How much does an AEO agency actually cost?
Almost nobody publishes AEO pricing, which suits agencies and hurts buyers. Here are the real ranges, the five pricing models behind them, and the questions that stop you overpaying.
The short answer
Standalone AEO work in the UK typically runs £3,000 to £15,000 per month. Published US guides quote entry programmes at $1,000 to $2,500 per month, mid-market retainers at $3,000 to $8,000, and enterprise programmes at $10,000 to $30,000 or more. ORRJO prices AEO as an add-on, folded into retainers from £1,250 per month.
| Engagement type | Typical range (2026) | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| ORRJO add-on model | Scoped into retainers from £1,250/month | AEO folded into brand, content, demand or lead gen scope |
| One-time AEO audit | $1,500 to $5,000 | Citation gaps, schema and content diagnostic |
| Entry monitoring | $1,000 to $2,500 per month | Basic monitoring and foundational fixes |
| Mid-market retainer | $3,000 to $8,000 per month | Content rebuilt in answer shapes, schema, citation tracking |
| Enterprise programme | $10,000 to $30,000+ per month | Multi-market content, entity work, off-site authority |
| Implementation project | $25,000 to $100,000 one-off | Full-estate AEO overhaul for large sites |
| UK standalone reference | £3,000 to £15,000 per month | Comparable dedicated UK AEO work |
Dollar ranges are from published 2026 pricing guides by US AEO providers; the UK reference range is published on our AEO service page. Reviewed 26 August 2026.
Answer engine optimisation is young enough that pricing is chaotic. The same deliverables get quoted at £2,000 or £12,000 depending on who is selling, and most agencies will not put a number in public. This page does, with sources, so you can walk into any AEO conversation knowing the market.
The five pricing models, and what each really buys
AEO is priced five ways in 2026. Knowing which model an agency uses tells you what they think the work is.
The one-time audit, published US guides put it at $1,500 to $5,000, is a diagnostic: where you are cited today, where the gaps are, what to fix. Useful as a starting point, useless if nobody executes it.
Entry monitoring retainers, around $1,000 to $2,500 per month, mostly watch dashboards. They tell you the score without playing the match.
Mid-market retainers, $3,000 to $8,000 per month, are where real work happens: content rebuilt in answer shapes, schema and authorship layered in, citations tracked across engines.
Enterprise programmes run $10,000 to $30,000 or more per month, and one-off implementation projects for big estates are quoted at $25,000 to $100,000.
Then there is the add-on model, which is how ORRJO prices it: AEO folded into the scope of an existing retainer, because the assets AEO needs, research, content, brand authority, are the same assets the rest of the engine produces.
What actually drives the price
Four things move an AEO quote, and none of them are buzzwords. Content volume: how many pages need rebuilding into answer shapes. Schema depth: how much structured data your estate needs, from FAQ and Article markup to full entity work. Citation tracking: how many engines and prompts you monitor, and how often. Off-site authority: whether the programme includes earning the third-party mentions AI engines lean on.
A fifth factor hides in plain sight: whether the agency has done it for themselves. Ask to see their own AI visibility. It is the cheapest diligence you will ever run.
Red flags in AEO pricing
Watch for guarantees. Nobody can guarantee a ChatGPT citation, and engines change weekly. Honest agencies sell inputs and measurement, targets never guarantees.
Watch for per-engine pricing. Anyone charging separately to get you listed on DeepSeek or Meta AI is selling the same open-web work several times over. Every serious engine retrieves the same web.
And watch for AEO priced as a thin bolt-on to an unchanged SEO retainer. If the deliverables list does not mention authorship, dates, answer-first copy or comparison tables, the word on the invoice changed but the work did not.
Frequently Asked Questions
Standalone AEO retainers in the UK typically run £3,000 to £15,000 per month. Published US guides quote entry programmes at $1,000 to $2,500, mid-market retainers at $3,000 to $8,000, and enterprise programmes at $10,000 to $30,000 or more. ORRJO folds AEO into existing retainers from £1,250 per month, scoped on a discovery call.
Because the assets AEO needs are the assets the rest of the engine already produces. Research gives the answers substance, content gives them a home, and brand work earns the third-party mentions engines cite. Selling AEO separately would mean billing twice for the same foundations.
Where you are cited today across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Mode, which prompts you lose and to whom, the schema and authorship gaps on your estate, and a sequenced fix list. Published guides price this at $1,500 to $5,000. If an audit does not include live engine testing, it is an SEO audit with a new name.
First citations from AI tools usually appear inside 60 to 90 days for content that is genuinely sourced and well structured. Full visibility shifts take around 6 months, and the compounding nature of citation graphs means month 9 is bigger than month 3.
No. Engines change constantly and answers vary between runs of the same prompt. What a good agency guarantees is the inputs, dated answer-first content, schema, authorship, third-party presence, and honest share-of-voice measurement against a fixed prompt set.
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