How much does a GEO audit cost in 2026?

A GEO audit costs anywhere from $99 to $15,000 in 2026, and where it lands depends on who runs it. An independent consultant charges about $1,500 to $5,000 and an agency audit sprint runs $5,000 to $15,000. Automated scans sit below that at $99 to $499. Those bands come from GTM 80/20's comparison of published prices, dated 28 October 2026. I opened that page and five other pricing pages on 31 October 2026 to build the tables below, and I sell GEO audits myself, so my own prices are in here too.

By Ronan Liedmeier, fractional head of growth. Last updated 31 October 2026.

A GEO audit (generative engine optimization audit) checks whether AI answer engines such as ChatGPT search, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews can read your site, whether your pages hold passages worth quoting, and which other domains get cited for your buyers' questions. The checks themselves are in what a GEO audit checks.

What does a GEO audit cost in 2026?

A one-off GEO audit costs $1,500 to $5,000 from a consultant and $5,000 to $15,000 from an agency, by GTM 80/20's 28 October comparison. Automated scans sit below that, and programmes that include the fixes sit above it.

The named prices on GTM 80/20's list run from $440 (Citant.ai's AI Search Audit) through $1,500 and $5,000 (Avante Visibility's Audit and Full GEO Audit) and $2,500 (Corey Fox's GEO deep-dive) to $10,000 and up (Rock The Rankings' AI Search Blueprint). GTM 80/20 sells fractional SEO and GEO work, publishes no fixed audit price and lists itself as its own pick, so read its comparison with that in mind. The same goes for me.

The UK figure from Gripped carries no source on the page, and AOK's range is a single band with no breakdown. AOK puts a full audit from $2,000 and Gripped from £3,000.

What do GEO retainers cost per month?

Agency GEO retainers for small and mid-size companies start at about $1,500 a month and commonly run to $5,000; enterprise programmes reach $25,000 to $50,000 or more. WebFX and Nutshell publish the same tier ranges, so I count them as one source.

A handful of agencies publish their own entry price. By DerivateX's list: Embarque from $1,500 a month, RevenueZen and PipeRocket Digital from $3,000, DerivateX itself from $5,000, and Omniscient Digital from $10,000. WebFX lists its own GEO service from $3,000 a month. DerivateX's table lists local SEO work (GMB and citations) in Embarque's plans, so check what a given retainer covers before comparing them.

Tools are a separate line. WebFX and Nutshell put AI visibility tracking software at $50 to $1,000 or more a month. Software reports the citation count. Deciding what to write is still a person's job.

What should a GEO audit include at each price?

A useful audit ends in a fix list you can act on, ordered by what blocks citation before what improves it. AOK Marketing's list of what to demand covers it well: an AI footprint baseline, a review of entity and trust signals, a content structure and coverage map, a technical eligibility checklist, and a prioritised backlog with a six-month plan.

The price bands split on who does the reading. An automated scan measures your site against a checklist. It cannot run your buyers' prompts in a fresh thread on each engine and log which domain took the answer, and that competing-domain list is where the content plan comes from.

On ordering: in my test of 209 vendors named across 40 Perplexity answers, an FAQ section, a named author, article depth, comparison tables and visible dates separated cited from uncited vendors in the same answer. Organization schema showed no effect. An audit that puts schema markup first is ordering by habit.

Is a cheap scan enough?

A scan finds access blockers, and access is where to start. Whether you get cited is a separate question a scan can't answer. In my check of 1,586 software company websites on 22 October 2026, 12.7% had a hard access problem, such as a homepage that did not load or page text missing without JavaScript. A $99 scan, or a free one, finds those.

The score itself does not predict citation. In the 209-vendor test the overall readiness score had no relationship with being cited when all vendors were pooled; the prompt category and brand size decided most of it. So the order I'd follow is free check first, then a paid audit only once access passes and you want to know who is being cited instead of you.

What do I charge, and why publish it?

I publish fixed prices for three engagements:

That puts the Audit at the low end of GTM 80/20's consultant band and at the floor of AOK's range. The prices are public partly because I'd be a hypocrite otherwise. In the 1,586-site check, only 22.7% of the 1,361 commercial software sites stated amounts on a pricing page. A buyer who asks an engine what something costs gets an answer from whoever did.

What I'd do

1. Run a free readiness check and fetch your homepage with curl. If the page text is missing or a search bot is blocked, fix that first; it costs nothing to find.
2. Write down ten questions your buyers ask before they talk to sales, in their words.
3. Run three of them yourself on ChatGPT and Perplexity in a fresh thread and note who gets cited. If it is you, a paid audit can wait.
4. If it is someone else, ask any provider the seven questions in the table above before you compare prices.
5. Pick a fixed audit over a retainer until you have content worth measuring.

I do this work for B2B software and professional services companies as the AI Search Audit, from $2,000 for one week. I run a few of your buyer prompts before the first call, so the quote starts from your numbers.