AEO services cost about $3,000 to $10,000 a month for most published retainers in October 2026, and $15,000 or more for full programs. AEO means answer engine optimization: getting your brand named in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini answers. Content volume, off-site work, tracking scope and contract term set the number. Blesso engagements start at $2k a month.
Key takeaways
- Published entry retainers sit near $3,000 a month. Mid-sized programs run $5,000 to $10,000. Full-service work starts above $10,000.
- Six things set the price: content volume, off-site mentions, tracking scope, reporting depth, scope beyond AI search, and contract term.
- The headline price is not the monthly cost. Citation budgets, tools and your team's time sit on top.
- Most of the market quotes after a call, so a published number is the exception. Compare quotes on deliverables, not totals.
- No price buys a guaranteed citation. Pay for a fixed prompt set, a stated cadence and a report you can check.
How much do AEO services cost per month?
Published AEO and GEO retainers run from about $3,000 to more than $15,000 a month. Noudar AI's survey of agency price pages, checked on 1 October 2026, puts published entry prices between $3,000 and $10,000. AI Ranked, in an October 2026 guide, finds the cheapest published retainers near $3,000 and full programs at $10,000 to $20,000 or more.
Both guides are written by companies that sell in this market, so read the figures as benchmarks published by sellers, not as survey data. We have not checked each price page ourselves.
| Provider | Published price | Term | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Optimist | Advisory from $3,000 a month | Month to month, 30 days' notice | Noudar AI |
| Percepture | GEO retainers from $3,500 a month | Not stated | Citeme |
| LoudFace | From $5,000 a month | 3-month first engagement | Noudar AI |
| Discovered Labs | From €6,995 a month (€5,995 on a 3 or 6-month commitment) | Month to month, 30 days' notice | Noudar AI |
| NoGood | Average retainer above $20,000 a month | Not stated | Citeme |
| Blesso | Engagements start at $2k a month, across all three service lines | 3-month minimum, then 30 days' notice | Blesso pricing |
Blesso is a done-for-you B2B go-to-market service, not an AEO-only agency. Its AEO / GEO work is one of three service lines, so the $2k floor is the price of starting an engagement, not a quote for AEO alone. Blesso publishes no per-tier prices, and this article does not give one.
What drives the monthly number?
Six factors explain most of the spread. HubSpot's AEO cost guide, as summarized by ORRJO, names five of them: content scope, schema and entity work, off-site authority building, monitoring coverage and reporting depth. Contract term is the sixth, and the price tables above show it.
- Content volume. Most of a retainer is writing. Discovered Labs scales its tiers by content units a month, and Percepture's tiers climb from 2 to 8 or more AI-ready pieces a month, per Citeme.
- Off-site mentions. Earned placements, directories and community posts take senior time. HubSpot calls this the widest swing between lean and high-investment programs, per ORRJO.
- Tracking scope. Each extra engine and each extra run per prompt adds tooling cost and analyst hours.
- Reporting depth. A basic dashboard costs less than competitor benchmarking and citation analysis.
- Scope beyond AI search. Tiers above $10,000 often bundle SEO, PR or paid media, per AI Ranked.
- Contract term. A three-month term can cut the monthly rate. Discovered Labs lists €5,995 on a commitment against €6,995 month to month.
What do you pay on top of the retainer?
The retainer is a floor, not the total. Some fees sit outside the headline price. Noudar AI lists a citation budget of $1,000 to $3,000 a month on top of the DerivateX retainer, plus one-off diagnostics from $3,500.
Add four more lines when you budget: a visibility tracking tool if the agency bills it separately, any setup or diagnostic fee, your team's review hours, and legal review for regulated claims. Only you can fill in those numbers.
How do you compare two AEO quotes?
Compare deliverables before totals. A $4,000 quote and a $9,000 quote may not sell the same thing. Ask each provider for these five items in writing:
- How many new or rewritten pages ship each month, and who approves them.
- How many prompts are tracked, on which engines, and how many times each prompt runs per cycle.
- What off-site work is included, with named placements and disclosed outreach.
- Whether the tracking tool is included or billed to you on top.
- What the monthly report contains. A report with no fixed prompt set re-measured across engines is content production with AEO on the invoice.
Also ask who the work is for. A retainer is worth more when the team can show the same method on its own domain. ORRJO makes the same point: ask to see the agency's own AI visibility.
What does Blesso publish about its AEO price?
Blesso publishes one number: engagements start at $2k a month, with a three-month minimum and 30 days' notice after that. The minimum means a committed spend of about $6,000 at the floor (3 × $2,000). The AEO / GEO line is described on its service page as buyer prompt mapping and tracking, share of answer monitored across seven engines, and answer-ready pages with machine-readable site optimization. The platform that runs the tracking is included and is not sold separately.
Blesso has no AEO result to quote in this article, and none is implied. Its published case studies are outbound and full-engine work, not AEO. Judge the AEO line by the five questions above, not by a result the article cannot show.
Does a higher price buy better AEO results?
A higher price buys more work, not a guaranteed result. Google's Search Essentialssay even a page that meets its requirements is not guaranteed to be crawled, indexed or served. Treat citations the same way. An agency can change the inputs: the pages, the structure, the corroborating sources. It cannot control the output.
There is research behind the inputs. The original GEO paper, by Aggarwal et al. (KDD 2024), found that adding citations, quotations and statistics raised visibility in generative answers by up to 40% in the authors' tests. That measures a method, not any one provider.
FAQ
Is a cheap AEO retainer worth it?
Only if the scope is narrow and honest. Below about $2,000 a month, expect tracking, schema upkeep and a few pages, not a meaningful off-site program. AIGNCI Digital makes this point, and 310 Creative warns that very cheap full retainers are often rebranded SEO. Ask what the monthly report contains before you judge the price.
Is a one-off AEO audit cheaper than a retainer?
Yes, as a first step. Published audit fees run from roughly $500 to $5,000, per 310 Creative and Ciela as compiled by AEO Services Agency, and diagnostics at some agencies are credited toward a retainer if you sign within a set window. An audit tells you what to fix. It does not fix it.
Should I buy a tool instead of a service?
Buy a tool if your team already ships content every week. Tools track and report; most do not create or publish content, per HubSpot as summarized by ORRJO. If nobody owns the weekly work, a tool gives you a dashboard and no change in citations.
How long a contract should I accept?
About three months, then 30 days' written notice. That is the pass test PageLens sets for contract terms, and it matches the terms several providers publish. Longer terms need a price cut to be worth the lock-in.
Why do so many AEO agencies hide their prices?
Because scope varies widely and the deliverables are not standardized. Noudar AI notes that large agencies such as Siege Media and iPullRank publish no price. A published floor lets you screen providers before a sales call.
Next step
If $2k a month with a three-month minimum fits your budget, ask what the AEO / GEO line covers for your category and how it would be measured from week one.