Price the work you need before comparing the monthly fee. AI visibility software, an audit and a team that changes your website are different purchases. Even two monitoring plans can count brands, prompts and answer checks differently.
Start with four things: the decision you need to make, the coverage required, who will implement the findings and the full payment commitment. A low subscription price can still leave research, writing, development and review with your team.
This guide is for a service business comparing those costs. Start with the dated software plan reference, size the workload, then use the quote worksheet to compare actual commitments. These are selected documented examples, not a market average or a complete directory. We also sell implementation; our own starting offer appears later as a worked example.
For several brands or markets, use the deployment planner to separate repeated collections from shared requirements. To decide whether a proposed commitment makes sense for your business, use the AI SEO purchase decision guide.
First, separate software, advice and implementation
Choose the responsibility you need to buy. The categories below are a way to read a proposal, not packages every provider must offer.
| What you buy | What the fee needs to cover | When it may fit |
|---|---|---|
| Monitoring software | Access, measurement coverage, reporting and any included assisted actions | Your team can investigate the findings and implement what the product does not handle |
| An audit or advisory project | Evidence, diagnosis, recommendations and a stated amount of follow-up | You need to establish the problem before committing to delivery |
| An implementation project | Defined page, content or technical changes, with acceptance points | You know the priority problem and need someone to complete that scope |
| Ongoing implementation | Agreed priorities, delivered changes, measurement and subsequent work | You need continuing delivery with clear responsibilities and review dates |
Ask a concrete question: “If this identifies a weak service page, who researches it, writes it, approves it and publishes the changes?” Record which of those tasks the fee includes. Recommendations, assisted actions and completed implementation should not be treated as interchangeable.
How software billing works
The plan reference retains observed prices, dates, billing bases and sources. It includes confirmed amounts, a custom quote and unresolved prices. A dollar symbol alone does not establish which dollar currency the provider charges. An annual monthly equivalent does not establish monthly invoicing. Confirm both before calculating a commitment.
The allowance also needs a unit. A saved prompt is a question configured for monitoring. An answer check is a collection attempt in a specified context. A credit is a vendor’s billing unit, which can cover differently weighted actions. These units cannot be compared as though they buy the same work.
An answer index and custom monitoring can also be separate purchases within one product. Ahrefs, for example, documents separate index access and custom-prompt plans. Do not compare the cost of a broad research index with the cost of collecting your own question set as though they were identical subscriptions. Ahrefs product and pricing documentation.
A plan can fit the question count and still miss the required platforms, locations, evidence or history. Ask to see the retained answer, source links, collection conditions and export before deciding that two coverage figures mean the same thing. For product capabilities, continue to the AI SEO tools comparison.
Worked example: size the monitoring before choosing a plan
Suppose your team wants to check 20 buyer questions on three platforms, on four scheduled dates. For one market and language, with one collection attempt for every question-platform pair on each date:
20 questions × 3 platforms × 4 dates = 240 planned answer checks.
This is an illustration, not a recommended sample size or a vendor allowance. It becomes 240 retained answers only if every attempt returns an answer you keep. Failed or missing observations remain part of the collection record.
Changing the requirement changes the workload:
- Keeping those questions and platforms but using 30 collection dates produces 1,800 planned checks.
- Repeating the original four-date exercise separately in two markets produces 480 planned checks.
- Tracking another brand in the same retained answers may not require another collection, but the vendor may still apply a brand limit or charge.
None of those figures is automatically a credit total. Send the vendor your questions, platforms, collection dates, markets, languages and other intended actions. Ask which plan covers them, what consumes extra allowance and how failed attempts are billed. Use the citation tracking log to keep planned attempts separate from what you actually observed.
Worked purchase: the cheapest headline may not cover the job
Take an illustrative requirement: 20 chosen questions, ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Gemini, daily for 30 dates, US English, two users and saved evidence that can be exported. This needs 1,800 scheduled attempts. It is a purchasing example, not a prescribed research design or a completed product trial.
- Otterly Lite cannot cover 20 questions: its documented allowance is 15. Standard’s monthly base plus its AI Mode and Gemini add-ons gives USD $189 + $59 + $59 = $307 before tax. That is a documented component subtotal; confirm retained-answer exports, history and your exact collection context. Otterly pricing.
