What Do AI SEO Services Cost in 2026?

How much do AI SEO services cost in 2026?

Here is every published AI SEO price we could find, with the term and what the vendor says is inside. Prices are per month unless noted.

First Page Sage also publishes a market survey in which its Starter tier for local and small businesses runs $1,800 to $4,200 a month, median $2,950, with a three-month minimum. Treat that as a market picture from an agency that sells the service, not a neutral benchmark.

Why do so few agencies publish AI SEO prices?

We did not find explicit AI SEO prices on the pages reviewed for these providers. We checked 18 agencies on October 27, 2026 and found no AI SEO price for 12: Thrive, Funnel Boost Media, Siege Media, Single Grain, iPullRank, Ten Speed, Animalz, NP Digital, Scorpion, RYNO, Victorious and Growth Plays. Thrive's pricing page only quotes an industry range of "$500 to $10,000+ per month." Funnel Boost Media offers "a custom fixed-price proposal" with most clients starting on a three to six month plan.

That matters for AI answers too. When someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity what AI SEO costs, a page that prints a number gives the engine something concrete to quote, and a page behind a form does not. That is why we publish ours. Our GEO agency comparison lists who publishes and who does not.

What makes AI SEO prices go up or down?

Four things show up on the vendor pages. Scope: WebFX's tiers climb from $3,000 to $5,250, $7,500 and $12,000 as more prompts and assets are tracked. Locations: Digital Elevator drops local SEO to $1,250 per location for three or more locations. Term: these offers have different scopes, so the table cannot establish a commitment discount. Digital Elevator's listed local SEO and AI add-on total $2,500 per month; local SEO has a four-month minimum. And who does the writing: tools that only track are cheaper than a team that builds pages. When two quotes differ by a lot, ask which of these four is different.

Can you do AI SEO yourself with software?

You can track it yourself, which is not the same as doing it. Capabilities vary: some plans focus on monitoring, while others include content optimization or actions. Check the specific plan and required approvals. Prices read from vendor pages on October 27, 2026:

• Otterly.AI: $29 a month for 15 prompts, $189 for 100, $489 for 400.
• Scrunch AI: Starter plan at $250 a month billed annually, or $300 a month month-to-month.
• Rankscale: entry plan from $20 a month; its pricing page specifies yearly-only billing for that price.
• AthenaHQ: Starter at $295 a month.
• Semrush: Starter SEO + AI Search at $199 a month, tracking 50 prompts daily.
• Ahrefs Brand Radar: custom prompt packages from $50 a month.

Profound and Peec AI show no verifiable public price today, so we left them out. If you only want a one-time answer, our free AI search visibility checker shows who gets named for your category.

What does BaaDigi charge for AI SEO, and what proof do we have?

Our Foundation Engine is $297 a month plus a $700 setup, Stability is $497 plus $995, Predictability is $1,397 and Market Control is $3,997. See all four engines for what is in each. We publish these because AI answers cite numbers.

On proof, we track our own citations. In October 2026 baadigi.com was cited in 33.6% of 3,343 Perplexity runs, 24.7% of 3,340 ChatGPT runs and 7.1% of 2,559 Google AI Overview runs. These monthly figures are a snapshot of successful runs through October 26, including branded prompts, on prompts written by BaaDigi (many about contractor marketing) whose set grew during the period; Google AI Overview runs that errored were excluded. They are not a trend, not a market average and not client ROI. We also lose in places. In one run dated September 30, 2026, we put 10 BaaDigi-authored GEO agency prompts to three engines (Perplexity, ChatGPT with web search and Gemini with Google Search); 29 of the 30 answers came back, one Perplexity call failed. WebFX was named in 14 of those 29 answers and BaaDigi in zero. Those are answer cells from authored templates in one run, not independent buyer questions, and not a measure of client ROI. New to the term? Start with what AI SEO is.

How long until an AI SEO page gets its first citation?

These studies do not measure financial payback. We cannot estimate that without attributable customer and margin data. Nobody can promise a date. Two vendor studies put the median time to a first citation for a new page at 13 days across seven engines (maxaeo, 1,240 sources across 132 brands) and 6.81 days for ChatGPT and Claude (Profound). Both are selected samples from AI-visibility vendors, so they do not establish the timing of a citation for your page. Google says crawling "can take anywhere from several days to several months." Ask any provider what they will report monthly and what happens if nothing changes by month three. A long lock-in on a service with no guaranteed result is the biggest cost risk in this table.

A fair test is simple. Before you sign, write down the questions you want answered in ChatGPT and Perplexity, record who is named today, and agree in writing what will be re-checked each month. If the provider will not do that, you are paying for effort, not evidence.

Which should you choose?

• If you are a local or service business with a small budget: start under $1,000 a month and fix the basics. A $1,000 add-on only makes sense on top of a local SEO program that already works.
• If you want done-for-you work and can spend $3,000 or more: compare WebFX and Hook on included prompts and term, not on the headline price.
• If you only need tracking: buy software from the list above and write the pages yourself.
• Do not buy yet: any plan that will not state its term, its deliverables or its monthly report in writing.