Quotes for an AI visibility audit run from free to $5,000, and the name alone tells you almost nothing about what you get. The price follows one thing: how much of a person's time is in it. A scan that software runs costs little or nothing. A report where someone asks ChatGPT your customers' questions and writes up the fixes costs a few hundred dollars. An agency engagement that tests six assistants against your competitors costs thousands.
We build LovedByAI, an AI search optimization platform for small businesses, and we offer free checks of our own, so we know what an automated check can and cannot tell an owner. For this guide we went through the audit prices sellers publish on their own websites, checked on 31 October 2026, and sorted them by what each one actually delivers. The term means very different things to different agencies, so the deliverables matter more than the label.
How Much Does an AI Visibility Audit Cost? Prices by Tier
| Tier | Typical price | Who does the work | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free automated check | $0 | Software | One check in minutes: crawler access, page structure and schema, or what AI assistants say about your business. A score, no advice. |
| One-off report | $97 to $300 | Software, sometimes reviewed or written by a person | 5 to 30 customer questions asked across several AI assistants, the competitors named instead of you, and a ranked fix list. |
| Human-led audit | $500 to $1,500 | A person, with a recorded video or a call | The questions, plus crawler, schema, Google Business Profile and directory checks, a walkthrough of the top fixes, and sometimes the fixes made for you. |
| Agency audit | $1,500 to $5,000 | An agency team | 4 to 6 assistants, 50 to 100 or more questions, competitors side by side, fix tickets or step-by-step instructions, and a longer walkthrough. |
| Tracking software | About $29 to $99 a month | Software | Checks over time whether AI answers mention you. A few plans also audit pages. |
| Managed retainer | From about $1,500 a month | An agency | Ongoing tracking plus content and fixes, usually on 90-day or longer terms. |
All of these are one-time prices except the last two. Some of the published prices behind the bands, checked on 31 October 2026:
- $97: one seller scans your site's schema, headings and business details, asks five buyer questions in six AI engines, and sends a plain-English fix list.
- $99: a self-serve tool asks 15 questions three times each in ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude and ranks up to 12 fixes. Another seller offers an analyst-reviewed snapshot at the same price.
- $297: a US agency has a person run 20 to 30 customer questions across five assistants and write up 10 to 20 ranked fixes within five business days.
- $500: a US agency asks ChatGPT 10 customer questions three times each, checks crawler access, your Google Business Profile and four directories, and records a 15-minute video of the top five fixes.
- $750: the agency behind the $297 report also makes the top fixes for you, including schema on up to five pages and your details on up to ten listings, then re-checks the answers 30 days later.
- $800: an agency runs 100 buyer questions across five engines and walks you through a 90-day plan on a call.
- From $1,299 or £2,500: agencies add competitor share of voice, 50 or more questions and a written roadmap, delivered over two to four weeks.
- $5,000: the top tier of the $500 agency covers six assistants, a 27-factor scorecard, fix tickets, a 60-minute walkthrough and a re-check 90 days later.
Many sellers publish no price at all and quote after a call. Several credit the audit fee if you sign up for their monthly service afterwards.
Is a $500 AI Visibility Audit Just an Automated Scan?
No seller we checked charges $500 for an automated scan. At $500 to $800 you are paying for a person to ask the questions your customers ask, read what the assistants say back, compare it with your website and listings, and tell you what to fix first. That judgement is the product.
The automated part is cheap. If a seller quotes $500 and the deliverable is a score and a generated PDF, you are paying for a scan you could run yourself for free. Ask to see a sample report before you pay.
What a Free AI Visibility Check Shows, and What It Misses
Three checks cover the automated part of a basic audit, and each is free:
- Crawler access. The robots.txt checker shows whether your site lets AI crawlers such as GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot in. OpenAI's crawlers made the largest share of AI crawler requests in our AI crawler statistics study, so they are the ones to check first.
- Page structure and schema. The LovedByAI site checker reads a page the way an AI system does: headings, direct answers, FAQs and Schema.org markup.
- What ChatGPT says. The ChatGPT visibility checker asks ChatGPT the question a ready-to-buy customer would type and shows which businesses it names.
