How Much Do GEO Services Cost in 2026?
Published retainers in this comparison start at $3,000 a month for WebFX and Optimist advisory, $4,000 for Optimist full service, and US$5,000 for Strataigize. These buy different work: advisory leaves execution with your team, contract lengths differ, and competitor billing currencies need confirmation. Budget for the initial commitment, implementation and extra charges before deciding which offer costs less for your needs. Prices checked October
An advisory retainer can suit a business with a team ready to implement. The same arrangement can create a second bill if you need to hire someone to publish content or fix the website. Include that work when comparing the
Generative engine optimization, or GEO, aims to improve how a business appears in AI-generated answers and search experiences. The offers below give you a starting point for pricing the work, including the term you commit to and who implements it. We sell GEO services ourselves, so apply the same currency, scope and contract checks to
Published GEO prices and contract terms
We rechecked the linked WebFX and Optimist pages on October 9, 2026 and compared them with our current pricing page. This is a small, named sample of public offers. It does not establish the price of the whole market or independently verify any
| Provider | Published price | Published term and scope to compare |
|---|---|---|
| WebFX | From $3,000 per month; listed tiers reach $68,250, with a bespoke tier by quote | The recurring optimization row specifies a six-month commitment. The table distinguishes prompt coverage, monthly assets, monitoring and strategy work. |
| Optimist | $7,500 one-time roadmap; advisory from $3,000 per month; full service from $4,000 per month | Both retainers are listed as month to month. Advisory leaves execution with your team; full service includes execution. The roadmap is a separate one-time engagement. |
| Strataigize, our own offer | From US$5,000 per month; typical range US$5,000 to US$12,000 per month | Month to month after the first three months. Our GEO service covers entity work, answer-first content, earned mentions and measurement; the proposal defines the deliverables. |
WebFX and Optimist display a dollar sign on the checked pages. Confirm billing currency in their written quotes before treating those amounts as USD or converting them to CAD. Our published amounts are explicitly USD. Taxes, exchange costs, one-time fees and separately purchased tools can change your
Compare the full committed fee
Here is a reproducible calculation using the published starting terms above. It is plain arithmetic for comparing offers. It does not quote a price or assess whether results would
| Example | Calculation | What the result means |
|---|---|---|
| WebFX entry tier | $3,000 × 6 months = $18,000 | Recurring fees across the stated six-month commitment, before any other quoted charges. Confirm currency. |
| Strataigize starting GEO retainer | US$5,000 × 3 months = US$15,000 | Recurring fees across our initial three months, before other agreed charges. |
| Strataigize typical upper range | US$12,000 × 3 months = US$36,000 | The same three-month calculation at the upper end of our typical range. |
| Optimist advisory starting price | $3,000 for one month | One month at the published starting rate. Check notice, roadmap requirements and any other onboarding terms in the agreement. |
You cannot conclude that one provider is cheaper for your needs from this table. Six months of work and three months of work are different purchases. An advisory engagement also requires someone on your team to implement
For a Canadian budget, keep the contract in its original currency first. Then record the exchange-rate date and the conversion method used by finance. Do not compare a CAD quote directly with a USD fee or treat a planning conversion as a guaranteed
Put competing quotes on the same basis
Choose one planning period and give each provider the same required pages, markets and publishing tasks. Record the cash due during that period and any unavoidable contractual fees beyond it separately. A three-month budget does not erase the remaining fees in a
Consider a hypothetical company that needs product-page corrections but whose developer is fully booked. An advisory quote provides recommendations. A second quote includes writing but excludes publication in the website’s content management system. Neither solves the capacity gap until a publishing owner and that work’s cost are identified. Mark an unpriced requirement as unknown,
Build
- Cash required: mandatory one-time work, recurring fees for the chosen period, excluded implementation, software, and applicable taxes and exchange charges. Count each item once.
- Internal work: hours for interviews, factual review, approvals, publication and checks after release. Finance can assign a cost to those hours for comparison, but existing staff time is not automatically an additional cash payment.
Keep the minimum contractual commitment alongside both totals. A lower monthly fee can still be the right choice when your team has capacity; a larger implementation scope only helps if it includes the work and delivery dates
What the recurring scope should explain
A useful proposal connects the monthly fee to work your team can inspect. Start with these
- Which buyer questions and markets will you measure? Record the prompts, language, location, platforms and collection dates. Ask which results are observed, missing or stale, and how repeated observations will be compared. A fixed repetition count is not a universal guarantee of statistical reliability.
- Who implements the changes? Specify technical fixes, page updates, new research and content production. Name who can deploy the work and who approves factual claims. Compare this with your existing SEO agreement using the AI SEO scope guide.
- What earns attention beyond your own site? Ask for the intended publications, directories or research distribution and how the agency records responses. An outreach plan is not a promised third-party placement.
- How does reporting reach a business decision? Keep visibility, citations, referral visits, qualified enquiries and closed revenue as separate measures. Include the attribution limits and the action the team takes when the evidence is incomplete.
Our published GEO scope is the starting point for a proposal. Output can differ from one retainer to the next. The GEO visibility checker is a self-assessment to help start that discussion; it does not query a live panel of
What a GEO fee cannot guarantee
No agency controls whether an independent assistant recommends your business. Google’s AI Search guidance says its usual SEO foundations apply and there is no special schema or AI text file required for AI Overviews or AI Mode. Eligibility still does not guarantee crawling, indexing or display. Useful structured data can describe a page accurately; it is not a
Check the actual search crawlers when diagnosing access. Google Search uses Googlebot. OpenAI distinguishes OAI-SearchBot for ChatGPT search from GPTBot for model training. Google-Extended controls uses in some other Google systems; it is not the control for Google Search’s AI features. Training permissions and search access are
Also review the effective Search generative AI setting, including inherited settings. A property can exclude its content from the specified AI features while remaining eligible for ordinary Search. Establish whether exclusion is intentional before paying for an
A vendor’s price in a heading is easy for a buyer to find. That does not establish why a search system cited the vendor. Likewise, a rise in citations does not by itself prove that the work produced qualified prospects. Ask for source-level evidence and measure the business
Before signing a proposal
Put the monthly fee, initial term, notice period, currency, one-time work and software charges on the same page. Ask whether the initial roadmap is optional, included or required before a retainer. Confirm who owns the accounts, content and reporting data when the
Agree on a review date and the evidence needed to continue or revise the scope. Some early work may fix crawlability or establish a baseline before it can demonstrate an acquisition result. Treat that as a specific implementation milestone, with a later outcome check, rather than a
Strataigize’s free 30-minute growth consultation can help assess fit and scope. Our separate US$7,500 AI Opportunity Audit is a two-week automation-planning engagement, credited toward a build if you proceed. It is not a required GEO audit fee. Ad spend is separate from agency fees and is billed directly by
For the broader vendor shortlist, read our GEO agency comparison. If proposals use the terms differently, AEO vs GEO vs SEO explains our terminology. To discuss the actual engagement, start with AI search optimization.