There is no single typical price for a UK managed service provider contract, and anyone quoting one is mixing services that are not alike. The numbers you can defend come from disclosed contracts and published price lists with a clear scope. This guide sets out those figures, what each one covers and what it leaves out, so a finance director can build a fair comparison before asking for quotes.
Quick answers by buyer type
| Question | Best published figure | Caveat |
|---|---|---|
| Mid-sized UK bank, annual MSP cost | £585,276.60 a year (British Business Bank end user and infrastructure contract) | One bank's scope, not an average |
| Bank, managed security | £154,613.67 a year (British Business Bank MSSP contract) | Scope and VAT not stated |
| UK retailer or NHS trust, managed cybersecurity | £46,770.16 a year (DXC, 1,100 endpoints) or £115,995 a year (Rapid7, 500 assets) | Product examples, licences treated differently |
| University or mid-market enterprise, managed Cisco networking | £15,454 a year in licences for the example estate below | Excludes hardware and operating charge |
| District council or mid-market enterprise, general MSP contract | No verified typical figure | Needs matched quotes |
| Service credits and SLAs | No verified UK norm | Negotiate each term in writing |
What does a UK MSP contract actually cost?
Published figures measure different things: a whole contract, a single security service, a licence or a day of labour. The closest thing to a real UK buyer comparator is the British Business Bank contracts register, with data as of 7 August 2026. It lists an end user support, infrastructure and server services contract with XMA Ltd at £2,926,383 over 60 months. Spread evenly, that is £585,276.60 a year.
The same register lists a separate managed security service provider contract with CYSIAM Limited at £463,841 over 36 months, or £154,613.67 a year. The register does not say whether these totals include VAT, so treat them as comparators for scope, not as a market average for banks.
How much does managed security cost for 1,000 endpoints?
Security is where public price lists are clearest. DXC's G-Cloud 15 pricing document prices a managed endpoint detection and response service for 1,000 workstations and 100 servers. Setup is £27,015.33 one-off, and ongoing support is £140,310.48 for 36 months, which works out at £46,770.16 a year.
The pricing assumptions say the customer provides the CrowdStrike licences, so that cost sits outside the figure. A low service line next to a licence bill you still pay yourself is not a like-for-like comparison with a bundled offer.
Rapid7 prices differently, by asset band. Its MDR Elite + NTA list price is £115,995 a year for 500 assets and £724,695 a year for 10,000 assets. The price per asset falls from £232 to £72 across that range.
Rapid7 MDR Elite + NTA list price by number of assets
Annual list price in pounds for five published asset bands.
View the data
| Category | £ per year |
|---|---|
| 500 assets | £115,995.00 |
| 1,000 assets | £183,906.00 |
| 2,500 assets | £300,483.00 |
| 5,000 assets | £501,985.00 |
| 10,000 assets | £724,695.00 |
What do Cisco licences and professional services cost?
Conscia UK publishes a budgetary G-Cloud 15 price list, stated as of 30 January 2026 and based on a three-year term. A Meraki access point licence is £85 a year, an MS225 licence with support is £244 a year and an MX85 Advanced Security licence with support is £1,037 a year. Professional services are £1,420 a day in hours.
These are components, not a managed network service. As an illustration only, 100 access points, 20 MS225 switches and two MX85 appliances come to £15,454 a year in licences and support (100 x £85 + 20 x £244 + 2 x £1,037). Those quantities are assumptions, and the sum excludes hardware and the provider's operating charge. The price list also says network, firewall and internet access is priced on approval after a bespoke design.
Conscia UK budgetary Meraki licence prices
Annual licence and support price per unit on a three-year term, as stated on 30 January 2026.
View the data
| Category | £ per year |
|---|---|
| Access point licence | £85.00 |
| MS225 licence and support | £244.00 |
| MX85 Advanced Security licence and support | £1,037.00 |
How is monitoring platform pricing structured?
