How Much Does AEO Cost?
AEO costs nothing extra beyond good SEO if you do the work yourself, and roughly $500 to $5,000 a month when an agency does it inside an SEO engagement. Agencies selling AEO as a separate add-on charge about $937 a month for it, and that line item is usually repackaged SEO work.
Keep reading and I’ll break down the real price ranges, what deserves a separate invoice, and what you can do free.
What Are Agencies Charging for AEO?
Agencies charging for AEO mostly price it inside a normal SEO retainer, and those retainers are well documented. Backlinko’s survey of 300+ SEO professionals puts the average monthly cost at $1,000 to $2,500, with premium US work at $2,501 to $5,000.
Who you hire moves the number too. Agencies run about 30% more than freelancers on average, and I compare the tradeoffs in agency vs freelancer for Shopify SEO.
If you’d rather pay by the hour, most consultants land between $50 and $100. One-time projects usually price between $1,000 and $5,000. Use those as a sanity check on any quote that mentions AEO.
On top of that, where the provider sits matters more than any acronym. US-based services run 3 to 5 times more than the same work from emerging markets, which explains most of the wild spread in quotes you’ll collect.
When AEO shows up as its own line item, SE Ranking’s agency survey found an average of $937 a month for AI optimization services. Here is how the ranges stack up:
| Service | Typical monthly cost | Who charges it |
|---|---|---|
| SEO retainer (average) | $1,000 to $2,500 | Most agencies and freelancers |
| Premium SEO retainer (US) | $2,501 to $5,000 | 34% of US, UK, and Australian providers |
| AI optimization add-on | $937 average | Agencies selling AEO separately |
| DIY AEO | $0 plus your time | Store owners using free Google tools |
Is AEO a Separate Service or Just SEO?
AEO is not a separate service, and you should not pay for it as one. Google’s guidance on its generative AI features says optimizing for them “is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO,” and it points site owners back to its standard advice for vetting SEO help. The pricing logic for GEO costs works exactly the same way.
That line sits in Google’s own AI optimization guide, along with a list of things you don’t need: no llms.txt file, no content chunking, no special markup to appear in AI results.
To be fair to agencies, naming the work is not a scam by itself. Labels help clients find services. The problem starts when the same hours get billed twice under two acronyms. Ask the vendor what changes on the page, because if the answer is vague, so is the service. I walk through that vetting step by step in should you hire an AEO agency.
Pay for the work, not the acronym. The tactics behind the AEO label are answer-first writing and clean structure, which I unpack in AI SEO vs traditional SEO. A good SEO was already doing them.
What Does DIY AEO Cost?
DIY AEO costs your hours and nothing else, because every required tool is free. Search Console shows the questions you almost rank for, Google’s documentation spells out what its AI features want, and the People Also Ask box hands you the exact wording customers use.
Paid AI visibility trackers do exist, and some are good. I’d still hold off on them until the free stack is working for you, because the trackers measure the work, they don’t do it.
As for the work itself, an hour a week covers one page. Pick a question from Search Console, rewrite the top of the page so the answer leads, add one piece of proof, move on. Twelve weeks in, you have twelve pages working for you.
If you sell on Shopify, the bigger budget question is usually the whole channel, and I’ve laid out real numbers in how much Shopify SEO costs. AEO rides along inside that spend.
Budget it like a habit, not a project. One reformatted page a week beats a one-time site blitz. Answer up top, proof below, next page.
When Is Paying for AEO Worth It?
Paying for AEO is worth it when it buys real SEO work on questions tied to revenue, and the stakes on those questions are rising. Semrush found commercial SERPs with an AI Overview grew 71% in six months, so the buying queries are exactly where answers are replacing links.
The same study found finance keywords with an AI Overview average $4.84 per click in ads versus $2.14 without one. When the paid price of a question more than doubles, owning the free answer is worth a lot.
Still, walk away from anyone guaranteeing AI citations or selling placement. You cannot buy a spot in an answer, and I show what actually gets brands mentioned in can you advertise on ChatGPT. Real proposals name pages, keywords, and edits, not secret relationships with AI companies.
A fair AEO pitch quotes pages and questions, not magic. If the proposal can’t name which questions you’ll own, it is selling the acronym.
Want a Straight Number for Your Store?
AEO pricing is simple once you strip the buzzword: free if you do it yourself, part of a normal $1,000 to $2,500 retainer if you hire well, and overpriced the moment it becomes its own mysterious line item. If a proposal cannot name the questions and pages behind the number, keep your money.
Book a call and I’ll look at your site and tell you, in plain dollars, what I’d spend and on which pages first. No acronym tax.
