AEO pricing in 2026: what AEO and GEO cost, from audits to agencies and software

This guide gathers the prices that agencies and software vendors publish themselves, with its source and the date we read it, and explains what moves a quote up or down. If you are new to the topic, start with what AEO is and how AEO, GEO and SEO differ.

How much does AEO cost in 2026?

There is no single price because there are four ways to buy AEO, and they cover different work. Software measures how often ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews name your brand. An audit tells you why, once. A monthly retainer pays someone to do the fixes and the off-site work. Doing it in-house costs time rather than invoices.

The ranges overlap because the same word covers very different scopes. A €950 retainer and a $10,000 retainer are not two prices for the same service. Compare what is delivered each month, not the label.

What do agencies charge for AEO and GEO services?

Few agencies publish prices. In our analysis of the top three Google results for 10 AEO and GEO queries (27 pages in France, the United States and the Netherlands, collected on 10 November 2026), 10 pages showed an amount. These are the agency figures we found, each quoted as published.

Sources, read on 10 November 2026: webconversion.fr/classement-agences-geo (Webconversion), searchbooster.fr/services-geo (SearchBooster), stackmatix.com/blog/aeo-services-pricing (Stackmatix) and emarketed.com/services/aeo (Emarketed). SearchBooster and Emarketed state their own entry prices.

Two patterns stand out. European retainers in these sources start under €2,000 a month, while US figures start around $1,500 and reach $20,000 a month at the top of Stackmatix's range. And all four sources rank in Google's top three for an AEO or GEO query (Google results collected through DataForSEO on 10 November 2026, 20 queries in 2 markets each), so showing prices has not kept them out of the results.

What does AEO software cost?

Software is the cheapest recurring line, and the one most often confused with services. A tool measures and suggests. It does not publish your pages, earn mentions on other sites or fix your robots.txt for you.

When you compare tools, ask three questions. Which engines are measured, and through the interface a person sees or through the vendor's API? How many times is each question asked, since a single answer is a sample of one? And are countries and languages separate, since an answer in Paris is not the answer in Brussels? Our AI visibility tool page describes how GeckoBoost measures by engine, country and language, with a margin of error on each rate.

What are GeckoBoost's prices?

The software has three public monthly plans in euros, excluding VAT. Services (audit, action plan, execution) are quoted per project, because the scope varies too much for a fixed price we could stand behind.

• Free trial: 14 days on one project, no card needed. Subscribing during the trial costs nothing until it ends.
• VAT: Belgian VAT is added for Belgian customers. EU businesses outside Belgium with a valid VAT number are invoiced under the reverse charge.
• Changes: change plan or cancel at any time from the billing page. A cancellation takes effect at the end of the paid month, and nothing is deleted when you move down.

What drives the price of an AEO engagement?

Whether you buy from us or from someone else, these are the variables that change a quote. Knowing them lets you compare two proposals line by line.

1. Markets and languages

   Each country and language is a separate measurement and often separate content. A brand selling in France, Belgium and the Netherlands needs at least French and Dutch, and the answers differ by country (heuristic, consistent with OpenAI's note that ChatGPT may use an approximate location, archived 30 October 2026).

2. Engines covered

   Each engine (ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, Perplexity, Copilot, Claude) builds its own list of sources. In our 10 November 2026 collection, the domains cited by two engines answering the same question overlapped by 8% on average (Jaccard index 0.08 over 154 engine pairs, ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Mode and AI Overviews). Covering more engines costs more and is usually worth it (heuristic).

3. Number of questions tracked

   Twenty questions describe a niche, two hundred describe a category. The questions should be the ones buyers ask, not your brand name (heuristic).

4. On-site work

   Crawler access, pages readable without JavaScript, structured data that matches the visible text. These are short, documented tasks (documented: Google AI features, OpenAI on OAI-SearchBot, Bing Webmaster Guidelines).

5. Content production

   Pages that answer buyers' questions directly. This is usually the largest share of a retainer, and its price depends on volume and languages (heuristic).

6. Off-site work

   Mentions in lists, directories, YouTube, Reddit and trade media. In our collection, YouTube was cited in 24 of 124 answers and Reddit in 20. This work is slow and rarely priced per unit (heuristic, based on our measurement).

7. Reporting

   Monthly reports by engine, country and language, with the margin of error. White-label reports for agencies cost more in most offers (heuristic).

Is it cheaper to do AEO in-house?

Often, yes, if you already have SEO and content skills. Most of what the engines document is classic technical SEO, and it is free to read. Google's own guide to generative AI search (May 2026) says its AI features are rooted in its core Search ranking and quality systems, and that many suggested AEO and GEO hacks are not effective.

• Let the crawlers in: check robots.txt, your CDN and firewall for Googlebot, Bingbot and OAI-SearchBot (documented: OpenAI, Bing Webmaster Guidelines).
• Make key content readable without JavaScript (documented: Bing names client-side rendering as a risk in its Webmaster Guidelines).
• Keep structured data identical to what the page shows (documented: Google AI features).
• Leave your site included in the Search generative AI setting of Search Console, the default (documented: Search Console Help, Search generative AI control, read 31 October 2026).
• Write pages that answer one question each, with a direct answer at the top (heuristic).
• Measure before and after on a fixed set of questions, or you will not know what worked (heuristic).

What in-house teams usually lack is measurement across engines and countries, and time for off-site work. A tool fills the first gap. The second is where an agency earns its fee. Our guide to boosting your AEO in 10 actions lists each action with its source, and the free AEO checker gives a first reading at no cost.

What should a quote include, and what should it never promise?

A good proposal lists the questions, engines, countries and languages measured, how often, the deliverables each month, who does what, and how results are reported. It states a baseline measured before any work starts. It never promises a position or a citation, because no vendor can deliver one. The engines say so themselves.

Paying for ads does not buy a place in the answers either. OpenAI writes that ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives. So treat any offer of a "top spot in ChatGPT" as a red flag, whatever its price (documented: OpenAI, approach to advertising, 16 January 2026).

How should you budget a first AEO project?

A sequence that keeps spending tied to evidence (heuristic):

1. Run a free check to see whether the engines name you at all.
2. Measure a baseline on the questions your buyers ask, in each market, for a few weeks, with software or an audit.
3. Fix the documented technical points first. They are cheap and they are prerequisites.
4. Decide between in-house and agency based on the gap the baseline shows, not on a pitch.
5. Review each month against the same questions and engines, and stop what does not move.

We start from zero too, and we publish how our own visibility moves in the GeckoBoost case study. For sector figures measured the same way, see the barometer. If you want someone to do the work, our AEO and GEO services start with an AI visibility audit, quoted after a first call.