pricing
- Included in the plan
In your ecosystem
- AI connection
- Not supported
- Model key
- Not recorded
- AI usage audit
- Not recorded
Compliance attestations
* IAPP AIGP certifies individuals, not products. It means named staff hold the credential — not that the platform does.
Bottom line
KnowBe4 is a human-risk management platform: security awareness training, phishing, vishing and smishing simulation, Phish Alert Button reporting, email and collaboration security (Defend, Prevent), and AIDA AI defense agents that automate phishing and training. It claims 70,000+ customers and 15+ years of behavior data, and holds SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001/42001 and FedRAMP Moderate. List pricing starts near $2.40 per seat per month on the 25–50 seat Foundation tier.
Frequently asked questions
How is KnowBe4 priced and what is the minimum commitment?
Pricing is per seat, per month MSRP on a 3-year term. The entry tier is 25–50 seats at $2.40/seat/month for SAT Foundation and $3.75 for SAT Advanced; rates fall to $1.63 and $2.79 at 501–1000 seats, and 1001+ seats are quoted. Add-ons such as Compliance Plus, PhishER Plus, Student Edition and unlimited third-party integrations are priced separately per seat.
How long does implementation take?
Automated campaigns make first value realistic in roughly two to four weeks for a cloud tenant. SSO/SAML is included at all subscription levels, and user provisioning runs through Active Directory or SCIM (Azure, Okta, OneLogin), so most setup work is identity wiring, group design and the first phishing baseline rather than software installation.
What compliance certifications does KnowBe4 hold?
The vendor security page states all products are SSAE18 SOC 2 Type 2 certified, that the platform (KSAT + PhishER) holds a FedRAMP Moderate ATO since 14 November 2023, and that KnowBe4 is audited against ISO 27001:2022, ISO 27701, ISO 27017, ISO 27018 and ISO 42001:2023 by an ANAB-accredited certifier. It also states GDPR compliance and EU standard contractual clauses.
What AI capabilities are included and what do they cost?
AIDA, the suite of AI Defense Agents, is included with SAT Advanced rather than sold separately. It automates phishing template creation, personalised training assignment, remedial training, policy quizzes and deepfake training content, and the SmartRisk engine scores human risk across 316 indicators. The reviewed pages do not state which model providers are used or whether customers can supply their own keys.
Does KnowBe4 train AI models on our data?
The pages reviewed for this profile do not state whether customer data is used to train or improve AI models, so treat that as unconfirmed and ask the vendor directly. The privacy policy confirms third-party processors such as Amazon Web Services operate under data protection contracts, and lists a public subprocessor page that buyers can review.
Does KnowBe4 integrate with our existing stack?
Yes. Native and third-party integrations include Microsoft 365, Slack and Google Chat messaging, CrowdStrike, Cisco, Cloudflare, Proofpoint-class email security, SIEM/SOAR tools plus governance platforms like Drata and A-Lign. There is also a public Reporting API, Webhook API and User Event API, and AWS Marketplace procurement for up to 500 users.