The question every agency asks the moment the first client says 'yes': what do we charge for this? The answer depends on what you deliver, but the model is almost always the same: a fixed monthly fee for tracking plus execution, with tracking as the foundation and execution as the work where the margin sits.
Why billing by the hour doesn't work
GEO isn't a project with a start and an end. AI models change, competitors move, sources come and go. A client who's in 30% of answers in March can be at 18% in June because a competitor got listed on a new comparison site. That means the value of GEO lies in continuing to track and adjust, not in a one-off audit.
Hourly billing fits that badly. The client sees an invoice saying 'research, 4 hours' and wonders what they got. A fixed monthly fee with a fixed report fits well: the client knows what they get, you know what you earn, and the report shows every month why the fee is justified. The same goes the other way: reselling a bare subscription to a tracking tool without execution is selling a product the client can buy themselves. The margin is in the work.
Three packages
Most agencies end up with three tiers. The names differ; the structure doesn't.
Tier 1: Insight. Tracking on three or four AI models, the client's own login in your branding, a weekly report by email and a monthly report. You discuss the report in fifteen minutes a month. No execution. This is the entry point for clients who first want to see what's happening. Typical fee: €150 to €250 per month.
Tier 2: Improve. Everything in tier 1 plus execution of a fixed number of actions per month from the action list: approaching sources, technical fixes (robots.txt, llms.txt, structured data), correcting facts, page titles. Usually three to five actions a month. This is the package most clients take. Typical fee: €350 to €600 per month.
Tier 3: Improve + content. Everything in tier 2 plus writing the pages that fill the content gaps (the sub-questions AI asks itself for which the client has no answer), one or two a month, plus optionally daily tracking. Typical fee: €750 to €1,500 per month, depending on the number of pages and the market.
Offer the tiers as a choice, but steer towards tier 2. Tier 1 exists to keep the threshold low; tier 3 to show a ceiling.
Worked example: costs, revenue and margin
Your cost per client is the plan you pick for that client. With GeoReady an agency pays nothing for the portal and per client a business plan: Pro €95 per month (50 prompts, three AI models), Growth €249 (150 prompts, four AI models, several locations) or Scale €499. See the current pricing. For most local and SMB clients Pro is enough; Growth is for clients with several locations or countries.
Say: eight clients, six on Pro and two on Growth, all in tier 2 at an average of €450 per month.
- To GeoReady: 6 × €95 + 2 × €249 = €1,068 per month.
- Revenue: 8 × €450 = €3,600 per month.
- Gross margin before hours: €2,532 per month.
Subtract your hours. In tier 2 a client costs two to four hours a month on average: an hour of signals and prioritizing, one to two hours of execution (the actions come with steps and code), half an hour discussing the report. At an internal €85 per hour that's €170 to €340 per client, leaving €15 to €185 per client on top of the plan and the hourly work you already get paid for. More importantly: it's eight clients who come back every month, with no acquisition.
What you leave out of the price
Three things belong outside the monthly fee.
- Large content projects. A series of ten location pages or a full buying guide is a project with its own quote, even if it comes from the GEO action list.
- Website technology outside your control. If the client's site is with another agency and every change needs a ticket, charge the coordination separately or hand the technical actions to the other agency. You deliver the code and the instructions.
- Extra AI models and daily tracking. Claude as a fourth model or daily tracking instead of three times a week are add-ons to the plan; offer them only if the client really asks, and pass them through.
Pitches and new clients
For prospects there's a separate model. A pitch with GeoReady costs €39 per prospect (or €149 for ten): seven days of tracking with everything in Pro, a pitch report and a live view in your branding. In the meeting you show where the prospect stands, who wins and what the first actions are. Win the client and the pitch becomes a client project with one click, history included. Not won? It cost €39. So don't use the pitch for existing clients (put those on a plan straight away), but keep it for acquisition.
Common pricing mistakes
Starting too low to 'get in'. Raising a €99-a-month service to €450 is harder than asking €350 from the start. Begin with tier 2 as the default and use tier 1 only when the client explicitly wants to look first.
Selling tracking as a separate product. Then the client compares you with the price of the tool. Sell tracking plus execution plus report as one service; tracking is the proof, not the product.
No minimum period. Cancel-monthly is fine and sells more easily, but agree that the first tracking period runs three months: shorter isn't a fair test, because source actions need time to show up in answers.
Promising results. Promise tracking, execution and transparency. Don't promise a position in ChatGPT; you don't control it. Clients who got a promise that didn't come true cancel. Clients who see every month what happened and why, stay.
How to deliver the service under your own brand, without the GeoReady name, is in white-label GEO.
Price GEO as a fixed monthly service with three tiers: tracking + report, tracking + execution, and tracking + execution + content. Cost per client from €95; a fee of €250 to €750 is common.