Several AI search software vendors also offer free one-off graders. Most of them measure brand mentions in AI answers rather than your site's code, so they pair well with the checks above. Our guide to running an AI readiness audit on your own site walks through the rest by hand.
What free checks miss is the why. A scan can tell you ChatGPT named three competitors and not you. It cannot tell you that your Google Business Profile lists the wrong service area, or that a directory still shows your old address. It also can't see a firewall or security plugin that blocks AI bots even when your robots.txt lets them in. Those take a person.
When Is It Worth Paying for an AI Visibility Audit?
Pay for a human-led audit when one of these is true:
- The free checks look clean, but assistants still recommend competitors. Something off your site is deciding it, and a person needs to find it.
- ChatGPT gets your facts wrong. Wrong hours, services or location usually trace back to a listing or directory that disagrees with your site.
- You have several locations or a large site. More pages and more listings mean more places for details to drift.
- Nobody on your side will make the fixes. A done-for-you option, like the $750 tier above, costs less than an agency audit and leaves you with fixed pages rather than a to-do list.
For most local service businesses, the sensible order is: run the free checks, fix what they flag with your web person, and only then pay for a $300 to $800 audit if assistants still pass you over. The $1,500 to $5,000 agency audits test many more questions, assistants and competitors. That depth matters for multi-location brands and crowded markets, not for a two-person firm.
What Drives the Price of an AI Visibility Audit?
The price moves with a few concrete things, and you can ask about each:
- How many customer questions are tested, and how many times. AI answers vary between runs, so good audits ask each question more than once.
- How many assistants. Some cheap tiers test ChatGPT only. Agency tiers cover ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, and Claude.
- How many competitors are compared side by side.
- Whether a person writes it up, with a recorded video, a call or a written report.
- Whether the fixes are done for you, and whether the answers are re-checked afterwards.
If you want to understand the fixes before paying anyone, our AI search optimization guide for WordPress covers what these audits look for.
Questions to Ask Before You Pay for an AI Visibility Audit
- Which AI assistants will you test, how many of my customers' questions, and how many times each?
- Will a person read the answers, or is the report generated?
- Do you check my firewall and security plugin, not only robots.txt?
- Do you compare my Google Business Profile and directory listings with my website?
- Do I get a ranked fix list, and who makes the fixes?
- Will you re-check the answers after the fixes, and is the fee credited if I hire you afterwards?
If the answer is that they will check your meta tags and keyword density, they are selling a traditional SEO audit under a new name.
Watch: how to choose an AI SEO agency
AI Visibility Audit vs Traditional SEO Audit
| Feature | Traditional SEO Audit | AI Visibility Audit |
|---|---|---|
| Who it checks for | Googlebot and human searchers | AI assistants and crawlers like GPTBot and ClaudeBot |
| Main question | Where do you rank for a keyword? | Does an assistant name you, and does it get your details right? |
| Content check | Keywords, word count, readability | Direct answers to customer questions |
| Code focus | Page titles, tags and page speed | Structured data and whether AI crawlers can get in |
| Outside your site | Links from other websites | Matching business details across listings and directories |
The two overlap. Your existing SEO builds the authority and site structure AI tools rely on, and when AEO finds zero answers on your site, the content is usually there but not written as clear answers an AI can lift.
Ongoing AI Visibility Costs After the Audit
An audit is a snapshot, and AI answers shift as the assistants update. Tracking software that checks whether assistants mention you costs about $29 to $99 a month at the entry plans we checked; compare the options in our roundup of AI search visibility tools. Agencies that manage it for you charge from about $1,500 a month, and the published retainers we found ran up to $12,000 a month.
LovedByAI sits between the two: it does the on-page fixes on WordPress sites itself and reports the AI mentions and AI referral visits that follow. It is free for one page, then $29 a month billed yearly or $39 a month billed monthly. If your goal is to get ChatGPT to recommend your service business, the fixes matter more than the audit. What a good audit should cover differs by sector; our briefs for accountants, insurance agencies and real estate agencies set out what to expect.
