This study aims to investigate how legal origin and cultural values can affect the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the cost of equity. Specifically, common law and civil law countries (legal origin) and countries with high long-term orientation are compared. The research is conducted by using panel data of 5,533 firm-year observations from 1,492 unique firms during a sample period of 2005 through 2013. The findings suggest that firms with better CSR performance will enjoy lower cost of equity. Furthermore, there is strong evidence in support of the corporate governance practices of CSR performance, which leads to cheaper equity financing. In addition, the findings support previous literature that the negative relationship between CSR and the cost of equity is stronger for civil law countries.