# [AEO agency pricing: what each model quietly incentivises](https://rebilder.com/solutions/aeo-agency) > Retainer, project or performance: how an AEO agency charges decides what it optimises for. Which model fits, and the one that cannot work. - **Updated:** 2026-08-17 We are not an agency. If you are hiring one, the pricing model shapes the work more than the scope document does, and one of the three common models is structurally unable to deliver what it promises. ## What you get - The three ways these engagements are priced - What each one rewards, including the parts nobody says out loud - Why performance pricing on citations cannot work - The free baseline to take before any of them starts ## The three models How an agency charges determines what it does when the engagement gets difficult. That is worth reading before the scope document, because the scope describes intentions and the pricing describes incentives. | Model | What it rewards | Fits when | | --- | --- | --- | | Monthly retainer | Continuing. Work that finishes is a problem to be replaced | You genuinely need ongoing content and someone to work the backlog | | Fixed project | Finishing. Scope creep is the agency’s cost, not yours | The job is the one-time technical half plus a template restructure | | Performance | Whatever the metric is, including gaming it | Only if the metric is one both sides control. See below | The mismatch to watch for is a retainer priced against work that is mostly one-time. Serving-layer setup, a bot-rule review and structured-data corrections do not recur; billing them monthly is charging rent on a change that already happened. ## Why performance pricing on citations cannot work Pay-per-result sounds like the vendor absorbing the risk, and for classic SEO it roughly is: a ranking is observable, attributable and stable enough to write into a contract. None of those three hold here. - **Not observable.** There is no position in a generated answer, and no complete record of what any assistant told anyone. What gets reported is a sample of prompts somebody chose. - **Not attributable.** The same prompt returns different answers minutes apart for reasons unrelated to your site. Attributing a change to the work requires a counterfactual nobody has. - **Not controlled.** Assistants are not deterministic and no vendor controls their output, so neither party can move the number on purpose. > **What the incentive actually produces** A contract paying on sampled mentions rewards choosing favourable prompts and reporting the sample that worked. That is not fraud so much as the predictable result of pricing against a metric nobody can measure properly, which is why the model is worth declining rather than negotiating. Performance pricing against something you both control is fine. Readability score against a published spec is deterministic and re-runnable. Answer rate comes from your own server. Either makes a defensible basis; sampled mentions does not. ## What to do before you sign anything 1. **Take the baseline yourself.** A readability score per template, from a published deterministic spec. Free, no account, and it is your negotiating position. 2. **Ask for the hours split.** How much of the fee is one-time technical work and how much is ongoing content. Ask in hours, not in deliverable names. 3. **Require the code in your repository.** Middleware you own keeps working after the contract ends. A vendor proxy does not, and neither do the results. 4. **Name the reporting source.** Your server logs. Agent fetches fire no beacon, so a page-view tool cannot contain the results of this work however it is configured. ## What this does not do - We are not an agency and take no engagements. Nothing here is a referral, and no provider is named or recommended. - It cannot make an assistant mention you. Assistants are not deterministic and no vendor controls their output, so a guaranteed citation is not a thing anyone can sell. - It does not change what Google sees. Content negotiation returns the same substance in another format, and search crawlers keep receiving canonical HTML. - We do not rank or review agencies. Nothing about a named third party is published without that domain owner’s verified opt-in, and that floor is not purchasable. ## What does an AEO agency do? A technical half covering how your pages are served to AI agents, and an editorial half covering content that answers real questions. The technical half is a one-time change; the editorial half genuinely recurs. ## How do AEO agencies charge? Usually a monthly retainer, sometimes a fixed project, occasionally performance-based. Each rewards something different, and a retainer priced against work that is mostly one-time is the common mismatch. ## Should I pay an agency per citation or mention? No. Mentions are not observable, not attributable and not controlled by either party, so the contract prices a metric nobody can measure properly. Tie performance pricing to a deterministic readability score or your own answer rate instead. ## What should an AEO engagement cost? The technical work should cost close to nothing, because the tooling is free, self-hostable and one-time. Content work costs what good writing costs. Ask for the split in hours before comparing quotes. ## Are you an AEO agency? No. We build the gateway and the published readability spec that the technical half runs on. The scan is free, the SDK is free and self-hostable, and there is no service to buy from us. ## Related - [AEO services: the deliverables](https://rebilder.com/solutions/aeo-services) - [What is AEO?](https://rebilder.com/solutions/what-is-aeo) - [AEO tool](https://rebilder.com/solutions/aeo-tool) - [AI SEO agency: what they do](https://rebilder.com/solutions/ai-seo-agency) - [Generative engine optimization agency](https://rebilder.com/solutions/generative-engine-optimization-agency)