When should you audit your smart contracts?
An audit will not only ensure security and trustworthiness but also check if your smart contract is qualified to be published and deployed since it can’t be changed afterwards. But the benefit of smart contract audit is not just that:
- It’s a comprehensive examination to find potential issues, underlying vulnerabilities and address bugs that can hamper your contracts.
- Strengthen your smart contracts and reduce the risks of being exposed to hackers and attacks.
- Earn confidence and credibility from the customer, blockchain community and future investors.
- Improve your smart contracts’ performance. Many audits come along with gas fee optimization and enhanced code quality for faster automation.
- Keep your money safe instead of spending it on making a new contract when things happen or losing your finances to exploitation.
An audit can’t be done in a few minutes or hours. Not to mention the cost of hiring security and blockchain experts for the job. The more complex your contracts, the cost for auditing them will also increase.
So, when does a project need a smart contract audit?
- Before major launch and final deployment.
- Immediately after you notice any harmful activity.
- After introducing important changes to ensure everything is on track as expected.
- Before the significant listing to check and tight to the given budget.
Top 14 smart contracts audit companies
There are many well-known smart contract auditors on the market, namely:
- OpenZeppelin – Best for automating smart contracts
- Hacken – Best for penetration test
- ConsenSys – Best for Ethereum contracts audit
- Cyfrin – Best for DeFi protocol & smart contracts
- Certik – Best for L1 smart contracts audit and formal verification
Being big names in blockchain security, these 5 giants can be pricey for many businesses. High price doesn’t equal good quality, so you should also consider:
| Company name | Best for | Location | Quality rate | Hourly rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Synodus | Overall audit & Optimization | Vietnam | 5/5 (Clutch) | $25-$50 |
| Hashlock | Manual analysis & monitoring | Australia | 4.8/5 (Clutch) | $100-$149 |
| Cyberscope | Binance L1-L2 smart contracts | Europe | 5/5 (Google) | N/A |
| Unicsoft | Solidity smart contract audit | Europe | 4.9/5 (Clutch) | $50-$99 |
| Slowmist | Overall audit | China | N/A | N/A |
| Ulam labs | Logical and code quality | Poland | 4.8/5 (Clutch) | $50-$99 |
| Datami | Security code review | US, EU | 5/5 (Clutch) | $50-$99 |
| Antier | L1 smart contract audit | India | 5/5 (Clutch) | $25-$50 |
| Leewayhertz | Bug fixing | India | 4.7/5 (Clutch) | $50-$99 |
1. Synodus
Being among the top blockchain experts of APAC, Synodus is no doubt a decent smart contract audit company. Having teams of qualified developers, security experts and legal consultants, Synodus will:
- Check every corner of your code and make sure there are no potential vulnerability, syntax errors, bugs or security loopholes.
- Consult on how to improve your smart contracts execution and optimize gas fee.
- Ensure your smart contracts protect your benefits.
With 100+ clients worldwide, Synodus is loved for their transparency, closed communication, seamless execution and cost-effective mindset. If you are looking for support for small to mid-sized smart contracts, their team is the best.
Unlike other companies on this list, Synodus offers both audits, fixing and optimization for smart contracts in Finance, Insurance, Healthcare, Real estate, and Retail industries. Notably, they once optimized a smart contract that can process 300,000 orders per second and reduced its trading fees.
- Smart contract auditing services: L1-L2 smart contract audit, Gas fee optimization, Code optimization, Security analysis, Smart contract testing.
- Supported chain: Work with public, private and permissioned blockchain – ETH, BNB, Polkadot, Corda, Hyperledger.
- IT and security compliance: SOC 2 Type I & II, GPDR, AML/KYC, ISO 27001, HIPAA, FISMA, PSD2, PCI DSS, ERC
- Talent pools: 250+
2. OpenZeppelin
Founded in 2015, OpenZeppelin quickly became the global leader in protecting smart contracts. Many auditors have adopted their OpenZeppelin Contract Libraries as an industry standard. This again proves this smart contract audit company’s in-depth knowledge and practice.
With a customer-centric mindset, they focus on clear communication and close collaboration, allowing teams to operate projects more quickly and safely. Aside from that, OpenZeppelin was the first cybersecurity startup to use gamification to detect security flaws in smart contracts.
Consisting of PhD-level mathematics, low-level EVM operations, cryptography, and finance experts, the team has performed 400+ audits and secured $15B+ assets.
- Smart contract audit services: L1-L2 smart contract audit, ZK-verifier contracts and optimistic rollups, threat monitoring and incident response planning.
- Supported programming languages: Solidity, Cairo, Rust, Go
- IT and security compliance: ERC20, ERC721, ERC1155
- Notable clients: The Sandbox, OpenSea, ANZ, Aave, Morpho, Uniswap.
