How Much Does AI SEO Cost, and How to Choose a GEO Agency
Roman Perch from New York City, Founder / CEO
You have decided it is time for your company to show up in AI answers, so you ask for proposals. One AI SEO agency sends a quote for a "GEO program" priced in the thousands of dollars per month. A freelancer offers what sounds like the same thing for a fraction of that. A third vendor names no price at all but promises "the #1 spot in ChatGPT within a month." There is no way to compare these offers: it is unclear what the work includes, how it is measured and what you are actually paying for.
The generative engine optimization market is young, and AI SEO pricing is still all over the place. In this article, I will walk you through what the cost of AI search optimization services is really made of, which pricing models you will run into, which questions to ask a vendor before signing a contract and which signs tell you right away to walk away from a GEO agency. At the end, I will explain how our pricing works and why.
Key takeaway
You pay for specialist hours, not a spot in ChatGPT. What drives the price, the pricing models, questions to ask an agency, red flags and our USD pricing.
What you are paying for: a quick look at the product
Before we talk money, let's agree on what is being bought. An AI answer is ready-made text an AI assistant writes in response to a question. People see it right above the search results — as an AI Overview in Google — or inside ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot. Someone asks "recommend a company for…" and gets not a list of websites but a recommendation: three to five names with explanations and links to sources.
AI search optimization, or generative engine optimization (GEO), is the work of making sure AI knows your company, understands the facts about it, trusts it and names it in those answers. GEO does not replace SEO; it is built on top of it, because AI assistants pull information from the same websites and third-party sources they find through search. For more on the difference, read what GEO is and how it differs from SEO.
So you are not buying "a spot in ChatGPT." You are buying a specific amount of work on your website, content, third-party sources and regular measurement. That amount is what drives the price.
What choosing the wrong vendor costs you
A bad choice costs more than the number in the contract:
- Lost time. GEO results build up over months. Six months with a vendor who produced reports instead of doing the work are six months in which your competitors established themselves in AI answers.
- A report with no implementation. An expensive hundred-page audit, after which it turns out no one is available to make the changes on your website.
- Reputation damage. Questionable tactics — fake reviews, mass low-quality publications — can spoil what AI says about your company, and fixing that takes a long time.
- Paying for nothing. A fixed package where half the hours go unused, but the money has already been charged.
What drives the cost of AI search optimization
The price of any sensible GEO work comes down to specialist hours multiplied by a rate. The number of hours depends on several factors.
The state of your website
If your website blocks AI crawlers, loads slowly and is full of indexing errors and outdated pages, the first months will go to technical work. If the site has been well maintained for years, this part goes quickly. We have collected what usually gets checked in our checklist for optimizing a website for AI search.
The size of your prompt research and niche
Prompt research collects the questions customers ask AI assistants — the keyword research of AI search. A company with one service in one city has a compact list of prompts. An online store with thousands of products or a B2B company with a dozen business lines has a large one. The more prompts, the more content you need and the bigger the tracking effort.
Content
Pages with direct answers, explainers, comparisons and expert articles. How much you need depends on how well your website already answers customers' questions.
Brand mentions and publications
Growing brand mentions on third-party sites and publishing articles in external sources to build the authority of your company and its experts. This is one of the most labor-intensive parts: you need to find the right sites, prepare the material, get it approved and see it through to publication. If a site charges for placement, that is a separate expense and should be visible in the estimate.
Markets and number of AI assistants
Optimizing for one market in one language and a single AI assistant is one job. Covering several countries, languages and every major AI assistant is another, with more measurement and more content.
Tracking
Regularly checking AI answers for your tracked prompts and reviewing sentiment and errors. Without it, you cannot tell whether everything else is working. We explain how it works in how to track what AI says about your brand.
Pricing models you will find on the market
The cost of AI search optimization depends not only on scope but also on the engagement model. Let's compare the four main ones.
| Model | What you get | When it fits | Risks |
|---|---|---|---|
| One-time audit | A report: what AI says about you, what holds you back, what to fix | You need the big picture and have your own team to implement | The report sits in a folder if no one implements it |
| Fixed project | A fixed scope of work for a fixed fee and timeline | A well-defined task with known boundaries | A large upfront budget, little flexibility, the work ends when the project does |
| Monthly retainer | Ongoing work for a monthly fee | GEO as a continuous process: content, publications, tracking | Unused hours in the package may be lost |
| Hourly billing | Payment for hours actually worked | The scope is unknown upfront and the workload varies month to month | An unpredictable invoice without transparent time tracking and reports |
Each model has its advantages, but GEO has one defining feature: it is not a one-off task. AI assistants get updated, their crawlers and answer formats change, and competitors do not stand still. A one-time audit or project is useful as a starting point, but results only hold with ongoing work.
Large agency, specialist GEO agency or freelancer
The choice usually comes down to three options.
