Buyer question
How much does answer engine optimization cost per month?
Software that only tracks your visibility had reported entry prices of $29–$295 a month in run A of our September 2026 audit. A managed programme, where someone else writes the pages and fixes the markup, was reported at $1,000–$8,000 in both runs. We charge $99–$799.
Updated 20 October 2026 · 7 minute read
Those three bands cover almost every quote you will see, and the gap between the first and the last is not margin — it is a different purchase.
Below is the full spread with where each figure came from, the five things that actually move the number, and the point at which you should not be paying anyone yet.
The four price bands
Swipe sideways to see every column
| Band | Typical monthly | What you get | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Do it yourself | $0 | You ask the engines by hand and fix your own pages | Sites under roughly twenty pages, or anyone not yet sure this matters |
| Tracking software | $29–$295 reported in run A, Sep 2026 | Scheduled checks, dashboards, competitor comparison. No writing. | Teams with someone in-house who will act on the findings |
| Managed programme | $1,000–$8,000 | Tracking plus content, structured data and outreach done for you | Brands with budget and no spare capacity |
| Enterprise | $10,000–$25,000+ reported, Sep 2026 | Many markets, languages and brands, digital PR, deep reporting | Large organisations with procurement |
Where every figure on this page comes from. Our own prices — $99, $299, $799 — are ours and are exact. Every other number on this page, including the four bands above, is what Perplexity reported on 19 September 2026 in run A of the audit we stored and published, not a price we have independently verified. We asked each question twice that day and the two runs do not agree about prices, so every figure here names its run.
The tracking band is the span of the reported entry prices in the table further down, from Otterly at about $29 to AthenaHQ at about $295 in run A; Perplexity’s own summary put do-it-yourself and tooling together at $0–$500 in both runs. Prices in this category move quickly — check the vendor’s own page before you rely on anything here.
Where those numbers come from
On 19 September 2026 we put the question “How much does answer engine optimization cost per month?” to Perplexity through its API, as part of our own published audit. This is what it told buyers, citing ten sources:
- DIY and tools: $0–$500 a month, plus your team’s time.
- Basic small-business programme: $1,000–$2,500 a month.
- Mid-market managed service: $2,000–$8,000 a month — which it described as the most common range.
- Enterprise: $10,000–$25,000+ a month.
- One-off audit or setup: $500–$5,000.
That is worth knowing for a reason beyond the numbers: it is what a prospective buyer is being told right now when they ask. If your quote sits far outside it, you will be arguing against the engine’s summary before you have said anything.
To repeat, because it matters: these are what Perplexity reported, dated, from a run we stored. We have not independently audited any other vendor’s books. Treat them as the market’s current public answer, not as verified prices.
Published tool prices, as the engines report them
Asked separately for alternatives to Profound, the same audit returned these figures. Again: reported, dated 19 September 2026, not verified by us — and the two runs of that question do not agree, so both are shown.
| Tool | Reported entry price | Positioned as |
|---|---|---|
| Otterly.AI | run A: ~$29/month run B: ~$29/month | Budget tracking for small teams and agencies |
| HubSpot AEO | run A: $50/month run B: $50/month | Simple tracking inside a wider marketing suite |
| Peec AI | run A: ~$95/month run B: ~$89–$95/month | Prompt-level visibility and citation analysis |
| Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit | run A: ~$99/month per domain run B: no price given | AI visibility beside conventional SEO data |
| AthenaHQ | run A: ~$295/month run B: no price given | Broad engine coverage with dashboards and attribution |
| Scrunch AI | run A: no price given run B: ~$250/month | How AI systems describe and experience your brand |
| Profound | Quoted per contract in both runs | Enterprise, many markets and languages |
Notice the shape: tracking is cheap and getting cheaper, because querying an API and charting the result is not hard. Everything above $500 is being charged for labour.
The five things that actually set your price
- How many questions are tracked. This is the main meter in almost every tool. Twenty-five questions and two hundred are very different bills.
- How many engines, and how they are checked. An engine with a public API is cheap to add. Google AI Overviews and Microsoft Copilot have no public consumer API, so anyone covering them is either doing it by hand or scraping. Ask which.
- How many brands and markets. Each extra brand or country multiplies the question set, and that multiplies everything downstream.
- Who does the fixing. The single biggest divide on this page. A dashboard is software margin; writing twenty pages a month is a salary.
- Whether anyone is building third-party sources. Getting listed accurately on the review sites and directories the engines already cite is slow, relationship-shaped work and it is priced accordingly. It is also, in our reading of the citation data, where a lot of the movement is.
