Answer Engine Optimization costs anywhere from a few hundred dollars a month with an independent consultant to $2,000 to $10,000 a month with most agencies, and more for enterprise programs. What moves the price is not the acronym on the invoice. It is how many pages get written, whether outreach and PR are included, and how many people sit between you and whoever does the work.
Below is what each option costs, what you get for the money, and how to tell which one fits your business.
What AEO costs, by option
The ranges below come from 2026 pricing guides published by agencies and consultants in this market. Treat them as typical, not fixed.
| Option | Typical monthly cost (USD) | What you usually get | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Do it yourself | $0 plus 4 to 8 hours of your time | Your own prompt checks, listing fixes and free Search Console data | One location, an owner with time |
| AI visibility software | $29 to $1,000+ | Dashboards that track mentions. They measure; they do not fix | Teams with in-house staff to act on the data |
| Independent consultant | About $200 to $6,000 | One specialist doing the audit, fixes and content directly | Small and local businesses, one to three locations |
| Boutique or mid-market agency | $2,000 to $10,000 | A team, more content each month, some PR and outreach | Multi-location or highly competitive categories |
| Enterprise agency | $10,000 to $30,000+ | Dedicated team, custom research, large content and PR programs | National brands |
One-off audits run from under $100 to around $5,000, with $1,000 to $5,000 the most common agency range.
What actually drives the price
Four things account for almost all of the difference between a $300 invoice and a $10,000 one.
- Content volume. Two carefully written pages a month and twenty pages a month are different jobs. More is not automatically better; answer engines lift one clear page over ten thin ones.
- Off-site work. Earning mentions in publications, directories and roundups is the slowest and most labor-heavy part of AEO, which makes it the most expensive part of any retainer.
- Locations and markets. Every city adds its own competitors, directories and buyer questions to test.
- Overhead. Account managers, sales teams and reporting calls all sit inside the retainer. They can be worth paying for at scale; for a single location they are mostly cost.
Is AEO priced separately from SEO and GEO?
It should not be. Most of the work that helps a business get named by AI also helps it rank on Google: crawlable pages, structured data, consistent listings and clear answers. AEO and GEO describe the same work from two angles.
If a proposal lists SEO, AEO and GEO as three separate line items, ask the provider to name one tactic that appears in one and not the others. A good provider will tell you plainly where the work overlaps.
What every plan should include, at any price
- Real transcripts. The actual questions asked and the actual answers, dated. Not just a score.
- A crawler and access check. Confirmation that AI search crawlers can reach and read your site.
- Entity and schema work. One consistent set of facts about your business, in your structured data and your listings.
- A monthly re-test. The same questions, the same engines, so progress is measured rather than argued about.
- Ownership. The pages, schema and listings stay yours if you cancel.
Red flags
- Guaranteed placement. Nobody controls what a model outputs. A guarantee means the seller is guessing or redefining success.
- Long lock-ins. Six to twelve month minimums are common with agencies. Ask why the work cannot earn its keep month to month.
- Link packages. Bought links carry risk to your domain, and answer engines discount them.
- Score-only reports. A visibility score without the underlying answers cannot be checked.
- Secret prompts. If a provider will not show you the questions they test, you cannot tell whether those questions matter to your buyers.
How to work out what you can afford
Start with what one new customer is worth to you in profit, not revenue. Divide the monthly cost by that figure, and you have the number of new customers per month the work must bring in to pay for itself.
For example, if a new customer brings you $400 in profit, a $200 monthly plan pays for itself with one new customer every two months, and a $4,000 agency retainer needs ten new customers every month. Neither is wrong; they suit different businesses.
Where my pricing fits, and what it leaves out
I publish my prices: a $49 audit, then $200 a month, month to month. That sits at the low end of the market for a specific reason. There is no agency, no account manager and no sales team, so you pay for the work and nothing on top of it.
The trade-off is scope. The plan covers two properly written pages a month, not twenty; it does not include paid ads, digital PR campaigns or link buying; and more than three locations needs its own quote. If your category needs a team running PR every month, an agency is the better buy, and the audit will say so. See exactly what each plan includes.
Frequently asked questions
Why do most AEO agencies hide their prices?
Most price each engagement after a discovery call, because scope varies widely between clients. That is reasonable for large projects, but it makes comparison hard for a small business that just wants to know whether a provider is in range.
Is AEO more expensive than SEO?
The price ranges overlap heavily because the work overlaps heavily. AEO adds prompt testing across several engines and more attention to entity data and third-party mentions, which can push retainers up when PR is included.
How long should I commit before judging results?
Give on-site fixes one to two months, since live-search answers can change within days of a page being fixed. Judge off-site and reputation work over three to six months.
Do I need AI visibility software?
Not to start. A manual monthly check, using the method in How to Check What AI Says About Your Business, tells most small businesses what they need to know. Software earns its cost once you track many prompts, locations or brands.
See where you stand before you spend anything
The $49 audit shows what ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews currently say about your category, and what to fix first. If you go ahead with a monthly plan, the $49 comes off your first month. Get the $49 audit.
Sources: OutreachBloom AEO/GEO pricing guide The Remarkable Agency, AEO/GEO agency cost Fuel Online, AI SEO pricing Humans With AI, AEO and GEO costs AYRank, GEO pricing