- Talent pools: 100
3. Hacken
Built by security experts and white hackers, Hacken quickly stands out as a top blockchain cybersecurity and smart contract audit company. From 2017 to the present, they have completed 1500+ audits, saved billions of assets, and worked with some of the biggest brands in the blockchain world.
Best known for penetration testing, the team mainly relies on their custom quality standards and methodology when auditing smart contracts, attaining less than 1% incident rate and 0% scam ventures. However, Hacken currently has 2 projects listed on the Rekt leaderboard for the top smart contracts exploits.
- Smart contract auditing services: Protocol audit, penetration testing.
- Major clients: Avalanche, Huobi, Kyber, The Sandbox, WhiteBit
- Supported programming languages: Solidity, Move, Rust.
- Talent pools: 120
4. Consensys
Consensys, a powerhouse in web3 development, also has a specialized line for smart contract audit services. You can go for their ConsenSys Diligence services, a packaged solution that uses its own standard to examine your smart contract. Or you can require a custom audit where they create a detailed roadmap and method for your projects.
Unlike other smart contract auditing firms on this list, ConsenSys pulls their focus on Ethereum. Over the years, the company has successfully secured over 100 blockchain companies and identified more than 200 concerns. In addition to security audits, the company offers two more services, including Fuzzing, which allows users to uncover problems immediately after drafting their first specification.
- Smart contract audit services: Automated security analysis, Smart contract testing, automatic property checking, threat modelling, incident response planning and security counselling.
- Chains supported: Ethereum
5. Certik
Founded by Columbia and Yale professors, CertiK is a pioneer in using formal verification and AI technologies to secure and monitor smart contracts and Web3 apps. Instead of manually checking every line of code like traditional techniques, they combine mathematical methods to guarantee your smart contract’s logic and performance.
Thanks to the industry-leading audit methodology and tooling, they have audited nearly 5,000 projects and found more than 75,000 security holes. Yet, like some giants in smart contract audit companies on this list, CertiK currently has 3 projects on the Rekt Leaderboard, namely Saddle Finance, Akropolis, and Arbix Finance, with a combined loss of $12.2 million.
- Smart contract auditing services: Security audit, formal verification, penetration testing, incident response.
- Major clients: Sandbox, Ton, Sequoia, Goldman Sachs
6. Cyfrin
Cyfrin provides industry-leading smart contract security audits and assessments, which are preferred by some of the largest decentralized protocols and infrastructure providers in DeFi. So far, they have secured over $10 billions of DeFi asset value, all thanks to their team of:
- Internal experts: You can hire leading Cyfrin auditors for in-depth security and smart contracts analysis. They call this service Cyfrin Audits.
- Worldwide auditors: You can start a little game and let your code be reviewed by dozens to hundreds of auditors for better exposure and scrutiny. They call this service Cyfrin CodeHawks.
Having such highly qualified security researchers and auditors, Cyfrin has performed audits for a variety of blockchain applications.
- Supported blockchain: ETH, Polygon, Optimism, Binance, Avalanche, Arbitrum, Base, Solana.
- Notable clients: Oku Trade, Dolomite, Dexe DAO.
- Talent pools: 20
7. Cyberscope
Being an award-winning cybersecurity and smart contract audit company, the team has amassed a large portfolio of 1,800+ audits and secured $1 billion+ in assets.
Despite claiming to work with many blockchain platforms, Cyberscope‘s domain mostly revolves around Binance. Their experiences in handling the blockchain platform are vast, so you can rest assured that every vulnerability will be found. The cyber team adopts the BEP20 standard to ensure that every piece of code is in place.
- Smart contract auditing services: Penetration testing, Formal verification, L1 audit, Solidity protocol audit, Smart contract optimization.
- Supported chain: BNB, BSC, Ethereum, Polygon, AVAX, Solana, etc.
- Talent pools: 10+
8. Hashlock
Based in Australia, Hashlock is the leading brand name for smart contracts and blockchain security of the region. Coming from web3 bug bounty, their experts and founders have faced different smart contracts threats and can seamlessly handle many cases.
They focus on the quantity and quality of vulnerability findings, meaning that the team adopts various security methods to trace as many issues as possible, even in the deepest code lines. This is what their clients love. With such high levels of collaboration and communication with clients, they differentiate themselves in Australia and globally.
- Smart contract audit services: formal verification, penetration testing, incident response, testing services, on-chain monitoring, security audit, L1 contracts audit.
- Supported programming language: Solidity, Rust.
- Notable clients: Redbelly Network, Tomcat Finance, the Verida Network, and CSENS
9. Unicsoft
Leveraging Blockchain, AI, Machine learning, and Data, Unicsoft is well-known for providing high-quality digital solutions. In smart contract audit, the team utilizes the Solidity style guide and Ethereum smart contracts security to perform audits that correctly examine every code of your contracts.
This smart contract audit company combines manual and automated scanning to find errors and vulnerabilities quickly. Their methodology and dedication have made them a trusted partner across 13 countries throughout their 15-year experience.
