How much does AI SEO cost? Australian GEO and AEO prices (2026)

AI SEO costs Australian businesses between A$399 and A$4,000+ monthly, ex GST, on the plans providers publish on their own websites. Most plans pitched at a small or local business sit between A$490 and A$1,500, and one-off AI visibility audits run from A$590 to A$2,500. Fixed implementation projects cost A$1,990 to A$8,000. GEO, AEO and AI search optimisation are the same work under different labels, so the label tells you nothing about the price. Output moves it: pages changed each month, prompts tracked, and mentions built off your site.

I read Australian providers' pricing pages on 26 October 2026, and eight of them publish a price for their own AI search work. Every figure below links to the page it came from, converted to one unit: ex GST, per calendar month.

In summary

Expect A$490 to A$1,500 monthly for a small or local business, and A$2,500 to A$4,000+ when AI search rides on a full SEO campaign.

• There's no standard AI SEO surcharge. Some providers fold it into SEO, some sell an add-on to SEO, and a few sell it alone as a separate retainer.
• Count the output: pages rewritten, articles, prompts tracked and off-site citations each month. That's what separates a A$490 plan from a A$3,700 one.
• Google says AI Overviews and AI Mode have no extra technical requirements, so most of the work is good SEO done thoroughly.
• WebFX's guide quotes American prices. Hold an Australian quote against Australian prices.

How much do Australian providers charge for AI SEO, GEO and AEO?

The eight Australian providers that publish AI search prices charge from A$399 to A$4,000+ monthly, ex GST, depending on how much work each month includes. Four start under A$1,000.

Each row comes from the provider's own page on 26 October 2026 (AEST). These are advertised prices from named providers: a map of the market, not a national average or a quote for your site.

Two patterns stand out. The cheapest plans sell AI search as a measured slice of work: a set number of prompts tracked and one or two pages improved. The dearest sell volume. Intelligent Resourcing lists around 16 "citation-engineered assets" monthly on Cited-Core, while WebGlobals' Growth plan ships four page rewrites and two articles.

What do Australian pricing guides say the market charges?

Several Australian agencies publish market ranges as well as their own prices, and those ranges disagree with each other by thousands of dollars a month. Trust no single guide.

Guides quoting A$3,000 and up describe content and citation volume for mid-sized brands, while those starting near A$500 describe small local businesses. Both can be right.

How do you compare AI SEO quotes that use different units?

Turn every quote into one number, ex GST and per calendar month, with one-off fees on their own line, before you compare anything. Five entry prices, converted:

My arithmetic: GST-inclusive figures divided by 1.1, prepay discounts taken off the monthly rate.

The add-on row catches people. An "AI search from A$1,200" headline reads like a A$1,200 decision, yet the provider sells it on top of an SEO retainer. So ask every provider, in writing, for the total you'd pay in month one and month two, retainer and add-on together.

What do you get at each AI SEO price level?

Plans under A$800 monthly track your visibility and improve one or two pages. Above A$1,500, you pay for new content and off-site work, and that's where the big jump in price sits.

Take the bottom rung, Grendesign's A$399 plan. From month two it optimises one existing page each month, with up to 300 words of edits and 30 minutes of technical fixes. That's honest, useful work for one service. It won't put a new service in front of ChatGPT on its own.

At the top, WebGlobals' Authority plan from A$2,900 adds digital PR, citation earning and entity work on your Knowledge Panel, plus 100+ tracked prompts. That off-site layer is what most cheap plans leave out, and it matters because it's how other sites come to vouch for you. AI answers quote those sites.

A long list of tasks can look reassuring, but nobody cares about the tasks. You care about what you get.

Is AI SEO more expensive than regular SEO?

Usually not by much. Several Australian providers include AI search in their SEO fee, and one sells it as an add-on from A$1,200 + GST monthly. Only one, Intelligent Resourcing, starts its AI-only retainers above A$3,000.

Google explains why. On appearing in AI Overviews and AI Mode, its documentation on AI features is blunt: "There are no additional technical requirements." It adds that "all existing SEO fundamentals continue to be worthwhile". First on the list: crawl access.

So good SEO already does a lot of AI SEO, because crawlable pages, clear answers, matching schema and outside mentions help in both places. The AI-specific fee should buy the rest:

• a fixed set of buyer prompts, tested every month across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews, with competitors tracked alongside
• answer-first page rewrites
• structured data that matches what the page says
• citations, reviews, list placements and mentions on the sites those engines quote, which is the slow, outreach-heavy part of the work
• a report on which answers name you, which name a competitor, and what changed

If a quote charges extra for AI search but lists none of these, you're paying twice for the same SEO work you already have.

What drives the cost of AI search optimisation?

Five things set the price. Pages changed each month, prompts and engines tracked, off-site work, how crowded your category is, and the state of your website.

Prompt counts are the clearest dial. Sydney WEB team prices on them directly: 25 prompts at A$490, 50 at A$790 and 100 at A$1,290, all ex GST. More prompts, more testing.

Off-site work is the expensive dial. Writing a page is a fixed job you can schedule. Getting a respected Australian site, directory or list to mention you takes outreach, and nobody controls the timing.

A worked example: an accounting firm in two sizes

Take a two-partner accounting firm that wants ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews to name it when someone asks for a small-business accountant nearby.

