At first glance, a $40 or $50 per month monitoring fee can seem steep, but that adds up to $600 or less per year. That’s still significant, but it’s a lot less than the average loss of a break-in. In 2017, people whose homes were burglarized lost an average of $2,416. We found that most residential security systems cost less than that (usually by at least $1,000) for the whole term of the contract, which is typically 36 months—and that includes standard equipment.