"Should we hire a consultant or buy software?" is one of the first questions every sustainability team asks when the double materiality assessment (DMA) lands on their desk. The honest answer is: it depends less on your company's size than on your internal capacity, the complexity of your business and how often you will need to revisit the assessment. This article compares the three realistic routes (consultant-led, software-led and hybrid) on cost, time, internal effort, expertise, audit-readiness and repeatability, and shows which one fits which kind of company.
In short: A consultant-led DMA buys you expertise and capacity but is expensive (quotes we hear from customers range from about €30,000 at smaller consultancies to €50,000–200,000 at Big Four firms) and leaves much of the knowledge outside your company. A software-led DMA costs a fraction (Materiality Master: €449/month or €2,499/year) and keeps the process in-house, but needs someone internal to own it. A hybrid (software plus targeted expert support, or Materiality-as-a-Service from €6,999) suits most first-time reporters. The revised ESRS (top-down approach, no exhaustive IRO search, updates only on significant change) shift the balance towards software and internal ownership.
Disclosure up front: we build DMA software, so we have a stake in this question. We have tried to be fair, including about the cases where a consultant is the better choice. If you are new to the topic, our step-by-step guide to the CSRD double materiality assessment explains the basics first.
What a double materiality assessment actually involves
Whichever route you choose, the work is the same. A DMA under the ESRS covers six steps: understand the business and its value chain, identify affected stakeholders and users of the report, build a list of impacts, risks and opportunities (IROs), score impacts on severity and likelihood and risks and opportunities on financial magnitude and likelihood, apply thresholds, and document the result so it can be described in ESRS 2 IRO-1, IRO-2 and SBM-3. Our worked double materiality assessment example walks through all six steps for a fictional manufacturer.
The question is therefore not whether this work gets done, but who does which part, with which tools, and who keeps the result.
The three routes at a glance
| Consultant-led | Software-led (self-service) | Hybrid | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who runs the process | External consultants, with input from your team | Your internal team, guided by software | Your team in software, experts for selected steps |
| External cost (first assessment) | Quotes we hear: approx. €30,000 (smaller firms) to €50,000–200,000 (Big Four) | Materiality Master: €449/month or €2,499/year | Software plus selected consulting days, or MaaS from €6,999 |
| Typical duration | Often 3–6 months | Typically 2–4 weeks of active work | A few weeks, depending on external support |
| Internal effort | Medium: interviews, documents, reviews, approvals | Highest: the team owns the process | Medium |
| Expertise needed in-house | Low | Medium: knowledge of the business, willingness to follow a guided method | Medium |
| Audit trail | Depends on the deliverable; ask for the working files | Built in: who changed what, when | Built in |
| Annual review (ESRS 1 §34) | Often a new engagement | Included in the subscription | Included; experts only if something significant changes |
| Where the knowledge stays | Largely with the consultant | In-house | In-house |
Route 1: The consultant-led DMA
In a consultant-led assessment, an external team designs the methodology, runs the workshops and interviews, builds the IRO list, proposes scores and delivers a report, usually with a materiality matrix and a methodology description.
What you get:
- Experienced people who have run many assessments and know what auditors ask about.
- Capacity: the consultant does the legwork your team may not have time for.
- An external, neutral facilitator for workshops with management and stakeholders.
What it costs: In conversations with customers we regularly hear quotes of €50,000 and more from Big Four firms for a full DMA, €80,000 to €200,000 for group-level assessments covering several entities, and around €30,000 from smaller consultancies for mid-sized companies. Prices vary widely with scope, number of entities and the amount of stakeholder engagement included.
Where it falls short:
- Internal effort is not zero. Your team still collects documents, joins interviews, reviews scores and gets approvals. Many companies underestimate this.
- Knowledge leaves with the consultant. The reasoning behind scores and thresholds often lives in the consultant's working files and heads, not in your systems.
