Budgeting for Hardware Security Keys at Your Company

What will hardware security keys cost per employee? In 2026 retail listings, a FIDO-only key started around $29. A multi-protocol key ran about $55 to $99. A FIPS-validated key started near $124. Each person should carry two keys, so double the unit price, then add a replacement pool and the staff hours it takes to enroll everyone.

The figure that matters most is not the price of the cheapest key. It is which standard your company has to meet, because that sets the price tier. The sections below go through each line of the budget in order.

Keys sort into three rough price bands, and the band depends on what the key can do. These prices come from a 2026 procurement roundup by Accio. They are listed prices on that date, not quotes you will be offered.

• FIDO-only keys support FIDO2/WebAuthn, the standard browsers use for phishing-resistant sign-in, and nothing else. Yubico's Security Key C NFC typically listed at $29. Google's Titan key was listed at $30 to $35.
• Multi-protocol keys also handle smart-card certificates and one-time codes, which matters if you have older systems that cannot use FIDO2. The YubiKey 5C NFC listed at $55 to $58, the 5Ci at about $85, and the 5C Bio, which has a fingerprint reader, at $98 to $99.
• FIPS-validated keys have been certified against the federal cryptographic module standard. The YubiKey 5 NFC FIPS started at $124.38.

What pushes a company toward the top band is usually regulation. NIST SP 800-63-4, finalized July 31, 2025, requires a phishing-resistant authenticator with a non-exportable key at its highest assurance level, AAL3. A buyer's guide from WWPass points out that synced passkeys do not qualify there, so AAL3 means buying physical keys or smart cards. If you sell to federal agencies, check the contract language too. CMS's CISO Memo 26-05 expects FIPS-validated authenticators where PIV cards are unavailable, gives its systems a March 31, 2027 deadline, and warns that acquisition teams may update vendor contracts to match.

The cheapest key of all is one you already own. GSA's phishing-resistant authenticator playbook notes that platform authenticators such as Windows Hello for Business, which are built into laptops, often add no hardware or license cost. Physical keys then only have to cover the people and devices that platforms can't.

Every person needs a second key. Without a backup, a lost key locks that person out until the helpdesk re-enrolls them. That alone doubles the hardware line. The reasoning, and where the backup should be kept, is covered in how many keys per person.

After that comes loss and turnover. The GSA playbook lists tracking, replacement and renewal as ongoing costs of physical keys. A one-time purchase covers none of this, so the replacement stock has to be a separate budget line. Lost keys also cost staff time, because each one has to be revoked everywhere it was registered, and that procedure is written up under an employee loses their key.

At least one vendor sells keys both ways, and the subscription changes the shape of the cost. Yubico's documentation lists prices effective January 1, 2026, per user per year: Base at $15 for FIDO-only keys, Advanced at $35 for the multi-protocol 5 Series, and Compliance at $55, which adds FIPS and Bio models. A second key per user costs 25% less than the primary. Each tier includes a 25% allowance for lost keys and staff churn, plus a further 25% allowance for backup keys. Terms run three, four or five years and renew automatically unless you give 30 days' written notice.

The subscription also bundles in 80 hours of professional services in the first year. Buying outright gets you no replacement allowance, and priority support costs $15,000 a year extra. Finance teams may also care that a subscription is billed as an operating expense rather than a capital purchase.

The catch for mid-sized companies is size. SecurityBrief Australia reported that the program targets organizations with 500 or more users. Smaller companies should expect to buy keys outright.

None of these sources gives an hour count for enrolling one person, so measure it yourself in a pilot. The GSA playbook suggests pilots of about 5% of the workforce, and 25 to 50 users for physical keys. WWPass suggests two to four weeks to prepare the identity provider and a four-to-eight-week pilot before the wider rollout. Time the enrollment sessions and count the helpdesk tickets during the pilot, then multiply out to the full headcount. Buying keys in stages, matched to these phases, also spreads the cost over the year.

The brief for this page asked for the cost of a credential-phishing incident. None of these sources gives one, so we won't make up a number. Your insurer or your own incident history is the place to find it.

The published figure most often cited comes from a Forrester study that Yubico paid for. SecurityBrief reported that it modeled a 5,000-employee composite company over three years and found a 265% return. The modeled savings included $476,000 from fewer password-reset tickets and $321,000 from retiring legacy MFA licenses. The study did not publish what the keys cost, and it was funded by the vendor, so treat it as a best case rather than a benchmark. The independent evidence points the same way but has no dollar figures. In the FIDO Alliance's Passkey Index 2026, every organization that measured phishing attempts reported fewer successful attacks after deployment.