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Range guide · Choosing · Lesson 03

Sizing a hands-on lab programme for a SOC

Short answer

Size a lab programme from the people and the hours, not the library. Count the seats that will actually be used, agree protected time per person, and compare published prices where they exist. Start with a free tier or trial to check usage before committing to a year.

By The Range Desk · Cyber Range Compare · Published 2026-10-01 · Updated 2026-10-11

Desk research from public vendor, standards and regulator pages read on 27 September, 11 October and 13 October 2026. Profiles follow our published method; we did not run the products.

3 min read

Hands-on labs are the easiest training type to buy and the easiest to waste. Seats get bought for everyone, a library of hundreds of labs goes live, and three months later a handful of people are using it. Sizing the programme properly avoids that.

Who actually needs a seat?

Start with names, not headcount. List the analysts, engineers and new joiners who have a skill gap you can describe, and the role path each should follow. People preparing for a certification are good candidates; so are those moving into a new area such as cloud investigation. Executives and the wider workforce do not belong on a technical lab seat; their training sits in other lanes.

How much time will they get?

Agree protected time before you buy. Labs work because they fit into a week, but only if the week has room. A modest, fixed allowance per person, protected from the alert queue, does more than an open invitation. Write the allowance into the plan and review usage monthly.

What do the published prices say?

This is the one training type where prices are visible. On the pages we read:

  • Hack The Box publishes its Professional business plan at $250 per seat per month or $2,500 per seat per year. Its Lite, Base and Ultimate plans are not priced publicly, and Lite lists a 14-day free trial.
  • HTB Academy offers a free start and lists certifications at $490 and $1,260.
  • HTB PRO, an individual plan announced on 21 September 2026, costs $49 a month or $490 a year.
  • TryHackMe publishes a free individual tier and paid individual plans, and lists business plans at $99 (Foundation) and $199 (Advanced) per month, with Enterprise on request. Whether those business prices are per user, and the billing period, were not confirmed in our read.
  • Immersive Labs, Cyberbit and Cloud Range do not publish prices.

Two cautions. Individual plans are not business plans: they lack the assignment, reporting and admin features a manager needs, so compare like with like. And a per-seat price is only half the cost; the other half is the protected time.

How do you check usage before committing?

Run a short pilot on a free tier or trial with five to ten named people and one path each. Measure completions and ask the participants whether the content matched their work. If usage is low in a pilot with protected time, it will be lower without it.

Which content questions matter?

Library size is easy to quote and hard to use. TryHackMe lists 800+ labs; Cyberbit lists 2,800+ solo labs. More useful questions: do the paths cover your stack and your roles beyond beginner level, can you build your own content (TryHackMe lists a Custom Content Studio; Immersive lists an AI Lab Builder), and does reporting show skills, not only completions?

What next?

Labs build individuals. The next lesson covers what changes when people train together, in team exercises.

Sources used in this lesson

Next lesson

Lesson 04 · 3 min

Team exercises versus solo labs: what changes when people train together

What team exercises test that solo labs cannot, how platforms describe them, and how to schedule them.