- A large agency. A big team, established processes, polished presentations. Large agencies price GEO programs in the thousands of dollars per month. That can make sense for a large business with a big set of prompts, but for small and midsize companies it is often more than they need.
- A specialist GEO agency. New companies that position themselves purely as AI search experts. Some are strong teams; others were doing social media marketing yesterday and simply changed the sign on the door. The key question for them is whether there is real SEO and website experience behind the GEO.
- A freelancer. Cheaper, but one person rarely covers everything at once: technical website work, content, third-party publications and tracking. When any link in that chain is missing, the results suffer.
What to make of "top generative engine optimization companies" lists
Rankings of the best GEO agencies are popping up, but on a market this young they are still new too. Before relying on such a list, find out who put it together, what criteria they used and whether a spot on it can be bought. A place in a ranking is no substitute for your own vetting: ask the vendor to show how they would work with your website, and ask the questions from the next section.
Questions to ask an AI SEO agency
- What is your experience in SEO and website work? GEO stands on the foundation of search optimization. Without it, the work is guesswork.
- What exactly does the work include? You should hear: an AI visibility audit, prompt research, technical fixes, content, brand mentions and publications, and tracking.
- Who will make the changes on the website? If the vendor only hands over recommendations, implementation falls on you or your developer.
- How do you measure results? The honest answer is regular snapshots of AI answers for the same set of prompts, plus tracking referral traffic from AI assistants in your analytics. We show how to set that up in how to track AI referral traffic in Google Analytics.
- Which AI assistants do you cover? Just ChatGPT, or also Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot and others?
- What exactly do you guarantee? The answer should be about the work, not a position in AI answers.
- How is billing calculated, and what goes into the report? Every month you should understand which hours and which delivered work you are paying for.
- How do you grow brand mentions? If the answer involves bought reviews or hundreds of look-alike articles, that is a reason for concern.
Red flags
- "Guaranteed #1 in ChatGPT." AI answers change depending on wording, location and timing. A guarantee like that can be neither delivered nor verified.
- "We have a secret technology." How AI assistants choose sources is already well understood. If a vendor cannot explain what they do, there is probably nothing being done.
- Fake reviews and made-up experts. They break platform rules and eventually hurt what AI says about your company.
- Reports only. A polished presentation every month, while nothing changes on the website or in third-party sources.
- No measurements. The vendor cannot show what AI answered for your prompts before the work started and what it answers now.
- "Your website doesn't matter; external publications are everything." AI evaluates your website as a whole. If a link opens a slow page with outdated prices, publications will not save you.
How our pricing works
We deliberately chose a model that combines the strengths of a retainer and hourly billing while removing their downsides.
- $290 per month. It includes the first 10 hours of work.
- Every additional hour is $45. If a month calls for more work — say, a series of articles or third-party publications — hours are added at a clear rate.
- Time and materials billing. We invoice only the work completed and delivered that month. You do not have to prepay for a package you may not use.
- No discounts or free months. No "first month free" that comes back in a later invoice. An honest price from day one.
Here is what it costs at different monthly workloads:
| Hours of work per month | Calculation | Amount due |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 10 hours | Monthly fee | $290 |
| 15 hours | $290 + 5 × $45 | $515 |
| 20 hours | $290 + 10 × $45 | $740 |
| 30 hours | $290 + 20 × $45 | $1,190 |
How can we work at this price when large agencies charge thousands of dollars a month for GEO? Because for us, GEO is not a new line of business built from scratch but an extension of the SEO we have been doing since 2002. Our processes for audits, content, technical fixes and third-party sources have been refined over years. We do not need to build experiments into the price.
What you get in the end
Instead of an estimate you cannot compare with anything, you get a clear rate and an invoice for work done. Instead of a report no one implements, you get a team that makes the changes on your website itself. Instead of promises of the top spot, you get regular measurements: which prompts get your company named by AI, where it is not yet mentioned and what we are doing next.
About us
AI Search Optimization has been doing SEO since 2002. We have 100+ clients around the world, Google and Yandex certifications, and one team that handles your website and your AI visibility end to end. We optimize for Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot and other AI assistants, in any market — including for companies from New York City.
The work includes an AI visibility audit, prompt research, technical fixes on your website (AI crawler access, llms.txt, schema markup, speed, errors), new content built for AI answers, brand mentions on third-party sites and publishing articles in external sources to build the authority of your company and its experts, and ongoing AI visibility tracking. AI evaluates your website as a whole, so we take care of the entire site — from technical fixes to GEO.
We guarantee delivery of GEO tasks, error fixes and fast adaptation of your website to changing AI search requirements. We do not promise a position in AI answers — and we suggest being careful with anyone who does.
Book a call — we will review what AI assistants currently say about your company, estimate the scope of work and tell you honestly how many hours a month you will actually need.