An AEO audit costs $1,500 to $12,000, and the median is $4,300. That is the range for a one-time answer engine optimization audit in First Page Sage's pricing report, published October 7, 2026, from 1,146 price quotes. Free audits exist too, from studios including Space & Story, and cover less. For a small site, the price mostly tracks how many pages get reviewed.
First Page Sage sells GEO and AEO services itself, so this is an agency-published study, not an independent survey. It states no currency or country; we read its figures as US dollars, not Canadian prices. Answer engine optimization (AEO) means getting your business named and cited in answers from ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews, as our plain-English explainer covers.
Key facts
- One-time AEO audit: $1,500 to $12,000 USD, median $4,300, typical term 2 to 6 weeks (First Page Sage, 2026-10-07).
- Only 8% of the 214 agencies in that study sell a standalone audit. 68% price AEO as a monthly retainer.
- Small-business audit pages quote lower: $500 to $3,500 at Studio Blue Creative in Tennessee, $1,500 to $5,000 at 310 Creative.
- Free audits exist: Veza Digital delivers one in 5 business days; ours at /audit takes 24 hours.
- Fixes are usually extra. HubSpot's cost guide says they are "usually billed separately" (HubSpot, updated 2026-09-08).
How much does an AEO audit cost in 2026?
A paid AEO audit costs $1,500 to $12,000 USD in 2026, with a median of $4,300, according to the First Page Sage report. In Canadian dollars, at the Bank of Canada rate of 1.4038 on October 27, 2026, the median is about CA$6,036 and the range runs from about CA$2,106 to CA$16,846.
An Ontario provider quoting in Canadian dollars adds 13% HST on top (CRA). A CA$6,036 audit becomes CA$6,821 on the invoice.
Small-business price pages from other providers mostly land below the report's median:
| Source | Audit price (USD) | Who publishes it | Page date |
|---|---|---|---|
| First Page Sage report | $1,500 to $12,000, median $4,300 | Agency study of 214 agencies | 2026-10-07 |
| Studio Blue Creative | $500 to $3,500 for small and mid-sized businesses | Tennessee agency | Undated |
| 310 Creative | $1,500 to $5,000 (its pricing table says up to $7,500) | Agency | August 2026 |
| Pravin Kumar | $1,000 to $10,000, fixed fee set by scope | Solo consultant, Bengaluru | 2026-07-19 |
| HubSpot | "Free to a few hundred dollars" for a diagnostic audit; agency audit or sprint from about $3,000 | Software vendor | 2026-09-08 |
The audit is the cheapest way to buy AEO from an agency. The same report puts the median Starter retainer at $2,950 a month with a three-month minimum, which is $8,850 before anything changes on your site. A project or sprint has a median of $14,500. Our GEO vs AEO services cost post compares those models side by side.
What's in a free vs $4,300 vs $12,000 audit?
A free audit gives you a measured baseline and a short fix list. A mid-priced audit adds a person reading every page against customer questions. The First Page Sage report prices audits but never says what one contains, and no provider we read publishes the contents of a $12,000 audit.
So the table below maps each price point to the scope a named provider publishes for something near it:
| Price point | Example | What the provider says is included | Turnaround |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | Veza Digital | Citation count across 6 AI platforms, AI traffic and how it converts, top competitor gaps, 3 to 5 quick wins | 5 business days |
| Free | Space & Story | 24-page report: phone and desktop speed, how often six AI tools mention you, whether Google and AI tools can read your pages, per-page content gap against your top competitor, prioritized fix list | 24 hours |
| $500 to $900 | Studio Blue entry tier | Automated audit | 3 to 5 days |
| $1,000 to $2,500 | Studio Blue mid-range | Crawl of roughly 75 to 100 pages, customer-question gap analysis, schema review, entity and citation signals, Google Business Profile and local pages, prioritized plan | 10 to 21 business days |
| $1,500 to $5,000 | 310 Creative | AI visibility baseline, schema gaps, technical issues that block AI crawlers, prioritized roadmap | Not stated |
| Around $4,300 (median) | First Page Sage report | Contents not itemized | 2 to 6 weeks |
| $2,500 to $5,000+ | Studio Blue enterprise tier | Comprehensive audit for larger sites | 4 to 6 weeks |
| Up to $12,000 | First Page Sage report (top of range) | Contents not itemized | 2 to 6 weeks |
Read across the rows and the pattern is page count and labour. Studio Blue names page count as the biggest cost driver. Pravin Kumar prices "a small, clean site" at the low end and a large or neglected one at the high end. A site with a dozen pages and a store with thousands of product pages are different jobs, so expect different prices.