Version one does tax returns and BAS for one suburb cluster, so it needs sharp service pages, answer-first FAQs, matching schema and steady reviews. A tracking plan with one or two page fixes monthly covers most of that, at A$490 to A$790.

Version two adds SMSF audits and wants clients nationally. That means new pages for a service with national competition. It needs articles that answer trustees' questions, and mentions on the sites AI answers quote for SMSF advice. That's A$2,500-and-up work, and a fixed project to lift the site first wouldn't be wasted money.

Same firm, several times the fee. Decide which version you are before you ask for quotes.

How do you know the AI SEO you're paying for is working?

Measure enquiries and the answers themselves. Treat AI traffic numbers in analytics with suspicion until someone checks them, because a rising "AI" line in GA4 can be bots.

This happened on an enterprise B2B client's account. A client's GA4 showed AI-assistant visits jump from 354 to 6,050 in a month. Almost none of it was real. About 5,700 came in three one-hour bursts: same 1920x1080 desktop Chrome, all new users, no referrer, about 20 seconds each, landing on two pages. Real AI traffic was 385 sessions against 354 the month before, roughly flat.

A report built on that chart would have shown a seventeenfold win, while the real AI traffic barely moved from one month to the next. So ask your provider three things, monthly:

1. Which of my tracked prompts now name me, and which name a competitor? Show me the answers.
2. Which pages changed this month, and which outside sites mention us now that didn't mention us at the start of the month?
3. How many enquiries came in, and from where? Has anyone checked the AI traffic for bots?

AI answers change from one run to the next, so judge the trend across a full quarter rather than from any single test. Our guide to AI visibility tools covers the software that runs prompt tracking, if you'd rather watch it yourself and save the fee.

Is AI SEO worth the cost?

AI SEO is worth it when the profit from the extra enquiries covers the fee. I price search work against what one job or client is worth to you, and the cheapest plan on the table can't tell you that.

Say the accounting firm in version one keeps A$2,000 profit from each new small-business client in that client's first year with the firm. At A$790 + GST monthly, a year of AI search work costs A$9,480. Five extra clients a year covers it. Those are example figures, so plug in your own margin, and how many of your enquiries turn into paying clients.

I learned this pricing lesson on roofs, and the maths behind it hasn't changed. A mate did the roofs; I did the marketing, sales and operations. Before Searchmaxxed, I built Radiant Roof Repairs from zero to more than A$1 million a year in revenue using SEO as the only marketing channel. Three high-intent Gold Coast roofing searches reached number one within 90 days. I did the pages, research, competitor checks and updates manually.

When we reached the map pack it was phone call after phone call: 1,487 calls came off our Google Business Profile. Most of that came through Google Maps. Finding people to do the work became the hard part.

That's an SEO result from my own business, not an AI SEO result and not a forecast for yours, but the point carries over. Being the answer is worth far more than the fee when your jobs are big, and much less when they're small. Our guide to whether SEO is worth it runs the numbers in more detail.

How do you compare two AI SEO quotes?

Convert both to ex GST per calendar month, then compare what changes each month rather than what the packages are called. Work through this list with each provider.

1. Write each quote as one monthly figure, ex GST, then list audits, blueprints and setup fees on a separate line underneath it.
2. Add any SEO retainer an add-on needs.
3. Ask for the monthly output as numbers: pages, articles, prompts tracked and competitors watched, so two quotes line up side by side.
4. Ask which engines they test by name: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, or only some of them.
5. Ask what they do off your site each month: reviews, citations, list placements, digital PR, links.
6. Ask who edits your site.
7. Ask what you keep if you leave: pages, content, prompt history, reports and accounts.

One test cuts through the jargon. Ask the provider to run three of your buyer prompts live, show you who gets named today, and say what they'd change first.

For SEO prices without the AI layer, see how much SEO costs in Australia.

Where does Searchmaxxed fit?

Searchmaxxed is an SEO and AI SEO agency. We do technical SEO, local SEO, content, link building, GEO, AEO and LLM SEO. The aim: rank in Google and get named in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI answers.

We don't publish fees. AEO and GEO sit inside every managed package, never as an add-on. The packages differ in volume: how many pages we ship and how much off-site work we do for you each month. We look at your website, your market and your goals, then quote the scope that gets you named where your customers ask. Our AI search optimisation page sets out the work in detail.

A page release is an approved new page or a substantial rebuild of one. Every managed package includes ongoing audits, a 90-day plan shipped in weekly releases, the build work itself and a monthly decision memo. You own the site, repository, content and data from day one. Terms are monthly, six-month or 12-month. If you'd rather start smaller, the AI SEO Audit takes five business days and shows where buyers search without finding you.

Here's how we do it. We build on a website you own, our Agentic Website. AI agents pull your Search Console and GA4 data, read the Google results and check what AI answers say about you and your competitors. That feeds the Managed Search Loop, which shows which page, fix or link should bring in the most enquiries next, and in what order. We build it, check the live page and measure the result. Off your site, the Off-Page Source Layer builds the links, reviews, citations and mentions that AI answers draw on when they pick a business.

Searchmaxxed's work has generated more than A$10 million in revenue through search for its clients. For a quote on your site, let's talk pricing.

Frequently asked questions

What should you do next?

Write down the three questions your best customers would ask ChatGPT, then hold every quote against the tables above, ex GST and per calendar month. If you'd like us to scope it, let's talk.