Pricing
Know it. Run it. Prove it.
Three plans, each answering a different question. All prices are in pounds sterling, exclude VAT, and are published here in full because a business your size should not have to book a call to find out whether it can afford something. Every plan is sold with a person on the other end; there is no checkout.
Know it
Foundations
"Which number is right?"
Best fit: you have never written any of this down. Nobody can say who owns a number, which version is current, or how long anything is kept.
What you end up with: a register of your datasets and reports with a named owner against each line, your trust tiers and retention rules defined, the responsibility matrix filled in, and seven written procedures approved and versioned.
£8,000 / year
paid up front · 12-month commitment · excludes VAT
or £780 a month — £9,360 total over 12 months
- Dataset register with named owners and stewards
- Trust tiers, sensitivity and retention rules
- Roles and the responsibility matrix
- The seven written procedures, editable, with approvals and versions
- Basic health scoring and the help centre
- Unlimited datasets and reports in the register
- One platform connection
- Up to 10 people with a login
- Email support and a one-hour onboarding call
Run it
Professional
"What happens when she's on holiday?"
Best fit: the decisions are written down and now have to happen every week without one person chasing them, and without them stopping when that person is away.
What you end up with: requests for access, onboarding, schema change and promotion running as approvals with a named approver and a date; owners emailed when something needs them; training completed against roles; and a maturity score that moves when any of it slips.
£18,000 / year
paid up front · 12-month commitment · excludes VAT
or £1,750 a month — £21,000 total over 12 months
- Everything in Foundations
- Approval workflows: onboarding, access, schema change, promotion
- In-app and email notifications; ownership-gap alerts
- Training courses, role guides and learning paths
- Maturity roadmap and advanced health scoring
- Fabric / Purview and AWS Glue connections, no limit on how many
- Audit trail exports
- REST API and MCP server
- Up to 50 people with a login
- Priority support and a half-day kickstart session
Prove it
Enterprise
"Can you show me?"
Best fit: somebody outside the data team — an auditor, a customer's security review, a regulator, a board — asks you to evidence how this is run, and your IT policy requires single sign-on.
What you end up with: your controls mapped to what the product records, quarterly evidence packs produced from the audit trail rather than assembled by hand, workflow templates shaped to your own process, and logins through your own identity provider.
£30,000 / year
annual only, invoiced · 12-month commitment · excludes VAT
- Everything in Professional
- Single sign-on with your own identity provider
- Compliance reporting: control mapping and quarterly evidence packs
- Custom workflow templates
- No limit on people or platform connections
- A dedicated account manager and a two-day assessment
What those limits count
People
Anyone with an active login in your workspace, whatever their role — admin, editor, steward, consumer or viewer. There is no cheaper read-only seat today. An invitation you have sent but nobody has accepted holds a seat until it is accepted or revoked. Our own people and a partner consultancy's, where you give them access, are flagged as such and do not use your seats.
Platform connections
One connection means one connector type that has synced at least once — Microsoft Fabric / Purview, or AWS Glue. Foundations includes one; Professional and Enterprise have no limit. Running it on metadata you enter yourself, with no connection at all, is a supported way to use every plan.
Datasets and reports
No limit on any paid plan. The register holds as many datasets, reports, procedures and audit events as you have; nothing here is priced per asset or per row.
All three plans are a 12-month commitment, with monthly payment available on Foundations and Professional. Paying the year up front is the lower figure. Invoiced, not card-billed, and every price on this page excludes VAT. Prices are for the standard hosted service; a dedicated instance or a deployment into your own Azure subscription is quoted separately, below.
Sold separately, to any plan
Consulting, if you want it
The product is complete on its own and does not assume you buy any of this. Some businesses would rather have it stood up with them, by people who have done it before. Every engagement is fixed scope, agreed and quoted before it starts, and the output is yours in open formats whether or not you stay a customer. The ranges below are the ranges we quote within; where in the range you land is decided by the factors named against each one, not by which plan you are on.
Initial consultation
Free · one-offWhen it helps: you do not yet know whether any of this is worth doing.
You get: forty-five minutes with you and whoever runs reporting, the product shown against your own examples, and an honest answer about whether to go further. "Not yet" is a normal outcome.
What sets the scope: nothing — it is one conversation, at no charge.
Discovery
£5,000–£10,000 · one-offWhen it helps: nobody can currently list what you have, so nobody can scope anything else either.
You get: a register of the datasets and reports you actually have, a named owner proposed against each line, a one-page definition of what your trust tiers mean, and a written brief for what an implementation would involve. It stands on its own: it is useful, and it is yours, whether or not you buy the platform or ever ask us to implement anything.
What sets the scope and the fee: how many source systems and reporting estates are in scope, how many departments have to be interviewed, and whether anyone has an inventory today.
Full implementation
£15,000–£50,000 · one-offWhen it helps: you have decided to do it and would rather not be the first person in your business to have tried.
You get: a blueprint and responsibility workshop, the register seeded with your datasets, the procedures tailored to how you actually work, owners appointed, and those owners trained in what they have just accepted.
