Top 10 Smart Contract Auditing Companies and Services

Updated on: 13 January 2025

Several smart contract auditing companies and services can provide excellent solutions based on your requirements, however, choosing the right one for your protocol and codebases can be challenging. 

We have thoroughly reviewed, evaluated, and analyzed tens of smart contract security companies to help you find the best ones to secure your smart contracts and users. 

In this article, we’ll take a deep dive into the top 10 smart contract auditing companies and learn what sets each of them apart.

But first, let’s briefly review what smart contract auditing is, why it is important, and what smart contract auditing companies do.

‍

Why are smart contract audits necessary?

Smart contracts are known for their efficiency and reliability. However, since they must transfer, store, and track digital value, they require strong security measures to prevent exploits and ensure user safety.

In 2023, the total value stolen from DeFi protocols decreased significantly to $1.8 billion, a 51.4% drop from the previous year. However, 2024 reversed this trend, with stolen funds up 21.07% year-over-year (YoY) to $2.2 billion. Even more alarmingly, the total number of hacks also went up from 282 last year to 303 in 2024. 

These concerning numbers make the crucial importance of smart contract auditors and the companies providing such services evident. 

‍

What is a smart contract audit service?

A smart contract audit is a time-boxed security-based code review of your smart contract or blockchain protocol. The auditor’s goal is to find as many vulnerabilities as possible and educate the client on how to improve the security of their codebase in the future.

A smart contract audit involves line-by-line analysis, stress testing, and understanding smart contracts or codebases through manual reviews and automated tests. This ensures that best practices are followed and the security and reliability of a smart contract or codebase are verified to reduce the risk of exploits and fund loss.

There are different types of audits. During competitive audits, thousands of security researchers compete to find exploit vectors in a code base. With private audits, a selected team of top security researchers works closely with the blockchain protocol’s team to ensure the security of its smart contracts and users.

In this list, you’ll find both the best competitive auditing platforms and smart contract audit companies this year. But before that, let’s explore the differences.

‍

‍What is a smart contract audit company?

Smart contract auditing companies specialize in ensuring the security of smart contracts. They analyze and stress test the code in your smart contract to identify potential bugs, exploit vectors, or unintended behavior. Their goal is to find and address vulnerabilities to ensure the integrity and reliability of your contract.

Professional audit companies can and will provide you with all the guidance you need to move forward on your security journey. They are perfect for:

• Pre-deployment smart contracts
• Deployed smart contract
• Smart contracts at any auditing round
  ‍

What is a smart contract competitive audit?

Smart contract security auditing competitions involve many independent auditors simultaneously examining the underlying code’s security and reliability. Competitive auditing fosters a healthy competitive environment by allowing auditors to showcase their skills.

These competitions involve different roles. Auditors protect the ecosystem by identifying threats, judges assess the severity and validity of findings and evaluate auditors' performance, and projects sponsor the prize pools to incentivize participants.

Essentially, auditors compete to identify vulnerabilities and inefficiencies, aiming to deliver a comprehensive report. This method ensures multiple perspectives on contract security and promotes a higher level of scrutiny, leading to a robust and secure code base. Competitive audits are perfect for: 

• Pre-deployment smart contracts
• Smart contracts at their first auditing round

Now that we understand the differences between smart contract auditing companies and competitive audits, let’s see why they are essential for blockchain projects. 
‍

Benefits of using a smart contract auditor

Reaching out to a smart contract auditing company or putting your protocol through a smart contract competitive audit can provide several benefits:

• Drastically reduces the risk of attacks and exploits by identifying and addressing potential vulnerabilities before malicious actors can utilize them.
  
• Enhances confidence and trust in your smart contracts and protocol as independent, third-party experts have validated them.
  
• Improves your contracts' efficiency by identifying areas for optimization, ensuring they consume as little gas as possible.
  
• Auditing your smart contracts by a reputable company strengthens your credibility in the crypto community. It demonstrates your commitment to safeguarding users' interests, thus winning their trust and loyalty.
  
• Reduce the risk of financial losses. A minor flaw in a smart contract can lead to massive financial losses upon execution. Audits help prevent such mishaps.
  