- Updates cost again. If the result is a PDF and a spreadsheet, next year's review becomes a new mini-project.
- Time. Engagements commonly run three to six months, partly because of scheduling and review loops.
Route 2: The software-led DMA
In a software-led (self-service) assessment, your own team runs the process in dedicated DMA software. The software provides the structure: the ESRS topic list, IRO templates, scoring scales, thresholds, the matrix, documentation and the audit trail. Your team provides the knowledge of the business. If you are comparing tools, our overview of the best double materiality assessment software lists what to look for, and our article on why software beats Excel explains why spreadsheets break down.
What you get:
- Low cost. Materiality Master costs €449 per month or €2,499 per year, with unlimited assessments and users on the annual plan. Three months on the monthly plan come to €1,347.
- Speed. A typical assessment can be completed in two to four weeks of active work, depending on size and complexity.
- Ownership. Every IRO, score, comment and document stays in your account, ready for the next cycle.
- Audit-readiness by design. The audit trail logs who changed what and when; thresholds and their rationale are documented in the tool.
Where it falls short:
- Someone has to own it. Software guides, but it does not make the judgement calls. You need at least one person who knows the business and can block time for a few weeks.
- No external challenge by default. A team assessing itself can develop blind spots. Plan for a review by management, the audit committee or an expert.
- Facilitation is your job. Workshops and stakeholder conversations still have to be organised internally.
Route 3: The hybrid, software plus targeted expertise
Most companies we work with end up somewhere in between. The internal team runs the assessment in software, and external experts are brought in only where they add the most value:
- Methodology set-up: agreeing scoring scales and thresholds before anyone starts rating.
- Calibration: a workshop on borderline results, for example a topic that sits exactly on the threshold.
- Quality review: a final review before the documentation goes to the auditor.
This keeps external spend to a few days instead of a full project, and the process and knowledge stay in-house.
A second form of hybrid is Materiality-as-a-Service (MaaS), starting at €6,999. Our experts carry out the complete DMA for you, including stakeholder engagement, in Materiality Master. You get access to the software for one year and aftercare with premium support for one year, so next year's review can be done in-house in the same tool.
How the revised ESRS shift the balance
Many of the first large DMA projects in 2024 and 2025 were large because the 2023 ESRS were read as requiring an exhaustive, bottom-up search: long lists of several hundred IROs, each scored and documented. The revised ESRS, adopted as Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/1563 and mandatory from financial year 2027, change that. We explain all changes in our article on the double materiality assessment under the revised ESRS. For the build-or-buy decision, five matter most:
| Revised ESRS 1 | What it means for the effort |
|---|---|
| §27 Top-down approach | Obviously material or immaterial topics can be concluded at topic level, without IRO-level scoring |
| §32 No exhaustive IRO search | No need to assess every possible IRO; information available without undue cost or effort is enough |
| §33 Value chain | Sector, regional or generally available data can replace direct supplier input |
| §42 Stakeholder engagement | Engagement from your due diligence processes is sufficient; no separate DMA engagement programme |
| §34 Updates | Update only when significant changes occur, and disclose when you last updated |
The volume work that justified large consulting projects shrinks considerably. What remains, and becomes more important, is documented judgement: why you concluded top-down, where you looked and where you did not, why your thresholds are where they are. That is work an informed internal team can do with a structured tool, with expert input where the answer is genuinely not obvious.
The §34 rule also changes the economics of repeat assessments. If your DMA lives in software, the annual check is a review of last year's assessment: has anything significant changed in the business, the value chain or the methodology? If not, you document that conclusion and the date. If yes, you update the affected IROs. With a consultant-delivered report, each review tends to become a new engagement.
Can software manage the stakeholder input?
