Code23’s AI Visibility & Search Audit is £1,500 + VAT fixed. The free AI visibility snapshot shows the gap in 48 hours with no charge. Ongoing work after the audit is quoted from the 90-day roadmap before anything starts, and the audit fee is credited against the first month if you continue. Those are the published prices on our AEO & AI Search Visibility page.

Market retainers elsewhere run much wider. Searchable’s illustrative agency tiers (webinar, September 2026) put visibility monitoring around $3k a month, growth around $5k-$7k, and full partner work at $10k+ a month, with some partners charging far more. A local dentist example in the same session sat around $900 a month for light monitoring. The range is wide because delivery cost, prompt coverage and how much implementation the agency takes on all move the floor.

This piece publishes our audit numbers, explains the three shapes ongoing work usually takes, and lists the questions that protect buyers. For the definition and mechanics, start with What is answer engine optimisation?. For how assistants pick brands, see How do you get recommended by ChatGPT and Claude?.

The short answer: UK AEO prices at Code23

Offer	Price	What it is
Free AI visibility snapshot	Free	Five high-intent prompts, ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews, who appears instead of you. One-page report in 48 hours.
AI Visibility & Search Audit	£1,500 + VAT fixed	50 buyer questions across four engines, competitor gap, which third-party sites AI already cites, technical AI-readiness, GA4 / Search Console, 90-day roadmap. Ten working days. Credited against the first month if you continue.

Ongoing work after the audit is not a published menu of monthly figures. It is quoted from the roadmap before anything starts. Scope is written before work begins. Nothing changes until you approve the starting picture.

What you are paying for after the audit

Ongoing AEO work usually takes one of three shapes, chosen from the roadmap rather than sold as a blind package:

Monitoring only answers “where do we stand every month?” You get a maintained core list of buyer questions, a monthly visibility report, a heads-up when sentiment spikes, and a quarterly review of that question list. You do not get the full roadmap executed. That is the honest limit.

Closing the gaps answers “fix the absences, do not only measure them.” Technical fixes ship in your codebase. Answer-first pages come from real absences in the question list. Entity and schema work stop the brand looking like three companies. The question list widens across learn, consider and purchase.

Winning mentions away from competitors with digital PR answers “get named instead of the rivals showing up today.” Off-site and digital PR target the sources AI already cites in your category. Ecommerce brands add shopping and product visibility. Reporting includes AI traffic and ROI inside your own analytics, and every quarter we review what changed against where you started.

Searchable’s illustrative $3k / $5k-$7k / $10k+ ladder (September 2026 webinar) maps to the same monitoring / growth / partner shape. Our UK work sits below those illustrative US-dollar agency tiers when we ship technical fixes ourselves, publish the audit price before anyone asks, and keep the audit as a fixed entry rather than an open-ended discovery. The quote after the audit follows the shape the evidence supports.

Why the market range is so wide

Five delivery-cost inputs set the floor (Searchable packaging framing, September 2026 webinar):

Platform capacity - how many prompts you track, across how many engines, how often
Strategy and account time - diagnosis, prioritisation, client decisions
Production and delivery - technical fixes, content, schema, entity clean-up
Earned media and distribution - pitching the sources assistants already trust
Target margin - what the agency needs left after those costs

The size of the question list multiplies platform and reporting cost. Fifty commercial buyer questions is a different job from a twenty-question pitch toy. Implementation weight multiplies production cost: monitoring-only is cheaper than shipping fixes in your repository and earning mentions on the sites AI already quotes.

That is why a local dentist example can sit near $900 a month while some partners quote $40k-$60k. Different coverage, different off-site load, different margin targets. Ask what is included before you compare the headline number to our pricing.

Classic SEO pricing in the UK is a related but separate conversation. SEO retainers often price content volume and link acquisition. AEO retainers should price question coverage, citation tracking, work on the sites AI already cites, and a clear starting picture you can measure against. If an “AI SEO” quote only lists blog posts per month, it is ordinary content marketing with a new label. For how the jobs differ, see AEO vs SEO.

Why measuring first protects the buyer

Without an agreed starting point, nobody can show what three months of work changed. Agencies can narrate activity. Buyers cannot check whether anything actually moved.

A proper starting picture locks:

The list of questions your buyers ask (categories, weights, engines, named competitors)
Visibility, citation and sentiment before any change
Crawler access and technical readiness
Connected GA4 and Search Console

Our audit exists so the retainer conversation starts from evidence. Conductor CMO study, 2026: 94% of enterprises plan to increase AEO or GEO investment in 2026. Rising demand without a clear starting picture produces expensive noise.

Month three is when a serious buyer asks what the work is delivering. Design the programme so that question has an answer against where you started, not against a vibe.