• Provides learning opportunities. The audit reports often include detailed explanations of the detected flaws, allowing your team to learn and improve their coding skills.

Of course, this assumes you’ll be working with a good smart contract auditing company. So, let’s see how to evaluate it.
‍

How to choose the right smart contract audit service

As we’ve said, selecting the right smart contract auditing company for your protocol, smart contracts, or code base can be complicated. You need to consider many factors when deciding who will secure the code that will potentially hold and handle all the funds of your users, company, or service.

In this guide, we considered five factors:

• Experience: Look for an audit company with extensive experience auditing smart contracts for prominent protocols with large Total Value Locked (TVL). The more experienced the company, the better it will be at identifying potential vulnerabilities.
  
• Reputation: A company's reputation in the community can say a lot about the quality of its audits. Look for companies that consistently receive positive feedback and whose audited codebases remain secure.
  
• Transparency: The company should be transparent about its auditing process and willing to provide detailed explanations of the findings.
  
• Technical expertise: Look at the chains, patterns, and architectures the smart contract auditing company specializes in.
  
• Cost: While cost shouldn't be the main factor, it is still important. Ensure the audit cost is within your budget and consider the value it provides.

With this in mind, let’s look at the top 10 smart contract auditing companies this year.

‍

Top 10 smart contract auditing companies

‍

1. Cyfrin

‍

‍

Trusted by leading protocols like ZKsync, Chainlink, Wormhole, Securitize, Lido, Starknet, and Ethena, Cyfrin leverages a community of thousands of top-notch auditors and the expertise of a team of world-leading security researchers.

It aims to reduce the amount stolen from Decentralized Finance (DeFi) by 1% every year and offers a one-stop shop for making web3 more secure, reliable, and accessible.

Smart contract audit services

Cyfrin provides five main solutions related to smart contract security:

• Private smart contract audits: A team of expert security researchers carefully reviews each line of code to ensure it is secure and reliable.
  
• CodeHawks: A gamified competitive auditing platform where the world’s best auditors compete with each other to find vulnerabilities and win prizes.
  
• Solodit: A platform that collects thousands of blockchain security vulnerabilities, bounties, and research to help improve smart contract and decentralized app (dApp) security.
  
• Aderyn: An open-source Rust-based static analysis tool that examines Solidity smart contracts to detect potential vulnerabilities by analyzing their Abstract Syntax Trees (AST).
  
• Cyfrin Updraft: An education platform featuring courses on blockchain development and web3 security with a community of 200,000+ students. 

‍Expertise

Cyfrin specializes in auditing smart contracts written in Solidity and Vyper, utilizing tools such as Foundry, Hardhat, Brownie, Apeworx, and Truffle to ensure comprehensive security assessments. 

Selected Clients

ZKsync, Chainlink, Wormhole, Securitize, Lido, Starknet, Ethena, Uniswap, and many more. 
‍

2. OpenZeppelin

OpenZeppelin is a cybersecurity technology and services company known for developing its Solidity libraries. Since 2015, it has helped protect assets worth over $50 Billion in some of the most prominent blockchain organizations.

Smart contract audit services

OpenZeppelin is a leading provider of secure blockchain solutions, offering key services such as:

• Smart contract audits: Thorough reviews of system architectures and code to identify and fix vulnerabilities.
• Ethernaut: An interactive game that helps developers learn smart contract security by finding and exploiting vulnerabilities.
• Defender: A platform for deploying, monitoring, and automating smart contract operations securely and efficiently.

Expertise

OpenZeppelin specializes in secure blockchain development and auditing. It offers trusted Solidity and Cairo libraries, comprehensive smart contract audits, and zero-knowledge-proof services. Its comprehensive offering supports distributed payment networks, financial systems, and governance protocols.

Selected Clients

Bancor, Celo, 1inch, The Graph, Origin, Cross Chain Swaps, etc.‍
‍

3. Spearbit

Spearbit is a decentralized network of security experts that offers web3 security consulting services. They bridge the gap between independent security experts and web3 projects that require their services. Auditors must undergo a screening process to become part of Spearbit and get assigned the appropriate designation.