This is one of the most common questions, and the answer is: software can structure it, but not replace it. In Materiality Master you add your stakeholders and rate them on interest, influence and knowledge, which produces a stakeholder matrix. You link stakeholders to individual IROs with an explanation of how they were involved, and you can invite key stakeholders as users with restricted rights to rate specific IROs themselves (users are unlimited). The AI assistant helps with descriptions, and the audit trail logs every change (see our help article on conducting a stakeholder assessment). To gather views from larger groups, a materiality assessment questionnaire run with your usual survey tool helps you collect them in a consistent format.
What software cannot do is hold the conversation with your works council, your key suppliers or an NGO acting as a proxy for affected workers. Under the revised ESRS those conversations can come from your existing due diligence processes. Our guide to stakeholder analysis in double materiality shows how to keep this proportionate.
Run your DMA in-house, without a six-figure consulting budget
Materiality Master guides your team through stakeholders, IROs, scoring, thresholds and documentation, aligned with the revised ESRS. Every change is logged for your auditor, and next year's review takes days, not months.
Which route fits you?
| Your situation | Recommended route | Why |
|---|---|---|
| First-time reporter with more than 1,000 employees (first report for FY2027) | Hybrid: software plus expert set-up and review, or MaaS | You need a robust first assessment and want to own the annual reviews afterwards |
| Group with many entities | Software as the central platform, consultants for group methodology if needed | Entity-specific assessments in one place; consistent method across subsidiaries; external help where it adds most |
| Wave-one reporter reviewing an existing DMA | Software-led | Under §34 you check for significant changes and adjust gross/net and positive impacts; that is a review, not a project |
| Mid-sized company reporting voluntarily (VS/VSME or customer requests) | Software-led, lean scope | No DMA is required under the Voluntary Standard; a focused assessment of the obvious topics is enough. See VSME vs ESRS |
| No internal capacity at all | MaaS or consultant-led | Someone has to do the work; MaaS leaves you with the tool for next year |
| Consultant serving several clients | Software as your delivery platform | Standardised method across clients, client collaboration in one tool, more clients per consultant. See our page for consultants |
When a consultant is the right choice
Software is not the answer to everything. A consultant-led assessment is often the better choice when:
- Nobody internally has the time. If the sustainability function is one person with a full workload, buying capacity is legitimate.
- The business is genuinely complex or contested. Think of high-risk supply chains with potential human rights impacts, extractive activities or several very different business models in one group. Deep sector expertise pays off here.
- Internal alignment is the real problem. When business units disagree on what matters, a neutral external facilitator can unblock decisions faster than an internal colleague.
- The board expects an external view. Some management boards and audit committees want an independent perspective on the first assessment.
Even then, ask the consultant to work in a tool you keep. You pay for the expertise, not for a file you cannot update. Many consultancies already run their client assessments in software for exactly this reason, as our article on how consulting firms use materiality assessment software shows.
Five questions to ask before you decide
- Who will own the DMA in two years? If the answer is "us", choose a route that leaves the process and the data with you.
- How much internal time can we commit? Be realistic: even a consultant-led project needs your team.
- Which parts really need external expertise? Usually methodology, calibration and review, rarely the whole process.
- What will the auditor see? Ask for the scoring methodology, the threshold rationale, the evidence and the change log, regardless of who does the work.
- What will next year cost? Compare the second and third year, not just the first.
Conclusion: buy expertise where it counts, keep the process
For most companies in 2026, the choice is no longer "consultant or software" but how much consulting on top of software. The revised ESRS have removed much of the volume work, and the remaining work is judgement your own team is best placed to make and keep. A structured tool keeps that judgement documented, auditable and cheap to update; external experts add value at the points where the answer is genuinely not obvious.
Compare the plans on our pricing page: Monthly (€449), Annual (€2,499, unlimited assessments and users) and Materiality-as-a-Service from €6,999. Once your material topics are set, the ESRS Datapoints Mapping Tool (€997 one-time) turns them into the revised ESRS datapoints you have to report. And if you advise clients yourself, see how Materiality Master supports your practice on our page for consultants.
