Pricing

What AEO actually costs

The published market rates, where they come from, and our own prices in full.

Published AEO retainers run roughly $2,000 to $10,000 a month, with one-off audits at $1,000 to $5,000 and fixed-scope sprints at $4,000 to $10,000. Our own list is £1,000 for a two-week Foundation Sprint, then £2,000, £4,250 or £7,750 a month.

Almost every page written about AEO pricing quotes a range and stops. Ranges are useful for orientation and useless for budgeting, so this page does both: the sourced market figures first, then our own numbers, in full, with no call required to see them.

Published market rates

These are third-party published figures, collected 15 September 2026. They are quoted in US dollars because that is how the agencies publishing them quote. They are not our prices and not a conversion of them.

EngagementPublished range (USD)Sources
One-off audit$1,000 – $5,000Stackmatix, 310 Creative
Fixed-scope sprint, 14–30 days$4,000 – $10,000310 Creative
Entry retainer$1,500 – $5,000Stackmatix, AI Advantage, 310 Creative
Mid-market retainer$4,000 – $12,000310 Creative, Stackmatix, Digital Elevator
Category leadership$10,000 – $25,000+Digital Elevator, Stackmatix
Enterprise$15,000 – $50,000+310 Creative, AI Advantage

Sources: 310 Creative, Digital Elevator, Stackmatix, AI Advantage Agency. Figures dated 15 September 2026 and re-checked every six months.

Our prices

Quoted in pounds because the clients this is built for are UK B2B. No enquiry required to see them, and they do not change depending on how the call goes.

StepPriceWhat it is
AI Visibility CheckFreeReadiness score, five buyer questions on one engine, three findings, three quick wins, back in 48 hours
Foundation Sprint£1,000 one-off, two weeksThe technical fixes implemented: crawler access, llms.txt, schema, and your top five pages restructured
Core£2,000/monthChatGPT and Google AI Overviews, 50 prompts, three assets a month, schema upkeep, monthly report
Growth£4,250/monthAll four engines, 100+ prompts, six assets a month, entity building, competitor analysis, call every two weeks
Authority£7,750/monthFull coverage, 200+ prompts, ten or more assets a month, third-party editorial placement, original data, weekly reporting

Why the ladder exists

Free to two thousand a month is a cliff nobody steps off for a stranger. The Foundation Sprint is the step in between: a fixed scope, a fixed fee, two weeks, and at the end of it the technical work is done whether or not you continue. It is priced well under the market sprint range on purpose. It is not where the margin is — it is where the proof is.

Payment terms

  • Retainers are invoiced monthly in advance, never in arrears.
  • Three-month minimum on retainers, then rolling monthly with thirty days’ notice.
  • Annual prepay takes two months off the year.
  • The Foundation Sprint is a single invoice. It stands alone — there is no obligation to continue.

What moves the number

  • Prompt-set size. More buyer questions means more runs, and runs are the cost base of honest measurement.
  • Engine coverage. Each engine retrieves from a different index and has to be checked separately.
  • Content volume. Assets per month is the main lever between tiers.
  • Entity work. Third-party placement is slow, manual and the reason the top tier costs what it does.

What does not move it: how big your company is, or how much you appear able to pay.

What you should ask any AEO provider about price

  1. How many prompts, and how many runs per prompt? A score from one run is not a measurement.
  2. Which engines, named, and how is crawler access verified per agent?
  3. What exactly is delivered in month one versus month three?
  4. What is the minimum term, and what happens to the work if we stop?

A provider who answers all four in writing is quoting a service. One who answers none is quoting a retainer.

FAQ

Related questions

Published market retainers run roughly $1,500 to $12,000 a month depending on scope, with mid-market engagements clustering between $4,000 and $12,000. Our own monthly tiers are £2,000, £4,250 and £7,750, published in full rather than quoted on enquiry.

Yes. The two-week Foundation Sprint is £1,000 one-off and implements the technical fixes — crawler access, llms.txt, schema and a restructure of your top five pages. It stands alone: if you never continue, the work is still done and still yours.

Lower cost base and no agency overhead, benchmarked deliberately below the published mid-market medians. The Foundation Sprint is the deliberate outlier, priced well under the market sprint range because its job is to prove the work rather than to carry margin.

Published, on this page and on the offers page. A price that only appears after a discovery call is a price that depends on the call.

They were collected on 15 September 2026 from the four named sources and are re-checked every six months. If you are reading this more than six months after that date, treat the ranges as indicative rather than current.

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