How much does SEO cost per month? Agency, freelancer and software compared

In the largest public survey of SEO providers, agencies averaged about $3,200 a month and freelancers about $1,350. Software that takes over the hands-on work costs roughly $100 to $150 a month. Those are big differences for work that looks the same at first glance. The difference is in what you are buying: a person’s hours, or a result on your site.

I run a marketing agency myself, so I know how such a price is built. In this article I do the math for you, and show when an agency is worth the money and when it is not.

Prices at a glance

The agency, freelancer and consultant figures come from Ahrefs’ SEO pricing survey of 439 SEO providers. It is an older survey, so treat the amounts as a floor rather than today’s going rate. Software prices are as of October 2026.

Who does it	Cost per month	What you buy
You	$0, plus your time	Two to four hours a week of your own
Software that executes	Roughly $100 to $150	Improvements on your site every week
Freelance SEO specialist	About $1,349 on average	Hours from one person
SEO agency	About $3,209 on average	Hours from a team
SEO consultant	About $3,250 on average	Senior advice, often fewer hours
In-house specialist	A full salary	Someone who works only for you

The most common retainer in that survey was $501 to $1,000 a month, and the average hourly rate was $111. Averages hide a wide spread: plenty of local providers charge less, and agencies serving competitive markets charge far more.

How an agency price is built

An agency sells hours. At around $100 to $150 an hour, a $1,500 monthly package is 10 to 15 hours.

Where do those hours go? Roughly:

• Hands-on work on the site: titles, descriptions, internal links, editing copy. About half.
• Reporting and meetings: the monthly report, discussing it, answering emails. A quarter.
• Research and strategy: keywords, competitors, plans. The rest.

That is not a criticism of agencies. Meetings and reporting are part of working with people. It does mean that for $1,500 you get roughly six to eight hours in which something actually changes on your site.

Take an accounting firm with 35 pages. In eight hours a month a specialist can properly handle maybe ten pages. After four months they have been through the site once. By then the first work is already out of date.

What does a freelancer cost?

You work directly with the person doing the work. There is no account manager in between and no office in the price.

For many small businesses this is a better choice than an agency. The downside: one person cannot do everything. Someone strong on technical work does not always write good copy. And when they are sick or on vacation, everything stops.

Looking for someone for your WordPress site? Read hiring a WordPress SEO specialist for what to ask up front.

What does SEO software cost?

Three kinds get mixed up here, which makes comparing hard.

Tools that measure. Semrush, Ahrefs and SE Ranking cost tens to hundreds of dollars a month. You see rankings, competitors and issues. You do the work yourself. Without a marketer in-house you use a small part of them.

Plugins that help you write. The paid versions of Yoast, Rank Math, SEOPress and AIOSEO cost roughly $5 to $30 a month. The AI suggests a title or description when you press the button.

Software that executes. This group is new. The software scans your site, picks what brings in the most and publishes the improvement on your site. Prices start around $100 a month.

GreatCompany has two main plans. Pro is $49 a month: you see per page what needs to be better and your SEO assistant writes the new copy. Automatic is $99 a month as an introductory price and belongs in that last group: on a WordPress site, GreatCompany publishes up to five improvements every Monday. All prices are on the pricing page.

All tools side by side, with what they do and do not take over, are in AI SEO tools.

What do you get for your money? An honest comparison

Three options side by side for the same 35-page accounting firm.

	Agency, $1,500	Freelancer, $800	Software, $99
Improvements to the site per month, estimated	8 to 12	8 to 10	Up to 20
Strategic advice	Yes	Yes, from one person	No
New copy	Sometimes, often at extra cost	Sometimes	On request, you proofread
Links from other sites	Sometimes	Rarely	No
Measurement in ChatGPT and other AI	Rarely	Rarely	Every day
Cancellation notice	Often 1 to 3 months	Varies	Monthly
Cost per year	$18,000	$9,600	$1,188

Software wins on volume and price. The agency wins on advice and on anything that needs a person. You do not need to know which is better in general. You need to know what your site needs.

When is an agency worth the money?

I would hire an agency or specialist in these cases.

You earn a lot per customer and competition is heavy. A law firm or a solar installer in a big metro area fights players who have invested for years. There you need strategy and links, on top of a tidy site.

You run a large online store. Thousands of products, filters and categories need technical custom work.

You are migrating to a new site. One mistake in the redirects can cost you your rankings in a day.

You want nothing to do with it and have the budget. Read outsourcing SEO and AI visibility for what to look for.

And when not? When you have a site of twenty to a hundred pages, work locally and mainly suffer from overdue maintenance. Then you pay an agency a lot for work that follows fixed rules.

Translate it back into customers

The price says little without the return. So calculate it like this:

1. What does a new customer bring you on average? Not revenue, but what you keep.
2. Divide your monthly SEO budget by that.
3. That is how many extra customers a month you need to break even.

Say the accounting firm keeps about $1,000 a year from a new client. With an agency at $1,500 a month that is eighteen new clients a year. At $99 a month, a little over one client a year.

The odds of landing that one client are a lot better. That is why starting small is often sensible for a small business. If it works, you can always scale up. The same calculation for AI visibility is in the ROI of GEO.

What to watch out for

A number one position as a guarantee. Nobody can promise that. Google decides the order.

Hundreds of links for a fixed fee. Those are almost always links from sites that only exist to sell links. Google ignores or penalizes them.

An annual contract without a trial period. SEO takes time, that is true. But after three months you should be able to see that work was done.

A report without a list of what was done. Ask every month: which pages were changed, and what was the old and new version? What belongs in a good report is in SEO reporting.

Considering a fixed monthly fee? Read SEO subscription for what such a package should include.

And if you do it yourself?

You can, and it costs no money. Count on two to four hours a week. With Google’s free tools and a free SEO plugin you get far. The weekly rhythm is in DIY SEO.

Many business owners start full of good intentions and stop after a few weeks. Not for lack of knowledge, but because something more urgent always comes up. That is why the middle road is often best: software does the weekly work, and you keep an eye on it. How that works is in automating SEO.

How much work is waiting on your site?

You only know what SEO should cost you once you know how much work there is. Join the waitlist and your free report shows which issues we find on your site and how many pages need a better title or description. Then you can calculate yourself whether that is worth an agency retainer.