AI Search Optimization Services Pricing: 9 Published Rates.

AI search optimization services pricing runs from under $100 a month for software-led plans to tens of thousands a month for enterprise retainers, based on the rate cards agencies actually publish. Most agencies publish nothing and quote custom. The spread is not about quality. It is about what is inside the box: an audit, a technical setup, a content program, monitoring, or a retainer that bundles all of it. This guide takes the box apart, lists the nine published price lists we could verify, and shows how to judge value in 90 days.

Our interest is practical. We sell this work as part of our AI search optimization services, and we track the traffic it produces across the sites we own. In that data, ChatGPT sent 93% of all AI assistant referrals, which tells you where most of the measurable value sits today. Every price below was read on the company's own page in October 2026, and prices change, so treat them as a snapshot.

What is sold under this label.

The audit. A one-time diagnostic: which AI crawlers your site allows or blocks, whether your entity is described consistently across the web, which sources the assistants cite for your category, and how ready your key pages are to be quoted. A good audit ends with a prioritized list. A bad one ends with a visibility score and a sales call.

Technical setup. Crawler policy in robots.txt and the CDN, an llms.txt file, Organization and FAQPage schema, author markup, fixing contradictions between your About page and your listings. This is mostly a one-time project with light maintenance, which is why it should not be the thing a retainer is built on.

Content program. Rewriting existing pages so the first paragraph answers the question with specifics, adding comparison tables and FAQ blocks, and publishing new pages or original data that other sites and models want to cite. This is where the recurring cost is, and it is the same work a good SEO content program does.

Monitoring. A fixed set of prompts run on a schedule in each assistant, with mentions, citations and share of voice reported against competitors. Agencies either resell a tool with a summary on top or run the panel by hand. The underlying tools start cheap: Semrush lists its AI Visibility base plan at $99 a month per domain on annual billing on its pricing page, and Otterly states on its homepage that pricing starts at $29 a month. Pay for the interpretation, not the dashboard.

The retainer. Everything above, bundled, usually tiered by prompts tracked and assets shipped each month, often on a six or twelve month commitment. Most published prices are retainers, because that is where agencies want you.

Pricing models and what each includes.

• Project audit: one fee, a document and a call. Includes crawler, entity, citation gap and page readiness findings. Does not include fixes.
• Fixed-term pilot: a set number of weeks with a baseline measured at the start and a readout at the end. Includes fixes and some content. Good for buyers who want proof before a retainer.
• Monthly retainer: tiered by prompts monitored, pages rewritten or published, and outreach. Includes reporting. Usually requires a commitment.
• Monitoring subscription: tool access plus a human monthly note. Includes nothing on your site. Fine if you already have an SEO team to act on it.
• Bundled SEO plus AI search: one retainer, AI search scope written into the SEO statement of work. Includes the same deliverables without a second invoice.

Nine agencies that publish AI search pricing.

We searched for agencies that put GEO, AEO or AI search prices on their own sites and fetched each page. Nine did, counting WebFX and its OmniSEO platform as one publisher. Many more wrote a "how much does GEO cost" article that quotes industry ranges and then says "request a proposal." If a company's own price is not on its own page, it is not in this table.

Read the table as a market, not a ranking. The sub-$1,000 plans are software with some human hours attached. The $2,000 to $7,000 range is where a small or mid-size business buys a real program with content inside it. The five-figure tiers buy volume: hundreds of prompts tracked and dozens of assets a month. Several of these companies also publish general market ranges in their articles; we ignored those and used only the prices they charge.

What drives the price.

• Prompts tracked. Monitoring cost scales with the number of questions, engines and markets checked, and the published rate cards tier on exactly this.
• Pages and assets shipped. Rewrites, new pages, tables, FAQ blocks and original data are human work. This is the real variable cost.
• Third-party outreach. Earning mentions on review sites, publications and forums takes weeks per placement and is the slowest, most valuable line.
• Competitors benchmarked. More competitors in the share of voice panel means more prompts run and more analysis.
• Markets and languages. Each adds a prompt set, a page set and often a separate entity cleanup.
• Commitment length. Six and twelve month terms buy a lower monthly rate and protect the agency's slow work from early cancellation.

Why it belongs inside your SEO engagement.

Look at the deliverables again: crawlable pages, consistent entity, direct-answer content, schema, FAQ, authority on third-party sites, measurement. That is an SEO scope of work with two additions, an AI crawler policy and an AI visibility panel. Buying it as a separate retainer means two teams editing the same pages, two content calendars, and two invoices for one outcome.

The honest structure is one SEO engagement with AI search written into the statement of work: the crawler policy, llms.txt, the prompt panel, and a monthly AI section in the same report. If an agency only sells it standalone, ask why its SEO work does not already include it. That is how we build it, and it is why our pricing does not have a GEO line.

How to judge value in 90 days.

If after 90 days you have a baseline, a crawler policy, rewritten pages, a dated panel and a lead number, you bought something real, even if the numbers are still small. If you have a visibility score and a deck, you bought monitoring at retainer prices.

What usually goes wrong.

• Paying retainer prices for monitoring. The tool costs under $100 a month; the human interpretation is what you are buying, so make sure there is one.
• Two retainers for one set of pages. SEO and GEO teams overwrite each other's work and nobody owns the content calendar.
• Prompts chosen by the agency, not by your customers. Brand-name prompts look great and mean nothing.
• No lead tie-in. Sessions from AI go up, nobody knows whether any of them called.
• Six month commitments signed before a baseline exists. You cannot judge movement you never measured.
• Authority work cut first when budget tightens. It is the slowest line and the one that compounds.

Where the service stops and the work begins.

Every agency in the table above can audit, rewrite, mark up, pitch and report. None of them can supply the thing that gets cited: your pricing, your data, your process, your customer proof, your opinions. Models quote specifics, and specifics come from the business. The buyers who get value treat the agency as the mechanic and show up with the substance. Our own 31-site referral study exists for exactly that reason.

If you want this run inside a real SEO program with the numbers reported in one place, Hire Theory Road. Bring the substance. We will handle the rest.