Monitoring tools are priced by capacity, not by managed service. Paessler's PRTG pricing page lists annual subscriptions in tiers, for example PRTG 500 at $200 a month paid annually for around 50 devices and PRTG 10000 at $1,642 a month for the top tier. LogicMonitor's pricing page prices per Hybrid Unit, from $16 on Essentials, with one unit equal to one collector-monitored device, one cloud IaaS resource, seven cloud PaaS resources or five wireless access points.
Both pages show US dollars, so ask any provider for a pounds sterling quote with the capacity model written down. The tool is one layer of the bill. Alert tuning, on-call handling and fixing what the alert finds belong in the MSP's own quotation.
Can you compare one UK MSP's pricing with another's?
Only on a matched specification. Conscia UK's day rate of £1,420 and the Cisco licence examples above are real published numbers, but a day rate does not tell you how many days a job takes, and a licence price does not tell you who runs the network. Published rate cards from different providers cover different roles, terms and dates, so they cannot show which provider has the lower total cost of ownership.
The same applies to a mid-market enterprise, which has no verified typical annual MSP contract value in the sources reviewed. Ask each provider to price transition, recurring operations, software, cloud usage, out-of-hours cover, projects and exit on the same sheet.
Which contract structures should you ask for?
The Cabinet Office's Model Services Contract guidance, updated in September 2025, names four pricing mechanisms: time and materials, fixed or firm, volume based, and guaranteed maximum price with target cost. It advises moving away from time and materials once work is fully defined or becomes operational service delivery.
It also separates fixed prices, which move with indexation, from firm prices, which do not. Ask every bidder to say which applies to each line. The guidance does not say how often UK MSPs use each model, so treat it as a checklist for your own contract, not a market survey.
A sound quotation separates recurring operations, software and cloud consumption, transition and projects, governance and reporting, and exit. Ask for each as its own line, with baseline quantities and the rules for changing them.
What do UK regulators expect from an outsourcing contract?
Banks and insurers regulated by the PRA face written requirements. Its supervisory statement on outsourcing and third party risk management, updated in November 2024, expects materiality assessments, due diligence and risk assessments, and says a written agreement is always required.
Price that assurance work into the total cost, alongside the technical service. It is a real cost of the contract, not a free extra.
What does an MSP cost a council, NHS trust, university or retailer?
The evidence reviewed here does not support a reliable annual figure for a district council, an NHS trust, a university or a retailer, so none is given here. The nearest scenario figures are the DXC and Rapid7 security prices above, which are product examples and not sector averages. Public notices tend to give a total value without a duration, or cover a narrow scope such as managed equipment at named sites. Dividing one of those by a guessed term would produce a number that looks authoritative and means little.
For those buyers, build the comparison bottom-up: count users, devices, sites and services, then ask at least three providers to price the same specification. Ask for the SLA terms in writing too, including measurement periods, priority levels, restoration targets and how any service credits are calculated. No public source reviewed here sets a UK-wide norm for these.
What should you do before asking for quotes?
Write one scope document and send it to every provider. List the estate, the hours of cover, who owns the licences, what you keep in house and how you will exit. Then compare each quote line by line. A lower headline fee is only a saving if the same work sits inside it.
Sources
- British Business Bank, Contracts register, data as of 7 August 2026
- DXC Technology, Managed Endpoint Threat Detection and Response G-Cloud 15 pricing document, January 2026
- Rapid7, Managed Detection and Response G-Cloud 15 pricing document, January 2026
- Conscia UK, G-Cloud 15 pricing, 30 January 2026
- Paessler, PRTG Network Monitor pricing, accessed 29 October 2026
- LogicMonitor, Pricing, accessed 29 October 2026
- Cabinet Office, Model Services Contract guidance for authorities, version 2.2(A), September 2025
- Prudential Regulation Authority, Outsourcing and third party risk management, November 2024 update
