Sauce · AI Search
How much does AEO and GEO cost? A plain answer
Quick answer
AEO and GEO mean getting named in AI answers from ChatGPT, Google and Perplexity. Agencies charge about $1,000 to $2,500 a month for a light plan, $2,000 to $10,000 for a full one, and $10,000 and up for large brands. The work is mostly the same as good SEO. For a local business, most of it is already in your SEO plan, so watch that you are not paying twice.
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Get the free scanAn agency just quoted you $3,000 a month to “optimize for AI search.” On top of the SEO you already pay for. Same website.
Two letters got swapped in and the price went up. AEO. GEO. It sounds like a new machine you have to buy.
It is not a new machine. It is mostly work you may already pay for, with a new name on the invoice. Here is what it really costs. And how to tell if the number in front of you is fair.
What AEO and GEO even mean
AEO is answer engine optimization. GEO is generative engine optimization. Both mean the same plain thing: helping AI tools name your business when someone asks them a question.
The AI tools are ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews, Perplexity, Copilot and a few others. They read the web. Then they write an answer and cite a few sources. AEO and GEO are the work of being one of those sources.
What the going rates actually are
Most agencies do not post prices. Across the pricing guides that do, the ranges look like this. Treat them as directional, not quotes.
Monitoring which AI tools mention you, basic schema markup, and a few content fixes. Good for a small site testing the water. INDUSTRY PRICING GUIDES
Ongoing content, digital PR to earn mentions on other sites, entity cleanup, and tracking across several AI tools at once. This is where most mid-size companies land. INDUSTRY PRICING GUIDES
National or heavily competitive brands, many product lines, a PR team on retainer. Not the tier a local service business needs. INDUSTRY PRICING GUIDES
You usually do not need a separate line item at all. The work that gets you cited locally is the work that ranks you locally. If you already pay for real local SEO, most of this is in it.
Why it costs about the same as SEO
Strip the labels off and look at the tasks. The list barely changes.
- “Entity optimization”
- “Answer-ready content structure”
- “Citation earning and digital PR”
- “Schema and structured data for LLMs”
- “Cross-platform AI visibility tracking”
- Making your name, address and details match everywhere. Old NAP work.
- Clear headings and a direct answer near the top. Old on-page work.
- Getting mentioned and linked on other trusted sites. Old link work.
- Marking up your pages so machines can read them. Old schema work.
- Checking where you show up. Old rank tracking, new surfaces.
One agency in this space puts it bluntly. The new acronyms are “just SEO with a new coat of paint.” When a firm keeps inventing terms to sound cutting edge, ask who that helps.
The numbers behind the hype
AI search is real and growing. It is also not the whole picture yet, especially for a local job.
For “plumber near me” at 9pm, the Google Map Pack still gets the call. For “how do I choose a commercial roofer,” an AI answer might. Spend where your buyers actually ask.
When paying extra for it is worth it
Big-ticket or considered jobs: full remodels, commercial contracts, medical, legal. People ask an AI tool for options first. Being named there matters more than for an emergency call-out.
If you are not tied to one service radius, AI answers are a real channel, and a dedicated plan can pay off.
Ask ChatGPT and Perplexity your main service question. If three rivals come up every time and you never do, there is a gap worth closing.
AEO work sits on top of good SEO. If your profile, reviews, citations and pages are a mess, fix those first. They feed the AI answers anyway.
Go deeper
The AI search picture
How it works, and how to think about it.
Before you add a line item,see what your current setup already covers. Free, 49 points.
Get the free scanHow to not overpay
- Do not pay twice. Ask your current SEO provider what of this they already do. Most of it.
- Ask what is AEO-specific. If the answer is schema, content and PR, that is SEO. Fair to pay for, not fair to double-bill.
- Start with an audit, not a retainer. A short readiness check costs little and tells you if there is even a gap.
- Tie it to revenue. “More AI visibility” is not a goal. More booked jobs from people who found you that way is.
- Skip the enterprise tier. A local service business does not need a $15,000 plan built for national brands.
How much does AEO or GEO cost per month?
Industry pricing guides put light plans at roughly $1,000 to $2,500 a month, full plans at $2,000 to $10,000, and large-brand programs at $10,000 and up. Most agencies do not publish prices and scope each client after a discovery step. For a local service business, much of this work is already inside a real local SEO plan.
Is AEO different work from SEO?
Mostly no. The tasks that get you cited by AI tools are entity consistency, clear answer-first content, structured data, and mentions on trusted third-party sites. Those are core SEO tasks. The main new part is tracking visibility across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI surfaces, which pick sources differently from each other.
Do I need to pay for AEO if I already pay for local SEO?
Usually not as a separate line item. Ask your current provider what AI-search work they already include. If your profile, reviews, citations and pages are in good shape, you are already feeding the AI answers. Pay extra only if you are in a research-heavy category or selling beyond one service area.
What makes AEO quotes so different from each other?
Scope and how many AI platforms are covered. The field is young, measurement is not standardised, and platforms change often, so agencies price wide and often run a paid discovery phase first. Two quotes for “AEO” can describe very different amounts of work.
Will AI search replace Google Maps for local jobs?
Not yet, and not for urgent work. For “emergency plumber near me” the Google Map Pack still drives the call. AI answers matter more for considered purchases where people research options first. Spend where your buyers actually ask their questions.
Sources
- Google Search Central, AI features and your website. AI Overviews draw on Google’s index and standard SEO signals. Google’s local ranking help adds that local results use relevance, distance and prominence, with no way to pay for rank. Read it
- OpenAI, ChatGPT search: ChatGPT search retrieves current web pages and shows inline source links in its answers. Read it
- Perplexity, How does Perplexity work?: Perplexity runs a live web search for each query, reads candidate pages, and answers with numbered citations. Read it
- Search Engine Land, Mastering generative engine optimization in 2026 and GEO for people who have to hit revenue targets. ChatGPT reaches 800M+ weekly users. AI Overviews appear on 16%+ of searches. GEO budgets should track revenue, not visibility scores. Read it
- HeyTony, The problems with hiring an SEO agency: AEO, GEO, AIO and LLMO are “all just SEO,” and acronym inflation mainly benefits the agency selling it. Read it
- Peer-reviewed: Aggarwal, P., et al. (2024). “GEO: Generative Engine Optimization.” Proceedings of the 30th ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD ’24). Defines GEO and tests which content changes raise the odds of being cited in a generated answer.
- Peer-reviewed: Lewis, P., et al. (2020). “Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Tasks.” Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 33 (NeurIPS 2020). The retrieval-then-generate method behind modern AI answer engines, which is why an indexable, quotable page is the unit that gets cited.
- Peer-reviewed: Liu, N. F., Zhang, T., & Liang, P. (2023). “Evaluating Verifiability in Generative Search Engines.” Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2023. Finds AI search answers often cite sources imperfectly, so being the clearest source on a question is an advantage.
- Peer-reviewed: Dulleck, U., & Kerschbamer, R. (2006). “On Doctors, Mechanics, and Computer Specialists: The Economics of Credence Goods.” Journal of Economic Literature 44(1), 5–42. Marketing services are a credence good: the buyer cannot easily verify what was done, which is why scope and pricing vary so widely.
- Peer-reviewed: Kirmani, A., & Rao, A. R. (2000). “No Pain, No Gain: A Critical Review of the Literature on Signaling Unobservable Product Quality.” Journal of Marketing 64(2), 66–79. When buyers cannot judge quality up front, how a service is priced and structured carries part of the signal.
Price ranges are summarised from published 2026 AEO/GEO pricing guides and are directional, not quotes. Platform figures are quoted from the reporting cited above.
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