What ISNetworld actually costs (and who pays)

The practical answer

ISNetworld doesn't publish a price list on its own site, which is why 'how much does ISN cost' is usually answered by consultants who charge to manage your account. The structure is public even though the numbers aren't: the CONTRACTOR pays an annual subscription fee plus a one-time account setup fee, per country, and the tier is set by your average employee count over the last three years. The hiring client pays a separate enterprise subscription for the dashboard.

The full published tier table is below. Read it as the shape of the pricing rather than today's invoice: ISN raises fees most years and confirms the current figure only inside the signup flow.

Multiply by networks: a sub whose customers variously mandate ISN, Avetta (roughly $450 to $1,200+/yr) and Veriforce maintains three paid memberships and three profiles to keep the same phone ringing. None of that money buys the sub anything except permission to keep working.

What each tier costs

ISN sizes membership by headcount, averaged over three years, so a shop that spiked to 12 people for one job doesn't get billed as a 12-person company forever. Each band carries its own setup fee and its own annual fee, and the first year costs both together. These are the United States figures from the most recently published tier table (2024, USD). Canada runs a separate schedule in CAD, roughly 15 to 20 percent higher at every tier.

• Single-person entity: $175 setup plus $800 a year, so $975 in year one.
• 2 to 4 employees: $200 setup plus $950 a year, so $1,150 in year one.
• 5 to 9 employees: $275 setup plus $1,275 a year, so $1,550 in year one.
• 10 to 19 employees: $500 setup plus $2,475 a year, so $2,975 in year one.
• 20 to 24 employees: $650 setup plus $3,175 a year, so $3,825 in year one.
• 25 to 49 employees: $975 setup plus $4,800 a year, so $5,775 in year one.
• 50 to 99 employees: $1,125 setup plus $5,475 a year, so $6,600 in year one.
• 100 to 149 employees: $1,525 setup plus $7,600 a year, so $9,125 in year one.
• 150 to 249 employees: $1,650 setup plus $8,000 a year, so $9,650 in year one.
• 250 to 499 employees: $2,100 setup plus $11,500 a year, so $13,600 in year one.
• 500 to 999 employees: $2,500 setup plus $16,500 a year, so $19,000 in year one.
• 1,000 to 2,499 employees: $3,000 setup plus $25,000 a year, so $28,000 in year one.
• 2,500 or more employees: $4,000 setup plus $31,000 a year, so $35,000 in year one.

Renewal, lapses and the fee nobody budgets for

After year one you pay the annual fee alone, at whatever tier your three-year average headcount lands in. Growth moves you up a band without warning, and the jump between bands is steep: crossing from 9 to 10 employees roughly doubles the annual fee, and crossing from 24 to 25 adds about half again.

The one that catches people is reactivation. Let a membership lapse and ISN charges a separate one-time fee to bring the expired account back, on top of the annual fee you skipped. For a sub who only hears from that client every other season, letting it lapse and rejoining usually costs more than simply keeping it current.

Where the money goes

The fee funds profile hosting, questionnaire review and document verification inside the network, work that exists because the hiring client outsourced packet-checking. Add the soft costs: hours building the profile, annual re-verification, and (for many subs) a third-party ISN consultant at several hundred dollars a year to keep the account green. That consultant is often the real reason the tier table is hard to find, since the people who publish it sell account management alongside it.

When the network model makes sense

For owners managing thousands of contractors across sites — refineries, utilities, heavy industrial — a shared network with standardized HSE questionnaires has real economies of scale, and if your client mandates ISN membership, that's the cost of that revenue.

The GC-paid alternative

If YOU decide the prequalification process for your own sub list, the network fee structure is optional. CoverWarden inverts it: the GC pays one flat subscription (the Prequal plan), and every sub gets a free no-login link to upload the packet — W-9, licenses, OSHA 300A (TRIR/DART computed automatically), EMR letter checked against your cap, financials, and the COI with endorsement-page review. Your smallest subs onboard in minutes and never see an invoice.