Pricing Answer Engine Optimization is harder than pricing classic SEO for one reason: the thing a buyer wants (to be named in an AI answer) is probabilistic. An engine's recommendation is reconstructed per query and shifts with every model update, so any package that promises a fixed placement is either misunderstanding the channel or misleading the buyer. The defensible alternative is to price the inputs you control and the measurement that proves they moved: the audit, the content and entity work, the off-site authority effort, and the per-engine citation reporting that shows whether your share of citations is rising. That framing also protects the agency: when the outcome is honestly scoped, a model shift that reshuffles citations is simply a measurement event you report.
The four packaging models
Across the market, AEO work is sold in four recognisable shapes. A one-time audit establishes a baseline across engines and a roadmap. A standalone retainer runs the ongoing measurement, content and source work. An SEO add-on layers AEO onto an existing search retainer for clients who already buy organic work. And white-label execution delivers the work under another agency's brand. Each answers a different buying situation, and each carries its own observed price range, which the table below sets out. Treat those ranges as where the market currently sits: your own number should reflect your scope, your engine coverage and your reporting depth.
What actually moves the number
Three variables explain most of the spread between a $2,000 retainer and a $20,000 one. The first is engine coverage: optimising and reporting across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude is more work than tracking one surface, and because the engines cite strikingly different source pools, the work does not transfer cleanly between them. The second is off-site authority: roughly 85% of AI-answer citations come from third-party domains, so packages that include digital PR, entity work and citation-building cost materially more than on-page-only ones, and tend to work better. The third is reporting depth: a package whose reporting ties to qualified pipeline is worth more, and costs more, than one that reports AI impressions alone. Price these three explicitly and your tiers stop looking arbitrary.
The floor, and the rebranded-SEO trap
Below roughly $1,500 a month, an AEO retainer is almost always classic SEO with AI-flavoured marketing on top: the $99-a-month subscriptions that claim AI-search benefits do not include the entity, off-site and per-engine measurement work that makes AEO a distinct discipline. For an agency setting prices, that floor is useful in two directions: it tells you where genuine AEO scope begins, and it tells you what a sceptical buyer is screening for. A credible package can show its citation-audit baseline, name the engines it covers, and report against specific prompts, which is exactly what buyers are now being told to demand before they sign.