AEO and GEO agency pricing: retainers, projects and pilots explained
How AEO and GEO agencies price their work, what drives the cost, what each model includes, and how to tell whether a quote is worth it.
SEO
Rank on Google
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AEO
Named by assistants
Cited in the answers ChatGPT, Perplexity and Copilot give.
GEO
Synthesised by AI
The source Google AI Overviews and Gemini build their answer from.
One shared foundation: crawlable, structured, trustworthy content — run as a single program.
GEO and AEO pricing is all over the place right now. Some providers publish entry prices of a few hundred dollars a month. Enterprise programs from well-known agencies can run to five figures a month. Both can be fair, because they buy very different things. Here is how to read a quote.
The four common pricing models
| Model | What you usually get | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| One-off audit | A baseline of your buyer prompts across assistants and a ranked plan | Deciding whether GEO is worth it for you |
| Pilot on one topic | Work on a small set of questions for a fixed period, with before and after results | Testing an agency before a retainer |
| Monthly retainer | Ongoing on-site and off-site work, plus weekly or monthly reporting | Companies committed to AI visibility |
| Tool subscription | Tracking software, without anyone doing the work | Teams that will do the work themselves |
What drives the price
- How many buyer questions and markets are in scope.
- Whether off-site work is included, such as review programs, directory profiles and article outreach. This is the expensive part, and the part that matters most.
- How much writing is needed on your own site.
- How often results are measured and how many assistants are tracked.
- Whether GEO is bundled with classic SEO and AEO.
How to tell if a quote is worth it
- 1Ask what share of the fee goes to off-site work. If it's close to zero, expect little movement in AI answers.
- 2Ask for the list of prompts and the baseline before you sign.
- 3Ask what changes in months one to three, and what is promised by when.
- 4Compare the fee to one or two won deals. For many B2B companies, a single new client pays for months of work.
Cheap can be fine, if you know what it covers
A low monthly price that only buys tracking is a tool, not a service. That's useful if your team will act on it. It won't change the answers by itself.
Why so many agencies hide their prices
Scope varies a lot, so many agencies quote after a call. That's reasonable. What isn't reasonable is refusing to explain how the price is built. Buyers ask assistants what GEO costs, and agencies that explain their pricing give those assistants something to quote.
A worked budget comparison
Imagine two quotes for the same company. Quote A is lower and covers a tracking tool, a monthly report and two blog posts. Quote B is higher and covers the tracking, rewrites of five key pages, a review program, directory work and outreach to three comparison articles a month.
Quote A is cheaper, but almost none of it changes the sources assistants rely on. Quote B costs more because most of the effort goes off-site, which is where recommendations come from. For a B2B company where one client is worth tens of thousands, Quote B is usually the better value. For a team with time to do the outreach itself, Quote A plus internal effort can work.
Questions to ask about any quote
- How many hours a month go to off-site work, and who does it?
- Which buyer questions and markets are in scope?
- What happens if targets aren't met?
- What do we keep if we stop: pages, profiles, data?
We usually start with an AI visibility audit and scope from there. See our GEO services page for the tiers.
Frequently asked questions
- How much does a GEO agency cost?
- It ranges widely, from a few hundred dollars a month for productised tracking offers to five figures a month for enterprise programs. The main difference is how much off-site work and writing is included.
- Is a GEO pilot worth it?
- Usually yes. A short pilot on one topic shows how an agency works and what moves, before you commit to a retainer.
- Are GEO tools cheaper than an agency?
- Yes, but they only measure. Someone still has to do the on-site and off-site work that changes the answers.
AI VisibilityAEOGEO
M
Magathi
AI Visibility specialist at Edthi · SEO, AEO & GEO
Leads AI Visibility programs at Edthi, helping companies get found and recommended across Google and the AI engines. Writes about how AI search actually decides who to cite.
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