What a Generative Engine Optimization Agency Costs in Practice

What GEO Agencies Actually Charge

In August 2026 we crawled the 307 US agencies that rank for "SEO agency" searches across 30 metros. 88.6% publish no verifiable price anywhere on their site. The 35 agencies that do publish real plans listed 124 of them between them: the median plan is $1,000 a month, the median cheapest plan is $450, and the median top tier is $1,999. Only 36% of those plans sit in the $1,500 to $5,000 band that pricing guides usually quote as typical. The full data is in our agency pricing study.

GEO is rarely sold as its own line item. It is usually folded into those same retainers, so the price you are quoted depends far more on what is bundled with it than on the word GEO itself. That is why the useful question is not "what does GEO cost" but "what exactly happens each month for this fee."

Three Tiers, Three Very Different Products

GEO work comes in three shapes: a diagnostic, monthly upkeep, and full execution. Here is how SEMPITE prices each, the same numbers that are on our pricing page and in checkout.

The diagnostic: Brand Audit, $199 one time. A 20+ page founder-reviewed report that scores your AI visibility per engine (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI), audits your backlinks and citations, and ends in a 30/60/90 plan and a 45-minute strategy call. The fee credits in full toward your first month if you continue.

Upkeep: Visibility Partner, $499 a month. 15 tracked keywords, a monthly AI Search Visibility report across four engines, Google Business Profile optimization with 2 posts a month, 4 citations a month, 1 answer-first blog post a month, a public profile page with schema, and a monthly call. Built for a single location or a personal brand.

Execution: Growth Partner, $1,499 a month, and Presence Partner, $2,999 a month. Growth adds 40 keywords, 3 competitors tracked inside the AI engines, 2 blog posts a week, social media on 2 platforms, up to 10 profiles and directories managed, the SEMPITE chatbot and custom builds. Presence adds weekly AI-engine tracking on 100 keywords, 3 posts a week, social on 3 platforms plus YouTube, 20+ managed profiles, a monthly email to your client list, press pitching and weekly calls.

If the audit finds structural problems with the site itself, that is a one-time Foundation Build, usually $3,000 to $7,500 and payable over 3 months. Every retainer is month to month.

What the Cheapest Tier Actually Buys You

A low-priced "GEO package" is often general SEO hygiene with a newer label: a checklist about E-E-A-T signals and a report on organic impressions. That work is not wrong, but it measures a different thing. Organic impressions tell you how you rank in a list of links. GEO is about whether an AI engine names you inside its answer, describes you correctly, and cites your site.

So ask what is measured. The SEMPITE audit runs the real questions people ask about your category through each engine and records three things: whether you are named, how you are described, and who is named instead. That record becomes the gap list, and every recommendation points at a specific page or profile.

The uncomfortable truth is that for some businesses the diagnostic reveals a problem GEO cannot solve. If your content is thin, your services are not clearly differentiated, or your business details contradict each other across the web, no amount of optimization will make an AI engine cite you over a competitor with a cleaner information footprint. The audit says so plainly, and every audit ends with a plan you can carry out yourself.

Where the Retainer Money Goes

Most of a GEO retainer is people's time, not software. At SEMPITE the founder does the client work himself rather than handing it to junior staff. The monthly work is editorial: making pages easy for AI engines to parse, with clear entity definitions, unambiguous service descriptions, FAQ blocks that mirror how people actually ask, and internal links that give an answer engine a logical path through your site.

The tracking layer costs less than people assume. Running a fixed set of questions through each engine on a schedule and logging who gets named is cheap to automate. What it buys you is a trend line you can read yourself: monthly on Visibility and Growth, weekly on Presence.

Check what a quote leaves out. Paid advertising is separate everywhere, including here (management from $750 a month plus your ad spend). Some agencies bundle ads, video and social into one large retainer with GEO as a line item. That can be fine, but ask how much of the fee actually goes to the GEO work.

What GEO Cannot Fix for You

First, if an AI engine has no reason to tell you apart from forty similar providers in the same area, optimization will widen your visibility but will not create a moat. You need a specific angle: a named method, a distinct service, something an answer engine can point to. A good audit flags that gap instead of pretending content tweaks will manufacture it.

Second, AI engines change how they choose citations on schedules nobody outside those companies controls. A change that lifted your visibility one quarter can be partly reversed by a model update the next. That is a property of the medium, not a failure of the work. Be wary of any agency that guarantees a position or promises you will be the number-one cited result for a query.

Third, the industry has no standard measurement yet. There is no independent, universally accepted score for how often you appear in AI answers, so you are trusting the method of whoever does the tracking. Ask to see the raw log, not just the chart.

The One Question to Ask Before You Sign

Before you commit to any GEO agency, ask them this: show me the exact questions you tested for my service category in my area, and tell me which competitor is named instead of me for each one. Not a demo with a generic search term. The actual log from a business like yours, redacted if necessary, showing the question, the generated answer, and where you appear or do not.

If they cannot produce that in a few minutes, they are not yet doing the work they are selling. Get the diagnostic first, read the gap list against what you know about your own customers, and only then compare retainers on price and on what happens each month.