What sets the scope and the fee: the size of the estate agreed in discovery, how many departments and owners are involved, how much of the standard operating model has to change to fit your organisation, and how much of the work your own people take on.
The six weeks it is usually described in is elapsed delivery time, not six weeks of a consultant working on you full time.
Training workshops
£2,000–£5,000 · one-offWhen it helps: your owners and stewards need to be taught by a person, over and above the courses in the product.
You get: a workshop for a defined group, on site or remote, built around your own register rather than a generic deck.
What sets the scope and the fee: the size of the cohort, how long the session runs, whether it is on site, and how much of the material is tailored to your organisation. Those three things are agreed in writing before it is booked.
Professional and Enterprise already include the courses, role guides and completion tracking in the product. This is the taught version, not a substitute for it.
Quarterly review
£3,000–£5,000 a quarter · recurringWhen it helps: the thing you are worried about is drift — that in a year nobody will have kept it current.
You get: the review run with you, the score and what moved it walked through, and a report to your sponsor.
What sets the scope and the fee: how many owners and departments take part, and whether it is run remotely or on site.
Bought every quarter, that is £12,000–£20,000 a year on top of the plan. It is optional, and it is a recurring cost — worth putting in the budget as one.
Custom integration
£5,000–£20,000 · one-offWhen it helps: the operating model surfaces something that needs building — a system that has to feed the register, a data-entry application to replace a spreadsheet, a pipeline nobody owns.
You get: Scorchsoft's engineering side: the connector, the pipeline or the application, scoped and quoted like any other software project.
What sets the scope and the fee: the same things that set the price of any build — the systems involved, what has to be built rather than configured, and what it has to keep doing afterwards.
Configuring the Fabric / Purview or AWS Glue connections the product already ships is part of setting it up, not a custom integration. This is for the things it does not have a connector for.
What is included in the plan, and what is not
The onboarding in each plan is about getting you into the product: a one-hour call on Foundations, a half-day kickstart on Professional, a two-day assessment and an account manager on Enterprise. It is not a discovery — nobody inventories your estate or interviews your departments in an hour. Discovery and implementation are about your business rather than the software, which is why they are quoted separately and why their output is yours regardless. The evidence packs on Enterprise are produced by the product from your own audit trail; the quarterly review is a person reading them with you and reporting to your sponsor. You can buy either without the other.
An illustration, not a package
What a first year can add up to
This is one worked example, not a fixed-price bundle and not a quote. Every figure in it sits inside a range published on this page. It assumes discovery is bought separately from implementation, which is how we sell them, and that both are optional: plenty of businesses buy the software and do the work themselves.
Your own scope and fee are agreed in writing before any work starts. If your estate is smaller than the one imagined here, so is the number.
Not in any of those figures: VAT; a dedicated instance or a deployment into your own Azure subscription, which are quoted separately; custom integration work; training workshops beyond what an implementation includes; and your own people's time, which is set out below and is usually the largest line of all.
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Professional plan Every year
Paid annually up front. The one line that recurs.
£18,000
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Discovery One-off
Mid-range of the published £5,000–£10,000. Optional.
£7,500
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Full implementation One-off
Within the published £15,000–£50,000. Optional.
£25,000
First year
Excluding VAT
£50,500
Only if you also buy the advisory
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Quarterly review Every year
£4,000 a quarter, within the published £3,000–£5,000
£16,000
First year with advisory
£50,500 + £16,000, excluding VAT
£66,500
Then, every year after
£18,000
the software on its own
£34,000
with the same advisory example
Discovery and implementation happen once. £32,500 of that first year does not come round again, at today's prices.
Where it runs
Three ways to host it, agreed in the first conversation
The register, the ownership records and the audit trail can be sensitive even though none of your actual data is copied. Some businesses are happy for us to run it; some need it inside their own Azure subscription, with their own identity, network and backups. Say which early. It changes how we set it up and what it costs, and it is much easier to plan for than to retrofit.
| Hosted by Scorchsoft | Included in the plan. The standard service. Your organisation's data is isolated from every other; we operate, patch, back up and monitor it. |
|---|---|
| Dedicated instance | Quoted per customer. Your own application and database, separate secrets, in Scorchsoft's Azure. For businesses whose policy requires nothing shared. We agree exactly what is isolated. |
| Your own Azure subscription | Licence plus setup and support, quoted per customer. Runs in your tenant, under your identity and network controls; you pay the Azure costs. Your IT partner can operate it. We agree in writing who patches, backs up, monitors and responds. |
The hosted service is what we run today. The other two are set up per customer against agreed requirements, so the first conversation is where they start.
How buying works
There is no checkout, and that is deliberate
Every plan is sold with a person on the other end. Here is the whole sequence, so you can see what you are starting before you start it.
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1
You enquire
A person reads it and replies by email, usually within one working day.
Free
-
2
Forty-five minutes
You, whoever runs reporting, and the product shown against your own examples. You will hear "not yet" if that is the answer.