Smart contract audit services

To strengthen the ecosystem, Speabit offers reviews and other security-related services to web3 projects. It also enables expert freelance auditors seeking flexibility to work on interesting projects together and provides educational content for Web3 security enthusiasts.

Expertise

Spearbit's technology stack encompasses protocol design, smart contracts, and the Solidity compiler. Their security assessments employ tools such as Foundry for testing, fuzzing campaigns, and formal verification.

Selected Clients

Redacted, Primitive, NFTX, BadgerDAO, Morpho, Llame, etc.
‍

4. TrailOfBits

‍

‍

TrailOfBits has been contributing to web3 security since 2012. Its commitment is to address the most complex security challenges by designing and innovating new technologies, conducting thorough research, and evaluating the latest technological products to ensure their security worth.

Services

• TrailOfBits offers three main services: Software Assurance, Security Engineering, and Research and Development.
  
  
• It also developed various tools to help developers and researchers in identifying and resolving critical vulnerabilities, including:some text
  • Echidna: A property-based fuzzer for Ethereum smart contracts.
  • Manticore: A symbolic execution tool for analyzing binaries and smart contracts.
  • Slither: A static analysis framework for Solidity.
    
    

Expertise

Trail of Bits specializes in high-end cybersecurity services, offering expertise in reverse engineering, cryptography, virtualization, malware analysis, and software exploitation.

Selected Clients

Acala, Balancer, Frax, Liquity, MakerDao, Parity, Yearn, etc.

‍

5. Consensys Diligence

‍

‍

Consensys Diligence is a leading provider of blockchain security services. It has helped over 100 teams build and launch secure dApps with confidence.

Smart contract audit services

Consensys Diligence offers comprehensive smart contract auditing services to identify vulnerabilities and ensure code integrity. These include:

• Smart contract audits: In-depth manual code reviews supported by tools like Mythril and Scribble.
  
• Threat modeling: Visualizing and analyzing a project's attack surface to prepare for evolving security risks.
  
• Fuzzing: Identifying vulnerabilities before deployment with automated fuzz testing.
  
• Security tools: A suite of tools such as Surya to visualize and analyze smart contract architecture, Karl for automated bug detection, and Theo for identifying security vulnerabilities through static analysis. 

Expertise

ConsenSys Diligence specializes in auditing Ethereum-based and Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible smart contracts and protocols. To ensure robust security, their approach combines manual code reviews, penetration testing, threat modeling, and automated analysis using advanced in-house tools.

Selected Clients

Lybra Finance, Wallet Guard, Socket, Rocket Pool Atlas, Forta, etc.

‍

6. Sigma Prime

Sigma Prime is a leading blockchain security firm and research collective known for advancing decentralized technologies through secure solutions and open-source development. 

Smart contract audit services

Sigma Prime provides a comprehensive suite of blockchain security services to ensure the integrity of decentralized systems:

• Smart contract audits: Detailed code reviews to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities in Ethereum smart contracts.
  
• Protocol design reviews: Thorough evaluations of blockchain protocols to ensure secure architecture and design.
  
• Formal verification: Rigorous mathematical verification to guarantee smart contract correctness and reliability.
  
• Fuzz testing: Automated fuzzing to detect unexpected vulnerabilities and edge-case behaviors.
  
• Consensus and network security assessments: Security analysis of blockchain consensus mechanisms and peer-to-peer networks.

Expertise

Sigma Prime specializes in blockchain security, focusing on Ethereum and related technologies. They are the creators of Lighthouse, a secure and high-performance Ethereum consensus client written in Rust. Lighthouse is designed for Ethereum 2.0, emphasizing robustness, security, and efficiency in staking and consensus operations.

Selected Clients

AlphaWallet, Filecoin, Gearbox, Infinigold, Synthetix, Protocol Labs, etc. 

‍

7. ChainSecurity

ChainSecurity specializes in smart contract audits and blockchain security solutions. It serves diverse clients, including DeFi protocols, web3 projects, and central banks. Its tools, Securify and VerX, detect and fix security issues in smart contracts, ensuring the integrity of decentralized projects.

Smart contract audit services

ChainSecurity offers comprehensive services to ensure the security and reliability of blockchain applications:

• Smart contract audits: Providing in-depth code reviews to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities.
  