- Smart contracts audit services: penetration testing, error scanning, documentation and logic analysis, code review, smart contracts for DeFi, crowdsales, crypto wallets, decentralize app.
- Supported programming language: Solidity.
- Talents pool: 150+
10. Slowmist
Coming from China, Slowmist is a trusted smart contract audit company with over 60 customers and $1 billion recovered under their operation. With over ten years of network security experience, Slowmist’s professionals have worked on multiple projects with Binance, OKX, Huobi, Pancakeswap, and Crypto.com.
SlowMist provides security audits and other related services, as well as a number of other security-related goods and services for AML, crypto and blockchain.
- Major clients: Binance, OKX, Huobi, Pancakeswap, Crypto.com
- Chains supported: Ethereum (All EVM chains), EOS, Fabric, Solana, VeChain, ONT
Yet, in the past, Slowmist was once failed to accurately examine a client’s smart contracts and cost them $34 million in lost assets and compensation. They failed to acknowledge a vulnerability which the attacker utilized to influence the price of the Pangolin pool.
11. Ulam Labs
Extensively working with Fintech and Blockchain software, Ulam is one of the top smart contract audit companies that aim for logical defense and code mastery. For this analysis, the team combine their own custom tools and IDE, z3-solver and GraphViz. With consistent growth, Ulam Labs quickly earned their client’s heart and has officially become the development partner of Algorand.
- Smart contract auditing services: Audit for Crypto protocol, DeFi, DAOs, NFT, Gaming, Tokens, ICO.
- Supported blockchain platforms: ETH, BNB, Solano, Polygon, Algorand, Aptos, Avalanche, Near, Multivers
- Notable clients: Adeflex, xBacked, SuperStable, Tsunami, Yamato
- Talent pools: 60
12. Datami
DATAMI is a prominent group of extremely skilled and experienced white hat hackers. They are committed to quality, devoted to preserving your digital assets, and have a proven track record of success with over 600 delighted clients worldwide. Datami provides unique cybersecurity solutions to keep your business safe.
- Smart contract audit services: penetration testing, monitoring, security code review, treatment and recovery.
- Tech stack: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, .NET, Node.js, Python, Kotlin (Android), Swift (iOS), Flutter, Xamarin, AWS, Digital Ocean, Terraform, Kubernetes, Docker
- Notable clients: Invictus, Cloverpop, Solvd
13. Antier
Antier, a reputable smart contract auditing company, provides comprehensive security audit services for organizations of all sizes to develop safe and error-free Blockchain applications.
Antier’s Blockchain professionals use their knowledge and skills to audit smart contracts for actual and future mistakes, security problems, compilation issues, and more, ensuring code quality.
- Smart contract auditing services: security assessment, threat modelling, audit reports and security counselling, smart contract audit for dApps, DeFi, NFT, ICO and blockchain protocol.
- Talent pools: 700
- Clients: Getblock, Nexo, 5ire, Nownodes, Changelly, Skoda,…
14. Leewayhertz
By providing outstanding technological solutions, LeewayHertz developed into a tech-savvy firm that efficiently answers customers’ demands and solves their most challenging digital issues.
This smart contract auditing company incorporates both a variety of tools and techniques to detect vulnerabilities within your code. For automated testing, they use MythX, CertiK, SkyHabour, Quill Hash. Afterwards, the team work on manual and functional testing to check if every logic is used correctly.
- Offer both Smart contract audit services and optimization
- Cooperation model: Dedicated team, Team extension, Project-based
- Talent pools: 250+
What to look out when choosing a smart contacts vendor
Auditing a smart contract requires blockchain, security, and legal knowledge. While many companies can code a good smart contract, not everyone can audit it.
You should check for:
- Have they done any audit projects or optimized any smart contracts?
- Have they joined any smart contract development that has been exploited?
- What is the size and popularity of the projects they have audited? The bigger the project, the better they are worth hiring and the higher the cost to work with them.
At the same time, make sure your smart contract audit companies know how to handle your blockchain of choice. Most vendors specialize in certain niches. While ETH and EVM-compatible altchains such as BNB or Polygon are the most common, Solana or NEAR would require someone familiar with Rust. Remember to evaluate their level of competency before the final decisions.
What security methodologies, blockchain standards, and audit approaches are they using? Best smart contract auditors might use their own protocols, while smaller ones tend to rely on established standards.
Finally, don’t forget to discuss what will be included in the audit reports with your smart contract audit company list. You should clear your expectations and demand a well-structured audit report. It should not only highlight the audit findings but also propose ways to optimize and fix the issues in a detailed technical aspect.
Wrapping up
Choosing the right smart contract audit company will help you strengthen your code and protect it from hackers’ intentions. If your project is complex and you have the budget, you can go with an established brand name. Otherwise, a smart contract auditor of the same size as yours and budget will be much more helpful with the same quality.
