What GEO costs: DIY, a one-time fix or an agency retainer
· 3 min read
GEO can cost nothing if you do it yourself. Agency retainers have a median of $6,850 a month, and starter retainers a median of $2,950, according to one survey of 214 agencies. One-time work sits in between. A small site with a technical or on-page problem rarely needs a retainer. A retainer starts to make sense when the problem is authority and you need ongoing content and PR.
Disclosure: we sell a $499 fixed-price fix, which is one of the options below, so weigh our view accordingly. The agency survey comes from First Page Sage, which sells GEO services itself and includes its own prices in the data.
The options side by side
| Route | Published cost | What you get | Best when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Do it yourself | Your time, plus $0 to about $50/mo for a tracker | Whatever you implement | You can edit your site and have a few hours |
| Cited Lens fix (one-time) | $499, delivered in 7 business days | Crawler access, schema, and answer-ready copy on 5 pages. No new posts, backlinks or PR. | The basics are missing, and you lack the time |
| Agency one-time audit | $1,500 to $12,000, median $4,300 | A report, sometimes with implementation | You need a detailed plan for a larger site |
| Agency starter retainer | $1,800 to $4,200/mo, median $2,950 | Ongoing work, scope varies | You need regular content and outreach |
| Agency retainer, all tiers | Median $6,850/mo | Ongoing strategy, content and PR | You compete in a big category with budget to match |
Agency figures come from First Page Sage's 2026 report, based on 1,146 price quotes from 214 agencies. Only 8% of those agencies use a one-time audit model and only 23% publish any pricing, so treat these as rough ranges. Quotes vary a lot, and many agencies only price after a call. Tracker prices are in our tool comparison, and ours is $29 a month.
Can you do GEO yourself?
Usually yes, for the first stage. If you can edit robots.txt and your page copy, you can do the work that vendors actually document. Our 30-minute checklist covers it. Hire help when nobody owns the site, the platform blocks you, or the checklist keeps sliding down the list.
One-time fix or monthly retainer?
Work out which problem you have, because each one needs a different kind of spend.
| What you see | Probable problem | Spend |
|---|---|---|
| Crawlers are blocked, or pages are blank without JavaScript | Technical | One-time |
| Crawlers reach you, but your pages do not answer buyer questions directly | On-page | One-time, or DIY |
| Pages are sound, but answers cite competitors and review sites instead | Authority | Ongoing, and it takes time |
A one-time fix cannot solve an authority problem, and we exclude backlinks and PR from ours for that reason. Equally, a monthly retainer is poor value while your robots.txt is blocking the crawlers. To diagnose yours, see why ChatGPT recommends your competitor.
Warning signs when you buy
- A guarantee of citations. Nobody controls this, including us.
- Claims of inside knowledge. Google says to be wary of tools that promise ranking success or claim to use internal Google metrics.
- Plans built on buying mentions. Google says that seeking inauthentic mentions is not as helpful as it might seem.
- Mass-produced pages for every query variation. Google says doing this mainly to manipulate rankings or AI responses breaches its scaled content abuse policy.
- No way to measure. Ask which prompts will be tracked, on which engines, and how often.
Frequently asked questions
How much does GEO cost for a small business?
It can start at nothing if you do the basics yourself. Fixed-price help starts from a few hundred dollars (ours is $499), and agency starter retainers had a median of $2,950 a month in First Page Sage's 2026 report.
How long does GEO take to work?
Crawler changes can take effect quickly: OpenAI says about 24 hours for ChatGPT search after a robots.txt update. Content and authority take longer, and no vendor publishes a timeline, so measure over weeks and months.
Is GEO more expensive than SEO?
In First Page Sage's data, yes: the median GEO and AEO retainer of $6,850 a month compares with $4,740 for traditional SEO. The firm sells both, and the work overlaps heavily, so ask what a quote adds beyond your existing SEO.
Sources
Check your own site
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