  
• Security assessments: Conducting thorough evaluations of blockchain clients and protocols to enhance network integrity. 

Expertise

ChainSecurity is recognized for its proficiency in auditing complex codebases across various blockchain platforms, including EVM-compatible chains and NEAR projects. The firm emphasizes rigorous quality assurance and detailed investigations to uncover novel vulnerabilities, ensuring robust security for blockchain applications. 

Selected Clients

Tron, Circle, MakerDAO, Lido, Uniswap, Yearn.Finance, etc.

‍

8. Dedaub

Dedaub provides end-to-end security solutions for the world’s leading Web3 protocols. It has completed 100+ full-protocol audits and rescued $1.5 billion in funds in white-hat hacks. To audit smart contracts, Dedaub leverages powerful analysis, advanced AI and analytics, and human expertise.

Smart contract audit services

Dedaub offers comprehensive smart contract audits to ensure the security and reliability of blockchain projects. Its suite of solutions includes:

• Smart contract audits: Thorough analysis of code to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities.
  
• Web3 protocol design advisory services: Expert guidance on secure protocol design to enhance financial and code security.
  
• Dedaub security suite: A suite of tools for decompiling, analyzing, and monitoring smart contracts in real time.
  
• WatchDog: An advanced security platform that uses automated static analysis warnings, real-time blockchain events, and continuous audit support to prevent serious hacks.
  
• Contract Library: A thorough decompiler for contracts on the Ethereum blockchain.

Expertise

Dedaub's team comprises PhD-level blockchain experts with extensive experience in smart contract security, cryptography, and financial systems. They have authored over a hundred high-impact academic papers, contributing significantly to the field.

Selected Clients

Lido, Yearn.Finance, Liquidity, GMX, Eigenlayer, Oasis Network, etc.

‍

9. Code4rena 

‍

‍

Code4rena is a platform that enhances smart contract security by organizing competitive audits where skilled auditors, known as "Wardens," identify vulnerabilities in blockchain projects. Despite its acquisition by the blockchain security audit provider Zellic in August 2024, Code4rena continues to operate independently. 

Smart contract audit services

Code4rena offers several types of smart contract security auditing services, each with a specific purpose:

• Open audits are open to everyone, and all information is public.
• Private audits are exclusively for auditors who have met the conditions of the Code4rena Certified Contributor Program.
• Invitational audits are exclusive audits where sponsors collaborate with top auditors from CodeArena’s community.
• Mitigation reviews are conducted when the new code is ready for review after Code4rena audit. The highest-performing auditors who found the initial vulnerabilities are invited to participate in this review.
• Bot races involve registering bots that submit findings that can be automatically detected in a project's code.

Expertise

Specializing in decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols and blockchain applications, Code4rena leverages the collective expertise of its auditor community to provide comprehensive security assessments.

Selected ‍Clients

Ronin, Basin, Canto, Thorchain, Optimism, ZKSync, etc.

‍

10. CodeHawks

CodeHawks is a competitive auditing platform that focuses on helping companies secure their smart contracts and ensuring that auditors get paid for their services.
Powered by Cyfrin, a leading web3 security company, it has distributed millions in rewards on its platform.

Smart contract audit services

CodeHawks offers two main services designed to enhance the security of smart contracts:

• Competitive audits: Engage a worldwide community of auditors who compete to uncover vulnerabilities, ensuring thorough scrutiny.
  
• First flights: Beginner-friendly auditing challenges that provide hands-on experience with real-world smart contract security assessments. 

Expertise

CodeHawks operates as a versatile audit platform that invites a wide array of auditors skilled in multiple programming languages and blockchain networks.

Selected Clients

ZKsync, Chainlink, Starknet, Sabiler, MorpheusAI, LinkPool, Vyper, and many more. 

‍

Conclusion

Recognizing the significance of top smart contract audit companies is crucial for ensuring the safety of your projects and protocols. These audits are essential for identifying and resolving vulnerabilities in the code, saving money and reputation.

With the emergence of more DeFi projects and applications, compromising security is not an option. Therefore, it is not only advisable but also necessary to have experts conduct a thorough smart contract audit.