For a small site, a $12,000 audit is hard to justify on the published evidence. Nobody shows what the extra $7,700 above the median buys, so ask the seller to list it.
Is a free AEO audit worth anything?
A free AEO audit is worth reading when it reports things it measured, names the AI engines and prompts it tested, and tells you what it did not check. It is worth little when it hands you one score out of 100 with no method behind it.
Every free audit is also a sales tool. Veza's sits next to a "Book a Call" button. Ours ends with the build and monthly plan that fit your site, priced up front. That does not make the findings wrong, but it does mean you should check them.
Three checks sort a useful free audit from a lead magnet:
- Can you repeat a finding? If it says ChatGPT doesn't mention you for a prompt, type that exact prompt into ChatGPT yourself.
- Does it name its engines? "AI visibility" with no list of tools is not a measurement. Our guide to measuring AI search visibility shows what a repeatable test looks like.
- Is the fix list ranked? Twenty unranked issues leave you where you started. You want the three that matter most, first.
If a free audit passes all three, you may not need a paid one yet. Spend the money on the fixes instead.
What should an AEO audit cover? (checklist)
An AEO audit should cover whether AI tools can reach your pages, whether they can understand them, whether they mention you today, and what to fix first. The checklist below pulls together the scopes published by Studio Blue, 310 Creative, Pravin Kumar, HubSpot and the free audits above.
| Check | What you should get back | Named in |
|---|---|---|
| AI visibility baseline | Which engines and prompts were tested, and where you appear or don't | 310 Creative, HubSpot, Veza, Space & Story |
| Crawler access | Whether robots rules or site setup block AI crawlers | 310 Creative, Pravin Kumar, Space & Story |
| Schema markup | What structured data exists, what's missing, what to add | Studio Blue, 310 Creative, HubSpot, Pravin Kumar |
| Content vs customer questions | Which questions buyers ask that no page answers | Studio Blue, Pravin Kumar (content structure) |
| Entity and citation signals | Whether other sites and listings describe you consistently | Studio Blue, Pravin Kumar |
| Local signals | Google Business Profile alignment, location pages | Studio Blue |
| Competitor benchmark | Who gets named instead of you, and why | HubSpot, Veza, Space & Story |
| Technical performance | Speed and page health | Pravin Kumar, Space & Story |
| Ranked fix list | Top fixes first, each with a reason and a next step | Pravin Kumar, Studio Blue, 310 Creative, Space & Story |
Before you pay, send the provider this table and ask which rows they cover. Also ask how many pages they will review, and whether fixes are quoted separately. HubSpot's guide says they usually are, either as a project or a retainer.
Most of the fixes these audits find are the same ones that get a site cited by ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.
How long does an AEO audit take?
An AEO audit takes anywhere from 24 hours to 6 weeks. The First Page Sage report gives 2 to 6 weeks as the typical term for a paid audit.
| Audit type | Turnaround | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Space & Story free audit | 24 hours | /audit |
| Automated entry audit | 3 to 5 days | Studio Blue |
| Veza free audit | 5 business days | Veza Digital |
| Mid-range audit (75 to 100 pages) | 10 to 21 business days | Studio Blue |
| Paid agency audit, typical | 2 to 6 weeks | First Page Sage |
| Comprehensive enterprise audit | 4 to 6 weeks | Studio Blue |
Longer is not better on its own. A six-week timeline makes sense for thousands of pages or a site with access to Search Console and analytics data. A 15-page service business does not need six weeks for anyone to read it.
What this post doesn't cover
First Page Sage gives no country breakdown, so none of its audit figures are Canadian prices. Studio Blue's and Veza's pages carry no publication date. We did not buy any of these audits or compare their reports. Every price here is what the seller publishes about itself, including ours.
Where Space & Story fits
Our audit at /audit is free, runs to 24 pages, and arrives within 24 hours. It covers speed, mentions across six AI tools, crawler access, a per-page content gap against your top competitor, and a ranked fix list.
We don't sell paid audits. AEO work is included in every monthly plan: Local CA$300/mo, Growth CA$700/mo, Authority CA$2,000+/mo, all in Canadian dollars plus HST (pricing). Whether AEO needs its own budget line at all is the question our pillar on AEO budgets answers, and the wider market prices sit on our AEO cost comparison.