How much does an AEO or GEO retainer cost in the UK?
An AEO or GEO retainer in the UK has no independent benchmark, so the best evidence is a handful of published prices. The one UK AEO price list found starts standalone answer engine optimisation (AEO) at £995 a month, and Whito's 2026 data puts single-channel UK agency retainers at £1,250 to £3,500 a month. US guides quote in dollars and run higher at mid-market. The table pairs each figure with its scope and the kind of evidence behind it.
| Source | Monthly price | Stated scope | Region and currency | Evidence behind it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Elite Digital price list | From £995 (standalone AEO) | AI citation monitoring, entity and schema architecture, question-led content; no guaranteed citations | UK, GBP, excludes VAT | One agency's published price list, undated |
| Elite Digital price list | £1,995 (Growth SEO) | Full technical SEO programme with AEO integration | UK, GBP, excludes VAT | As above |
| Whito | £1,250 to £3,500 | Single-channel agency retainers such as SEO | UK, GBP | Rate cards and surveys collected January to May 2026 |
| Stackmatix | $1,500 to $5,000 | Audit, schema, 5 to 15 pages a month, monitoring on 1 to 2 platforms | US guide, USD | Article, no sources named |
| Stackmatix | $5,000 to $10,000 | Five platforms, content restructuring, competitor citation analysis, digital PR | US guide, USD | As above |
| WebFX | $1,500 to $5,000 (small), $5,000 to $25,000 or more (medium) | GEO strategy, implementation and tracking | US vendor, USD | WebFX's own estimates |
| AOK Marketing | Adding GEO to an SEO retainer: $1,500 to $3,000 more a month (small business) | GEO added to existing SEO | US vendor, USD | Ranges agencies commonly quote; publisher sells GEO |
| This site | Monthly AI-search visibility checks included from £3,000 (Growth package) | Part of the SEO retainer | UK, GBP | Listed on our pricing page |
Read the table as a set of anchors, not a market rate. A UK B2B firm that buys AEO as part of an SEO retainer can expect the AI-search element to sit inside the £1,250 to £3,500 band in which Whito places single-channel retainers, which is our reading of these sources, not a measured figure. US prices are in dollars and have not been converted.
Why is there no independent UK benchmark?
There is no benchmark because AEO is a new category and almost every published price comes from an agency selling it. Stackmatix names no sources for its ranges, and AOK Marketing describes its figures as ranges agencies commonly quote. The sources also mix scopes: a $1,500 to $5,000 retainer can mean a monitoring tool plus a few pages or a done-for-you programme. Compare scope before price.
Is AEO priced differently from GEO?
AEO and GEO are rarely priced separately, because they share most tactics. Stackmatix defines AEO as getting content into direct answers across AI platforms, voice search and featured snippets, and GEO as a focus on generative AI outputs. It says agencies usually bundle the two into one retainer. Elite Digital's UK list prices AEO but does not price GEO separately.
The practical question for a buyer is which AI platforms the retainer covers. WebFX lists ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews among the platforms a GEO strategy targets. For definitions, see our guide to AEO, GEO and SEO.
What does each budget tier buy?
Each tier buys a different share of the work, and the lowest tier buys almost none of the fixing. HubSpot groups AEO spend into three rough tiers.
| Tier | Monthly spend | What it buys | Who does the fixing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lean | About $30 to a few hundred dollars | A monitoring tool, sometimes with a one-time audit | Your team |
| Mid-range | About $1,500 to $5,000 | A smaller done-for-you plan, for example schema and three to five pages of content | Shared |
| High investment | About $10,000 to $15,000 or more | Strategy, high-volume content, off-site work, technical work and pipeline reporting | The agency |
Elite Digital's standalone AEO scope, which is monitoring, entity and schema work and question-led content, matches HubSpot's mid-range pattern. Its price is in pounds, though, so the two cannot be compared directly.
What drives the price of an AEO retainer?
Five things drive the price: content scope, schema and entity work, off-site authority building, monitoring coverage and reporting depth. HubSpot says off-site authority building causes the widest price swings. WebFX adds that tracking tools usually price by the number of prompts and AI platforms monitored.
Site size and market also matter. Stackmatix lists site size and complexity, the current state of the site, industry competition and geographic scope as further drivers, and AOK Marketing lists multi-location scope and content velocity. A multi-market programme costs more than a single-site one for the same reason it does in classic SEO, as our guide to enterprise SEO pricing explains.
What should an AEO statement of work include?
An AEO statement of work should name the deliverables, because, as HubSpot notes, the invoice label does not show what is included. Use this checklist, drawn from HubSpot's list of named deliverables and WebFX's quote-comparison list:
- Prompts tracked. Ask for the number and a sample.
- Engines covered. Get the list of AI platforms by name.
- Pages produced or reworked. Ask for a monthly count.
- Schema and entity work. Ask what is changed and who approves it.
- Off-site scope. Confirm whether digital PR and citation building are in or out.
- Reporting cadence. Ask for the queries tested, the engines used and the sources each answer cited.
- Hidden costs. WebFX lists onboarding, integrations and internal review time.
- Minimum term. Confirm the contract length. Elite Digital's list also shows a one-off onboarding fee of £495 to £1,495 on new SEO and content retainers.
HubSpot lists the red flags: rebranded SEO sold as AEO, guaranteed citations, vague scope without page counts or engine lists, and proprietary visibility scores with no disclosed method. Elite Digital itself states that it offers no guaranteed citations.
Should AEO be bought separately from SEO?
For most B2B firms AEO is better bought with SEO than instead of it. HubSpot says SEO and AEO share a foundation, strong Google rankings often feed AI citations, and cutting SEO to fund AEO can weaken both. AOK Marketing prices the combination as an uplift: $1,500 to $3,000 more a month for a small business and $4,000 to $6,000 more for an enterprise, both agency-quoted.
Our own packages follow that logic. Monthly AI-search visibility checks are included from the Growth package at £3,000 a month, alongside the SEO they depend on, as set out on our AI search page. For classic SEO prices, see what a £1,500 SEO retainer buys and B2B SEO agency prices.
How do you test an AEO retainer before committing?
Test it with a 60 to 90 day pilot that costs far less than a full programme. HubSpot recommends starting with a monitoring subscription, optionally with a one-time audit, and skipping content production and off-site work. Set a baseline in week one, fix cheap gaps such as pages that rank but are not cited, and compare results at day 60 and day 90.
Keep expectations realistic. HubSpot cites a Search Engine Land study showing AI referral traffic roughly tripled between January and December 2025 but was still under 2% of referral traffic. Judge a pilot on citations and accuracy as well as visits, and read our guide to measuring zero-click B2B search before you set targets. To see how your own pages appear in AI answers, book a free B2B SEO audit.