- Ahrefs’ 2,500-check custom plan can cover that numerical attempt count under the ordinary one-check rule. Confirm the selected engines, context, users, evidence and exports before treating it as a suitable purchase. Engine weights can differ; the documentation gives Claude an eight-check weight. Ahrefs monitoring and engine coverage.
- Semrush’s 25-prompt headline does not settle the bill for this brief. Confirm how multi-platform targets consume prompts and the separate toolkit access required for another corporate user. Toolkit limits and access.
- Profound’s public trial cannot test this exact brief. It uses recommended prompts and excludes prompt customization and exports. Its Enterprise offer requires a quote. Profound pricing.
A compatible allowance is only one requirement. Keep a vendor’s confirmed answers beside the original fee, and mark the total partial until required charges and terms are settled. The calculator above deliberately sizes attempts without declaring a winning plan.
What does an AI SEO agency cost?
Service fees need a scope before they become comparable. The provider comparison records advertised starting fees where the reviewed material supports them, including the applicable term or what remains unknown. A fee may buy full production, a particular package or an advisory programme. It is not automatically the price of your project.
Our own starting offer is explained below. Compare the work, implementation ownership, client inputs and total commitment alongside any provider’s fee. There is no defensible average in this small, differently scoped sample.
What changes the cost of implementation?
An implementation quote also needs to cover the work behind each published change. Ask the provider to connect the fee to a named scope and owner.
The condition of the existing site
Separate technical repairs, content changes and a rebuild. Ask what evidence makes each necessary. An unclear service page on a sound site is a different job from inaccessible pages or a difficult publishing system.
The services and markets you want to cover
Name the services and buyer decisions in scope. Different markets can need different evidence, language and approvals. Another keyword alone does not establish a need for another page.
The expertise and proof available
Specify who supplies and checks business facts, examples and specialist input. If the evidence is not ready, investigation and approval need time in the scope.
Who writes, edits and publishes
Name the writer, factual reviewer, implementer and publication approver. Include dependencies on your developer or existing supplier. Otherwise an advisory fee can leave an unpriced delivery job with you.
What gets measured
Agree the questions, platforms, markets, dates and reporting responsibilities. Keep search impressions, AI mentions, referral visits and qualified enquiries separate. A measurement report is a deliverable; a commercial result is something to establish from evidence.
One site or several brands: what changes the scope?
A website, brand, service, location and market can describe different parts of the same business. Count the work before multiplying the price. These are illustrative scope questions, not packages or quotes.
| Situation | What the proposal needs to resolve |
|---|---|
| One website, one brand, one market | Which service and buyer decision come first? Which pages, technical changes and measurement are included? |
| One website, several service lines | What research and site work can be shared? Which services need distinct expertise, evidence and approval? |
| One brand across several locations or countries | Which facts, buyer questions and languages differ? Who approves local claims, and which reporting is shared or separate? |
| Several brands or websites | Which access, publishing systems and delivery teams differ? What can be reused, and what must be investigated or implemented separately? |
Three locations do not automatically mean three copies of every task. The same publishing system may support shared technical work, while each location still needs accurate information and approval. Equally, one website can contain several businesses requiring separate research.
Ask for the billing unit, the shared work, the work repeated for each unit and the limits that trigger a revised quote. Keep software allowances separate from the services the implementation team agrees to deliver.
Compare the total commitment, not just the monthly fee
Put quoted charges, payment dates and internal effort beside each other. Your existing SEO supplier may already cover some of the work: agree one owner for each change before adding another contract. Confirm ownership of pages, accounts and records, what happens to hosting, and any handover or continuing charges when the engagement ends.
Separate the commitment from the payment schedule
A monthly figure can describe a monthly payment or an annual fee expressed as a monthly equivalent. Keep the original billing wording and the exact amount for your scope.
| Reading | What belongs in it |
|---|---|
| Minimum commitment | Charges required by the initial term, including confirmed mandatory fees. Retain notice and renewal terms, and clarify how they affect the amount. |
| Payments in your comparison period | Amounts due on actual dates in the period you choose. Annual prepayment and monthly instalments create different cash schedules even when they cover the same service period. |
| Work and costs still unresolved | Unquoted charges, tax treatment, optional work, excluded implementation and responsibilities left with your team. Missing does not mean free. |
To build a commitment subtotal, add the confirmed recurring charges for the committed term, required setup charges and other mandatory charges. Include tax only on the confirmed basis. Keep optional work separate. If a required amount is unknown, label the subtotal partial.