What we charge, and what it does not include
Our prices are $99, $299 and $799 a month, month to month, no setup fee. They are listed in full on the plans page. The honest framing:
Swipe sideways to see every column
| Plan | Monthly | Brands | Tracked questions | Manual checks | Engines |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $99 | 1 | Up to 25 | 4 a month | 1 — Perplexity |
| Growth | $299 | Up to 3 | Up to 100 | 20 a month | All engines we track |
| Scale | $799 | Up to 20 | Up to 500 | 100 a month | All engines we track |
These are the caps the application enforces, read from the same file the checkout and the app itself read, and the question limit is counted per brand rather than across the account.
Scheduled checks and the work a person does
Every paid plan also gets a scheduled check every week for each brand, and Growth and Scale also check up to 25 or 100 key questions every day; the manual checks above are on top of them. A Free account gets no scheduled check.
What each step up buys beyond the caps is work a person does: structured data set up for you from Starter up, monthly content fixes written for you and a monthly call on Growth, and source building plus a named strategist you work with directly on Scale.
Nothing is emailed. No email provider is configured yet and the monthly report is written and tested but dormant, so the report you read is the one in the app, rendered from the run. We would rather say that here than have you wait for a message that cannot arrive.
“All engines we track” means Perplexity today. It is the only engine we hold an API key for. ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini adapters are built and waiting on keys.
Google AI Overviews and Copilot have no public consumer API, so we do not track them on any plan and do not pretend to. We would rather lose the sale than have you discover that in month two.
We sit below the $1,000–$2,500 “basic programme” band because we are narrower than the agencies in it. That is the trade, stated plainly: less coverage, less money.
When you should not pay anyone, including us
- Your site is under about twenty pages. Measuring an empty site tells you what you already know. Spend the money on content first.
- You have an in-house SEO who only needs the numbers. Buy a tracker. Otterly’s own pricing page showed an entry plan at $29 a month when we read it on 1 October 2026, and run A reported Peec AI at about $95; both are below our $99, and a tracker is built to show charts, which we are not. We have used neither. Pay for work, not for data you already know how to act on.
- Nobody on your side will action the report. This is an easy way to waste money in this category. A dashboard nobody opens is the most expensive thing on this page.
- You were promised placement. Nobody can sell you a guaranteed mention in an AI answer. Anyone quoting a price for one is selling something they do not control.
Five questions to ask before you sign
- Which engines do you query through an API, and which do you check by hand?
- How many questions and how many brands does this price cover?
- Can I see one real report — not a sample deck — before I buy?
- Who writes the pages: you, or me?
- What happens to my data and my question history if I leave?
Vagueness on any of these predicts vagueness later. The fourth one can explain the whole price difference by itself.
Common questions
How much does answer engine optimization cost per month?
Software that only tracks your visibility had reported entry prices between $29 and $295 a month in run A when we checked on 19 September 2026: Otterly at about $29 and AthenaHQ at about $295 were the ends of that range in run A. Run B, a minute later, reported no price for AthenaHQ at all and topped out at $250 for Scrunch AI. Perplexity’s own summary put do-it-yourself and tooling at $0 to $500 in both runs. A managed programme where someone else does the writing and the technical work was reported at between $1,000 and $8,000 a month in both runs, and both runs put enterprise programmes at $10,000 to $25,000+ a month. Bungad charges $99, $299 or $799 a month, below that managed range, because we cover one engine automatically rather than a dozen surfaces.
Why is the price range for AEO so wide?
Because the label covers two different purchases. A tracker tells you what the engines say and stops there. A managed programme also writes the pages, fixes the structured data and builds third-party sources, which is labour and priced like labour. Five things drive the number: how many questions are tracked, how many engines and markets, how many brands, who does the fixing, and whether anyone is pursuing mentions on outside sources.
Is there a free way to do AEO?
Yes. The do-it-yourself band costs nothing: you ask the engines by hand and fix your own pages. For a site under roughly twenty pages that is the right first step, and paying anyone before that is premature. The step-by-step version of the free method is set out separately at bungad.com/aeo-for-small-business.
What should I ask before paying for AEO?
Ask which engines are actually queried through an API and which are checked by hand, because ‘all the AI platforms’ can hide engines that are checked by hand or scraped. Ask how many questions and brands the price covers. Ask to see one real report before you buy. Ask what happens to your data if you leave. And treat any guarantee of placement in AI answers as disqualifying, because nobody controls that.
More guides
Read next
Find out what you would be paying for
Enter your domain. We ask Perplexity three of your buyers’ questions and show you whether you were named and which domains the engine cited — before you spend anything.
3 questions on Perplexity, free. A domain checked in the last week is served from that stored run rather than asked again, and the daily free allowance resets at midnight UTC.