Free
-
3
A trial workspace, if you want one
Arranged after that conversation, on Foundations or Professional, pre-populated so you are not staring at an empty system. Set up with you rather than self-served; length agreed at the time.
By arrangement
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4
A written proposal
The plan, and any consulting, scoped and quoted before anything starts. Nothing begins on a verbal.
Fixed scope
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5
Set-up and onboarding
Invoiced, not card-billed. Your workspace ships with the structure, procedures and courses already in it.
In the plan
What you can see before you decide
Every screenshot on this site is the real product with sample data, not a mock-up, and it is labelled as sample data wherever it appears. There are six of them at the foot of this page, full size. A complete written procedure is published in full, and the guides and glossary are open with no sign-up.
What we cannot show you yet
Lake On Rails is new and has no customer references yet, so you would be early. We will not offer you one, or a case study, or an adoption statistic, because they do not exist. Scorchsoft has been building software for other businesses since 2010 and can give references for that — but those are references for Scorchsoft, not for this product, and we will say so when we hand them over.
The cost that is not on this page
What it asks of your own people
For most businesses your size, this is bigger than our invoice, and it is the honest reason these programmes stall. It is also what each person is accountable for, which is why it belongs next to the price rather than in the small print.
Whoever runs reporting today
Two days a week for six weeks, then half a day
About 25 days a year once it is running. It has to be the same person throughout; a rotating half-day is worse than none.
Accountable for: the register being complete and current, and the operating model being followed rather than merely published.
Each data owner
Ninety minutes up front, then an hour a month
The first conversation — accepting accountability, setting retention — is the one that gets deferred. It has to happen.
Accountable for: what their datasets mean, who may see them, how long they are kept, and approving the changes that touch them.
The sponsor
An hour a month at first, then an hour a quarter
An absent sponsor is how these stall. This one is not a cost to minimise.
Accountable for: appointing owners and backing them when a decision is unpopular, and reading the score each quarter.
Where that time goes
The sequence an implementation runs to
Six weeks of elapsed time, not six weeks of anyone full time. Doing it yourselves, on the plan alone, is the same sequence at whatever pace you can carry — the product ships with the structure, the procedures and the courses already in it.
Weeks 1–2
Blueprint and responsibilities
What your tiers mean, who plays which role, what the matrix says. Yours: the sponsor and the department heads in a room. Ours: running it and writing it down.
Weeks 2–4
The register, seeded
Your datasets and reports in, classified, owners proposed. Yours: whoever runs reporting, most of two days a week. Ours: the connection, the import and the tidying.
Weeks 4–5
Owners appointed and trained
Each owner accepts, sets retention and approves access. Yours: ninety minutes per owner, and a sponsor who chases the ones who do not book it.
Week 6 onwards
It runs, and it is measured
Approvals happen in the product, the score moves, the quarterly review has something to read. Yours: about half a day a week from here.
What procurement will ask
Straight answers
Security, hosting and data handling are answered on the questions page. The commercial ones are here.
Is there a free trial?
There is no free tier and no self-service checkout. At these prices you should expect a relationship, and we would rather show you the product on your own examples than have you find your way round a sandbox. A pre-populated trial workspace on Foundations or Professional can be arranged after the first conversation — it is step three of how buying works, above.
What is the difference between paying monthly and annually?
The plan is an annual commitment either way. Paying it up front is the lower figure; monthly billing spreads it and costs a little more over the year, which the card shows rather than hides. Enterprise is annual only, because it is set up against your own identity provider and comes with an account manager.
Can we start on Foundations and move up?
Yes, at any point, pro-rated. Most businesses find the question changes within the first year — "which number is right?" becomes "what happens when she is on holiday?" — and the plan changes with it. Nothing is re-entered.
Do we have to use your consultants?
No. The product ships with the register structure, tier criteria, responsibility matrix, procedures, workflows and courses already in place, and a setup wizard walks you through your organisation, roles and first dataset. The consulting exists for businesses that would rather have it stood up with them. It is optional and the product does not assume it.
What happens to our data if we leave?
The register, procedures, matrix and audit trail export in open formats, and the outputs of any consulting engagement are yours regardless. You do not have to stay a customer to keep what you built.
Can we buy it through the Azure Marketplace?
A listing is planned, so a Microsoft-first business can find and enquire about Lake On Rails from inside the Marketplace. Purchasing through it, and whether a purchase can count against an Azure commitment, depend on Microsoft's rules for the offer type and on your agreement, so we will not promise either until we can confirm them for you. Today we invoice directly.
Are there customer references?
Not yet. Lake On Rails is new and we have no customer references for it yet, so you would be early. What that buys you — direct access to the people building it, and a say in what comes next — and what it costs you is a conversation we would rather have in the first meeting than in month four.
The first step costs you nothing
Forty-five minutes with whoever runs your reporting
We tell you honestly whether this is worth doing at all, and roughly what it would take. If the answer is not yet, you will hear that. "Not for us" is a fine outcome, and a better one than a slow maybe.