Start here: new to the acronyms? Read SEO vs AIO vs AEO vs GEO: What Actually Changes first. It explains what each discipline optimizes for, and it makes the prices below much easier to read.
If you have asked three agencies what AI search optimization costs, you have probably received three answers that do not look related. One quotes a four-figure monthly retainer, another a five-figure project, a third will not give a number until a call. This guide puts the published market ranges in one place, explains what actually moves the price, and shows what to check before you sign anything.
A quick note on terms. Across the industry, “AIO” is often used to mean optimizing to be cited by AI answers. At North Blue we separate the terms: AIO is the use of AI inside the SEO process, while AEO and GEO are the disciplines that target answer engines and generative summaries (the full breakdown is in SEO vs AIO vs AEO vs GEO). The pricing below covers the work most people mean when they search for “AIO pricing”: getting your brand cited in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews.
The short answer
Published agency ranges cluster into three bands. Small and local businesses typically see roughly $800 to $2,500 per month. A serious starter program for a growing business lands around $2,000 to $5,000. Full programs with heavy content and entity work run from $5,000 to $12,000, and enterprise scopes go from $12,000 to $25,000 or more per month.
Typical monthly retainer by service type
Published ranges from agency pricing guides, September 2026. These are ranges: your scope decides where you land.
- Local, single location
- $800–$1,200 / month
- Local, multi-location
- $1,500–$2,500 / month
- Starter (AI Overviews)
- $2,000–$5,000 / month
- GEO, growth package
- $3,500–$6,000 / month
- AEO retainer
- $3,500–$8,000 / month
- Growth (full AEO + GEO)
- $5,000–$12,000 / month
- Enterprise
- $12,000–$25,000+ / month
Sources: Stackmatix (Starter, Growth, Enterprise), Fuel Online (AEO retainer, GEO growth), Pleiades Consultancy (local). Bars are capped at $24k.
What each tier usually includes
| Tier | Monthly range | What you typically get |
|---|---|---|
| Local, single location | $800–$1,200 | Directory setup, LocalBusiness schema, top-tier citations and about one content piece per month. |
| Local, multi-location | $1,500–$2,500 | A full citation network, industry-specific schema, two content pieces a month and monthly citation monitoring. Setup fees of $2,500–$5,000 are common. |
| Starter | $2,000–$5,000 | 10–20 target keywords for AI Overviews, basic schema, 2–4 content pieces a month and an initial GEO audit. |
| Growth | $5,000–$12,000 | A full AEO and GEO program, 8–12 content pieces, technical SEO work, entity optimization and AI citation tracking. |
| Enterprise | $12,000–$25,000+ | Cross-platform strategy, 20+ content pieces a month, custom monitoring of answer engines and a dedicated strategist. |
Pricing by discipline: AEO, GEO and technical foundation
Some agencies price by discipline instead of by tier. The pattern is consistent: the technical groundwork is cheap relative to the ongoing content and authority work, which is where most of the budget goes.
| Service | Published range | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Technical foundation | $2,000–$2,500 one-time, or about $750/month | Crawler directives, sitemap and IndexNow setup, schema deployment. |
| AEO audit and restructuring | $2,500–$5,000 one-time | Usually scoped to around 20 pages. |
| AEO retainer | $3,500–$8,000/month | About 4–6 posts a month plus schema management. |
| GEO starter | $2,500–$3,500/month | Entry program for smaller sites. |
| GEO growth | $3,500–$6,000/month | Adds entity building and more content. |
| GEO authority | $5,000–$12,000/month | Press co-citation, community signals and knowledge-graph work. |
| Fixed-fee projects | $5,000–$50,000 | Audits or schema overhauls, priced by scope. |
What pushes the price up or down
- Industry competitiveness. One guide puts the premium at 30–50% for competitive verticals such as SaaS, fintech and healthcare.
- Number of AI platforms targeted. Tracking and optimizing for ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and AI Overviews separately costs more than one.
- Content velocity. Two pieces a month and twenty pieces a month are different businesses.
- Locations and site complexity. More locations, more schema types and legacy platforms all add setup and maintenance work.
- Monitoring frequency. Weekly citation tracking across several engines is a real cost worth budgeting for.
How long before it pays back
Budget for patience. One published guide reports first signals within 60 to 90 days, meaningful results by months four to six, and peak return between months nine and twelve. That matches how we scope it internally, and it is why month-to-month terms and clear monthly deliverables matter more than a discount.
What to check in any proposal
- Deliverables per month, in numbers: pages, schema items, reports.
- How citations are measured: which engines, which prompts, how often.
- No guaranteed citations. Nobody controls what a model quotes. Treat guarantees as a red flag.
- Who does the work. AI-assisted drafting is fine, but a person should review everything that gets published.
- Contract terms. Month-to-month is common and reasonable while the discipline is this young.
How much does AI engine optimization cost for GEO, AEO or LLM SEO?
AI engine optimization, whether it is sold as GEO, AEO or LLM SEO, typically costs $2,000 to $5,000 per month for a starter program and $5,000 to $12,000 per month for a full program, based on the published ranges above. A one-off AEO audit usually sits at $2,500 to $5,000.
Those three labels describe overlapping work, so compare scopes rather than names. A full-service AI brand optimization retainer is the Growth tier in the table above: content, entity work, technical SEO and citation tracking delivered together every month.
How we scope it at North Blue before quoting:
- We build the prompt set first. The questions your buyers ask, taken from Search Console and from how your customers actually talk, run in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews.
- We log who gets cited for each one: your site, a directory, a competitor or nobody. That log is the baseline every later report is measured against.
- We check what the engines need in order to cite you: AI crawler access, correct structured data and a consistent entity (name, category, location) on your site and your external profiles.
- We size the content gap. The number of pages that need rewriting into answer format is what moves a quote from the starter band to the growth band.
For AEO-specific retainers and what agencies list as starting prices, see our AEO pricing guide. If you want us to run the program, start with our AEO service.
AI search optimization cost: common questions
We answer the most common questions about our services
How much does AI engine optimization cost?
Published agency ranges put starter programs at $2,000 to $5,000 per month and full programs at $5,000 to $12,000 per month, with enterprise scopes from $12,000 to $25,000 or more. Small local businesses typically see $800 to $2,500 per month.
What is the typical cost of a full-service AI brand optimization retainer?
A full-service retainer that combines AEO, GEO, technical SEO, entity work and citation tracking usually falls in the $5,000 to $12,000 per month range in published pricing guides. The content volume per month is the biggest driver inside that range.
How much does an AEO audit cost?
Published ranges put a one-off AEO audit and restructuring at $2,500 to $5,000, usually scoped to around 20 pages. The final number depends on how many prompts are tested, on how many engines, and how many pages need fixing.
Are GEO, AEO and LLM SEO priced differently?
Mostly by scope. AEO pricing leans on answer-format pages and schema, GEO pricing adds entity building and third-party citations, and LLM SEO is a market label that usually covers both. Ask every agency for deliverables in numbers so you can compare like with like.
Where to start
For most small and mid-sized businesses the sensible path is a starter program: fix the technical foundation, restructure the pages that matter into clear answers, and start measuring citations before committing to a larger content budget. If you want to see what that would look like for your site, talk to us, or read how the four disciplines fit together in our SEO vs AIO vs AEO vs GEO comparison. You can also explore the SEO services page.
Sources: pricing figures come from published guides by Fuel Online, Stackmatix and Pleiades Consultancy, reviewed in September 2026. Agencies change their prices, so treat every number here as a range to sanity-check against real quotes.
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