Every price we charge is on this page. If a vendor needs a discovery call before telling you a number, that is a negotiating position, not a scoping requirement.
Last updated · Prices in USD
How much does answer-engine optimization cost? Shortlisted charges $1,500 for a one-off Index Report, $3,000/month for the Core retainer (three-month minimum) and $6,000/month for Category (six-month minimum). Across the wider market, mid-market GEO retainers run roughly $2,000–$8,000 per month, one-off audits $1,500–$5,000, and enterprise engagements $10,000–$30,000 per month.
The diagnosis. Buy it, act on it yourself, and never speak to us again if you like.
The default engagement. Measurement plus the work that changes the measurement.
For brands that intend to own the shortlist rather than appear on it.
Published and estimated 2026 rates across the category, so you can see exactly where we sit. We would rather you chose us knowing the alternatives than not.
| Tier | Monthly | What you get | Right for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Self-serve tools | $85 – $500 | Dashboards tracking mentions and citations across a limited number of engines. Measurement only. | Teams with in-house capacity who need visibility, not help |
| Budget agencies | from $1,500 | Content volume, light monitoring. Rarely a disclosed prompt panel or variance reporting. | Buyers optimising for price over rigour |
| Shortlisted Core | $3,000 | Published panel, five runs per engine, three metrics, plus citation and entity work. | Mid-market SaaS and e-commerce, $5M–$100M revenue |
| Specialist B2B agencies | $3,000 – $20,000 | Vertical focus, revenue framing, published case studies. Strong operators. | Funded B2B SaaS with an existing content engine |
| Content-led agencies | $8,000 – $11,000 | Editorial depth, digital PR, data journalism. Outcomes usually reported as content metrics. | Brands where the bottleneck is publishing capacity |
| Enterprise technical | $10,000 – $30,000 | Deep retrieval and embeddings work, original research. Bespoke, no public rate card. | Large organisations with complex sites |
Ranges compiled from publicly stated agency rate cards and published 2026 pricing surveys of the GEO market. Estimated figures are marked as such in our sources; enterprise pricing in particular is third-party estimate rather than disclosed rate. We have no commercial relationship with any firm listed.
Below that price you are buying a dashboard with a person attached to it, and you would be better off buying the dashboard.
The economics are simple. A monthly panel across four engines at five runs per prompt is real compute and real analyst hours before a single improvement is made. Add citation placement, entity work and content production, and a sub-$3,000 retainer can only be delivered by cutting the measurement — which is the part that makes the rest defensible.
So the honest positioning is this: if all you need is measurement, buy a tool and keep your money. We will tell you that on the first call. What you are paying us for is the work that moves the number, and the evidence that it moved.
One real buyer prompt for your category, the verbatim answer, and the one thing we would fix first. No charge, no call.