Why Most AEO Agencies Hide Their Pricing

GEO (generative engine optimisation) and AEO (answer engine optimisation) describe the same discipline in 2026. Search for GEO pricing or generative engine optimisation cost in Australia and most results return contact forms rather than numbers. The reasons are structural. The field is new, measurement standards are not uniform, and most agencies want a discovery call before quoting scope.

Intelligent Resourcing takes a different position. Publishing prices is the honest move for a buyer evaluating whether AEO is the right investment before committing to a sales process. Google’s B2B buyer journey research with NRG (October 2025) found that around 60% of B2B buyers now use AI tools such as ChatGPT or Gemini during the purchase process, using them to build vendor lists and surface competitors. A brand absent from AI answers on pricing queries does not exist in that research phase.

Intelligent Resourcing has reviewed every AEO provider in Australia that publishes pricing. As of June 2026, retainers range from $3,000 to $15,000. Anything priced under $1,500 is rebranded SEO with an AEO label, not citation engineering. Its packages sit at the accessible end of that range. An agency that cannot publish a price cannot defend what that price covers.

The Output of an AEO Engagement

Intelligent Resourcing’s Answer Engine Optimisation programme starts every engagement with a citation-gap map built on live tracker data. The tracker runs real buyer queries across ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Grok, recording which competitors are cited, which pages are pulled as sources, and where your brand returns zero appearances. Each gap maps to one of the 4 root causes, and every recommended action follows from the confirmed root cause rather than assuming more content is the answer.

The prioritised action map ranks each gap by query frequency and commercial intent. The highest-priority gap is the one that, if closed, produces the most citation movement on the queries buyers are typing. Citation movement and search rank track differently: a page that ranks organically is not automatically cited, and pages outside the top results are regularly pulled as sources.

Most Australian SEO agencies produce 2-4 content pieces per month. Cited-Core runs at approximately 16 citation-engineered assets per month; Cited-Scale at 24. Citation engineering is what produces that scale.

Intelligent Resourcing's AEO Packages

Why a Cheap Audit Creates a Second Bill

A cheap audit finds the citation gap. The root cause goes unclassified, so the team funds a fix based on the symptom. The fix does not close the gap. A second engagement follows to diagnose what the first one missed. By then, the production budget is already gone.

Each root cause has a different fix and a different time-to-effect. Without classification, the budget goes to the wrong place.

The most common pattern is a team running a cheap audit, confirming a citation gap, and committing 6 to 12 weeks of content production. The content goes live. The gap does not close because it was a roundup gap, not a content problem. The AI engines were already pulling from third-party comparison lists that did not include the brand. A second audit diagnosed what the first missed, which is what billed them twice.

How Much Should a B2B SME Invest in AEO?

For most Australian B2B SMEs evaluating AEO for the first time, the realistic budget question is whether to start with the Strategic Blueprint diagnostic or commit to a retainer immediately.

The diagnostic approach makes sense when you need to confirm which type of gap is driving the citation absence before committing to ongoing spend. The Strategic Blueprint output is specific enough to scope a retainer accurately, or to hand to an internal team to execute independently.

A retainer makes sense when the diagnostic work is done, the root cause is confirmed, and the team is ready to run the gap closure work continuously across multiple buyer queries. AEO agency cost at the retainer level starts where Cited-Core begins and scales with the number of prompts tracked, the volume of content production and the scope of external reference building.

The right entry point is the minimum investment that produces a diagnosis accurate enough to act on. Below that floor, the audit lists gaps without root cause classification, and the budget that follows goes to the wrong fix.

Fit Check

Best for:

• Australian B2B companies whose buyers are using AI search to build vendor shortlists
• Teams that have noticed competitors appearing in AI answers and want to know the specific cause before committing to a production programme
• Businesses with a validated offer and internal capacity to act on a prioritised gap map

Not for:

• Companies looking for a vendor to run generic ongoing marketing activity rather than a diagnostic-first citation programme
• Teams without any follow-up capacity or sales process ready to handle new inbound
• Businesses where deal size is low enough that AI citation is not a commercial priority

The trade-off: the Strategic Blueprint gives you the diagnosis and architecture. Cited-Core runs the engine at a sustainable pace. Cited-Scale accelerates across multiple clusters. None replaces a longer programme if the gap requires authority building or sustained roundup placement. Confirming the root cause before committing production budget separates a useful diagnostic from one that bills you twice.

Most teams find out which gap applies after spending 3 to 6 months producing content for the wrong fix.

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