What does AEO cost in Australia?
AEO and GEO pricing in Australia varies widely, because the category is new and nobody has standardised it yet. This guide breaks down what is actually on offer at each price band, with real numbers, so you can place a quote before you get on a call about it.
What is available at each price level.
These describe the Australian market broadly as of mid-2026 and will shift as more specialists enter. Treat them as a map, not fixed rates.
| Band | Monthly cost | What is typically included | Who it fits |
|---|---|---|---|
| DIY tools | Free tiers up to about $400/mo (many are US tools priced in USD) | Self-serve monitoring and tracking. You run it and act on the data yourself | Teams with in-house capacity to do the work |
| Productized done-for-you | About $2,400 to $5,000/mo | Managed audit, on-site fixes, monthly reporting, some off-platform authority work | SMB and mid-market B2B SaaS with no dedicated AEO hire |
| Mid-market agency | About $6,500 to $14,000/mo | Integrated AEO and SEO, a larger team, broader scope | Companies with marketing teams and bigger budgets |
| Enterprise | About $8,000 to $25,000+/mo | Full service, dedicated account teams, sometimes alongside an existing PR or SEO retainer | Enterprise and ASX-listed buyers with larger marketing orgs |
For context, ordinary Australian SMB marketing retainers run roughly $1,500 to $5,000 a month, averaging around $2,500 to $3,500. Outloud sits at $2,400 for Core and $3,900 for Premium, excluding GST, at the accessible end of the productized band. The lower price comes from running on a lower cost base, and it holds the same scope. It is a deliberate position, not a discount to apologise for.
Why two AEO quotes can differ this much.
- How many engines are covered. ChatGPT only is cheaper than covering ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini and Google AI Overviews together.
- Whether off-platform authority work is included. Directory listings, review-site presence and structured forum work are sometimes bundled and sometimes billed as a separate line.
- How deep the reporting goes. A basic citation count costs less than a full report covering prompt coverage, consistency and share of answer against named competitors.
- The contract structure. Some Australian providers ask you to qualify on marketing budget before they will even run an audit. That is a market pattern worth knowing about when you compare quotes.
What it doesn’t cost.
AEO does not have to replace an existing SEO retainer. The technical foundation work it relies on, such as crawlability, structured data and plain site clarity, overlaps with good SEO practice rather than duplicating it. So the honest way to read the number is as a layer on top of what you already do, not a second full retainer competing with the first.
Straight answers about cost.
Is AEO priced per project or as a retainer?
Most Australian providers, including Outloud, run it as a monthly retainer rather than a one-off project fee. The work is audit-and-monitor by nature: you establish a baseline, make changes, then re-measure, so it fits a monthly rhythm better than a single project.
Does a bigger budget guarantee better AI visibility?
No. Research on AI citations finds that classical SEO signals like domain authority and backlink counts are weak predictors of whether ChatGPT cites a page, compared with clear content structure and a close match to the buyer’s question. A smaller, well-executed engagement can outperform a larger unfocused one on this specific channel. That is a genuine finding about how the engines behave, not a reason to treat cheaper as automatically better.
What is a reasonable minimum commitment?
It varies by provider. As one data point, Outloud runs month-to-month from day one with 30 days’ notice either way and no lock-in. Others ask for a three, six or twelve month term. There is no single market standard yet, so treat the commitment ask as part of the price, not a detail.