Quotes for the same brief routinely differ by a factor of five, which tells you the category has not settled. Some of that spread is genuine scope difference and some is opportunism, and the variables below let you tell which is which.
The three pricing models
Audit only. A one-off assessment: where you appear, where you do not, what is causing it, what to do about it. Low four figures. Sensible if you have people who can act on the findings.
Retained programme. Ongoing content, entity, citation and monitoring work. Mid four figures monthly for most mid-market businesses, higher in competitive categories or on large sites.
Project sprint. Fixed scope over six to twelve weeks, usually entity cleanup, structured data and content restructuring. Appropriate when the foundations are the problem and ongoing work is premature.
What actually moves the price
- How much usable content you already have. The largest single variable, and it is not your revenue. A site with fifty solid pages needs restructuring; a site with five needs building.
- Entity mess. A business trading under three names across two decades of listings is materially more work than one that has been consistent.
- Category competitiveness in the sources that matter. Not keyword difficulty — how contested the directories, publications and communities are.
- Number of locations or entities. Multi-location businesses multiply the consistency work.
- Regulatory constraint. Categories requiring clinical or legal review carry real overhead.
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Quotes that should worry you
A fixed price quoted before anyone has looked at your site. That is a package, not a plan, and the scope will be whatever fits the price.
Anything priced as a percentage of ad spend. AEO has no meaningful relationship to media spend, and that pricing model imports an incentive that does not belong here.
Very low monthly retainers. Below a certain point the only deliverable that fits is content volume, which is the thing least likely to move the outcome.
Guaranteed placements or citations. Nobody controls what a model says, so a guarantee is either meaningless or describes something you would not want.
Frequently asked questions
How much does an AEO agency cost?
A one-off audit is typically low four figures. A retained programme is usually mid four figures monthly for mid-market businesses, more in competitive categories or on large sites. Project sprints for foundational work sit in between.
What makes AEO more expensive for some businesses?
How much usable content already exists, how inconsistent the business's information is across the web, how contested the sources in the category are, the number of locations, and whether the category requires clinical or legal review.
Should I trust a fixed AEO price quoted upfront?
Be cautious. A price quoted before anyone has examined your site is a package rather than a plan, and the scope will be set to fit the price rather than the problem.