What a monthly report must contain

Every monthly report should answer four questions in plain language:

What changed - citation presence, sentiment, competitor moves, and shifts in which sites AI quotes on the agreed questions
What we delivered - technical fixes shipped, pages published, outreach sent, entity updates
What it means - the three numbers that show it is working, not vanity scores; which gaps closed, which remain
What happens next - the next priorities, with owners and done-when criteria

The month-three question is sharper: continue, change course, expand, or fix a risk. That quarterly review sits on what changed against where you started. If your agency cannot show the before-and-after, you are funding motion.

The three numbers that show it is working (and why none proves revenue alone)

Crawler activity. Are the assistants and search bots that matter actually fetching the money pages? Silence here often means a robots, WAF or rendering problem, not a content problem.

AI referral quality. Visits from chatgpt.com, claude.ai, gemini.google.com, perplexity.ai and similar referrers, watched for engagement and conversion quality inside your own analytics. Volume alone misleads; pre-sold referral quality matters more.

Branded search. Lifts in branded queries can follow stronger assistant mentions. They can also follow offline campaigns, PR or seasonality. Treat branded search as a corroborating signal, not as proof.

HubSpot-style attribution anecdotes in the wider market often show AI as a small share of measured traffic while a larger share of customers say they found the brand via AI. That gap is why we report the three numbers that show it is working in your stack and refuse placement guarantees. Searchable’s September 2026 data on which sites AI cites still shows professional services brands earning only 26.9% of AI citations from their own domain (retail 28.6%, finance 29.6%, hospitality 33.7%, B2B tech 41.4%), so off-site work remains part of the cost story.

Four questions to ask any agency selling AI SEO

1. How do you choose the list of buyer questions?
Ask for learn / consider / purchase coverage, unbranded weighting, and how commercial categories were chosen. Twenty questions is a demo. A serious list is agreed with you before measurement starts.

2. Show me how you measure where we stand today.
Visibility, citations, sentiment, crawler access and connected analytics before any change. If work starts before that exists, walk away.

3. Which sources does my category actually get cited from?
Ask which third-party sites already feed answers in your category. Professional services and retail lean harder on third parties than some B2B tech niches. Scope should follow that mix.

4. What will you show me at month three?
You want the before-and-after against where you started, delivered work, the three numbers that show it is working, and a continue / change / expand decision. Not a new slogan.

Those four questions match the selection criteria we publish on the AEO service page. Use them on us too.

Red flags

Guaranteed placements inside ChatGPT or Claude. Assistants choose sources by their own retrieval rules. A fixed listing promise is a red flag.

Paid mentions sold as earned media. Paying for a directory spam blast is not the same as earning a citation on a source assistants already trust.

No analytics access. If the agency will not work inside your GA4, Search Console or equivalent, you cannot keep the measurement when you leave.

Twenty-question lists. Too thin for commercial coverage, too easy to overfit in a pitch.

Activity without a starting picture. Reports full of tasks and empty of before-and-after.

Tool lock-in as the product. Platforms help. The programme should still make sense if you keep your own analytics and change vendors later.

FAQ

How much does AI SEO cost?

There is no standard price yet because the work is new and agencies bundle it differently. In the agency-training material we work from (Searchable, September 2026), monitoring-only retainers start around $3,000 a month, growth retainers run $5,000 to $7,000, and full partner programmes $10,000 and up, with a local dentist example at roughly $900 a month for light monitoring. UK prices for small and mid-sized businesses sit well under those figures. Our audit and snapshot prices are in the table at the top of this guide.

How much does SEO cost in the UK?

Classic SEO is a separate line from AEO, priced by content volume, technical debt and link work rather than by AI visibility. We cover it in its own guide: How much does SEO cost in the UK? An AI SEO quote that only lists blog posts per month is ordinary content marketing with a new badge.

Does AI SEO really work?

It works as a contribution you can measure, not as a guaranteed placement. Investment is rising (Conductor CMO study, 2026: 94% of enterprises plan to spend more on it), and the data on which sites AI cites (Searchable, September 2026) shows most citations in many industries still come from third parties, so the work has to reach beyond your own site. Judge it by the three numbers that show it is working: are AI crawlers reaching your pages, how do visitors from AI assistants behave, and is branded search rising. Do not buy a ChatGPT listing promise.

What should an AEO audit include?

A list of the questions your buyers actually ask assistants, where you stand on visibility and sentiment across the engines that matter to you, which competitors appear where you do not, which third-party sites those answers pull from, whether AI crawlers can read your site, connected analytics, and a 90-day plan you can read in ten minutes. If an audit skips the third-party sites, it has skipped most of the work.

What is the difference between monitoring and a growth retainer?

Monitoring tells you where you stand each month and flags changes; nothing on the site changes. Growth work closes the gaps: technical fixes, answer-first pages and entity clean-up. Winning mentions away from competitors adds PR aimed at the places assistants already trust. Buy the level the audit’s plan actually calls for, not the one with the most bullet points.

Next reads: What is answer engine optimisation?, How do you get recommended by ChatGPT and Claude?, and the live offer on AEO & AI Search Visibility.

How Much Does AEO Cost in the UK?