Keep currencies separate. Do not assume that cancellation refunds unused time. Record internal effort as named roles and estimated hours unless you have a supported cost basis; do not silently add it to supplier charges.
Keep a quote comparison record
Download the blank Markdown worksheet or the CSV worksheet for a spreadsheet. Save a copy and fill it in on your device. These are blank files, not an online calculator or a form submission.
- Name your required scope and comparison dates. Record each proposal’s version, date and currency.
- Copy the supporting passage beside each fee, billing term and responsibility. Record written clarifications with their date and source too.
- Keep the minimum commitment, payments due in your chosen period and remaining work separate. Mark missing values Unknown; use zero only when the provider confirms that no charge applies.
- Give each unresolved item an owner and a follow-up date. If the scopes differ, retain the difference rather than treating the quotes as equivalent.
A useful request to send with the record is:
Please quote for the named services, sites and markets, and show what work is shared or repeated. Separate setup, recurring and mandatory extra charges. Confirm the currency, tax treatment, minimum term, payment dates and renewal or notice terms. Name who researches, writes, implements and approves the work, including what our team must provide. List anything still unpriced.
For the broader provider decision, use the hiring worksheet. Use the delivery and review timeline to check whether the proposed dates concern completed work or observations of its effects.
What should you avoid paying for?
Challenge fees built around guaranteed inclusion, a special AI file or bulk pages for tiny query variations. Ask what useful work remains if the claim of privileged access to an AI system is removed.
Google’s guidance uses established SEO foundations for its AI search features. It does not require special AI markup or llms.txt, and warns against making pages for every search variation primarily to manipulate visibility. This applies to Google, not every assistant.
Access checks can be legitimate technical work, but access is not a citation. OpenAI distinguishes OAI-SearchBot from GPTBot: search access and potential training use have separate controls. Ask the provider to explain the relevant setting and its limits.
What evidence would make a proposal credible?
Ask for a starting problem comparable to yours, the work performed, dated evidence and the limits of the result. A percentage without its starting values and measurement period is not enough to assess the fee.
Keep three questions separate: was the agreed work delivered, what visibility changed, and did relevant buyers enquire? A citation screenshot does not establish qualified enquiries. Reporting should retain the sampled questions, dates and conditions, and identify observations the provider could not collect.
For examples of delivered work and dated Google Search Console evidence, see the HR advisory rebuild and Xporate rebuild. Their search results do not establish AI citation rates or qualified enquiries, predict another business’s outcome or establish a market rate.
What our plan costs and includes
Our AI SEO implementation plan starts from $1,111 a month, in USD, with three months to begin: Setup in month one and Compound in months two and three. This is our published starting offer, not a market average or an individual quote.
We write and implement the agreed work; you supply business facts, access and approvals. The proposal records the exact fee, goal, scope and responsibilities. From month four, the plan runs month by month, with 30 days’ notice and no exit fees. Hosting stays covered while you pause.
What the starting price does not tell you
The starting price does not specify unlimited pages, services or markets. A new site or rebuild can be included in the agreed month-one Setup scope, delivered in batches from approved inputs. A separately quoted new website or website rebuild is an alternative route, delivered in one go within 21 business days of approved inputs, with monthly work optional from the month after launch. The proposal confirms the route and scope.
Worked example: what a starting offer leaves to confirm
The worked offer review retains our source wording as reviewed on 6 October 2026. The same offer and term remain in the source checked for this guide on 7 October.
| Published information | What still needs your proposal |
|---|---|
| A starting monthly fee in USD | The exact fee for your scope, tax treatment and mandatory extras |
| Three months to begin | Invoice dates and the full initial commitment for the agreed scope |
| Setup, then Compound | Specific pages, systems, markets, deliverables and responsibilities |
| Monthly continuation from month four, 30 days’ notice, no exit fees | The applicable dates and continuation wording in your agreement |
The example leaves the total unresolved because a starting offer alone cannot establish an all-in quote. Apply the same check to any provider, including us.
Choose the first scope from the problem
Write a short brief before requesting prices: the service you want buyers to find, the markets involved, the site or systems in scope, the people available to help and the decision you need to make next. Include the monitoring requirement only where it supports that decision.
You can use the worksheet with any supplier. If you want us to scope implementation, request the free Clarity Call directly or choose the optional free Outside View first. The call establishes the work and price; the written review is not a prerequisite.