AI SEO pricing in Australia. Scoped, not guessed.
We do not sell a rate card, on purpose: every website and every market is a different fight. What we publish instead is the entire scoping model: the parts list your package is built from, the four dials that move the number, and exactly what the proposal shows. Here is how the number gets made.
The straight answer, first.
AI SEO with Brain Buddy AI starts from $1,990 AUD a month, and the scope decides the rest. Your proposal is a bespoke package assembled from the parts list on this page: one-off foundation work priced separately, then one monthly figure for the ongoing campaign, with every line item and quantity stated. Pay monthly, or annually where a saving is offered. Each agreement has a minimum term agreed up front, then continues month to month and ends only on 60 days’ notice. The free audit is where your real number starts.
Publishing even this much makes us unusual. We crawled ten Australian agency websites on 25 August 2026 while researching this page, and not one publishes what a quote is built from. Every number sits behind a discovery call, and most quotes arrive as one figure with no scope attached. We would rather show you the whole parts list, so when our proposal lands you can see exactly what the number is made of, and hold every other quote to the same standard.
Why we do not sell fixed tiers.
We used to think in tiers. We stopped, because tiers flatter the average and misfit everyone: they overcharge the solo operator with a tidy ten-page site, and they quietly undersize the clinic fighting a contested metro suburb, which is the expensive kind of cheap. A fixed tier answers the question “what do most businesses need?”. A scope answers the only question that matters: what does your site, in your market, at your pace, actually need. So every engagement is scoped from the same parts list, and the tier names stay in the bin.
The four dials that move the number.
“It depends” is true. It is also where most agencies hide the number. Here is the honest version: the price depends on four dials, and each one changes real quantities on real line items, not a mystery multiplier.
How contested your market is
A solo arborist in a regional town and a cosmetic clinic in South Yarra are not buying the same fight. The more businesses chasing the same answers, the more shipped work it takes to be the one named.
The state and size of your site
Ten tidy pages need less than eighty messy ones. A rough site means a bigger one-off foundation build before the monthly campaign starts compounding.
How much ground you cover
Locations, service lines, engines tracked and pages under active coverage all multiply the work. One clinic, one suburb, one service is a small scope. Three locations and six services is not.
How fast you want to move
Velocity is the real meaning of aggressive: articles per month, new answer-gap pages per month, how much ships each week. The aggression section below covers when dialling up is worth it.
The parts list every package is built from.
This is the actual catalogue our proposals are assembled from, published. One-off foundation work gets your site to a state worth compounding; the ongoing campaign does the compounding. Quantities are dialled per scope: one business needs two articles a month, another needs eight, and the proposal states the count either way.
- Technical SEO and structured-data build
- Google Business Profile setup and tuning, per location
- Service-page restructures, shaped to the questions buyers ask AI
- Local landing pages for each suburb or service area
- Answer-gap landing pages: net-new pages for searches you have no page for yet
- On-page and content optimisation across priority pages
- Local SEO: citations, maps and local-pack work
- SEO agent page coverage: the pages actively monitored, optimised and re-checked each month
- Answer Engine Optimisation: Google AI Overviews, featured snippets, Copilot answers
- Generative Engine Optimisation: the work to get named by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude
- Citations and business listings, consistent everywhere AI checks
- Competitor answer-share tracking: who AI names in your category, and why
- Long-form articles, volume dialled to your scope
- Answer-gap landing pages each month for the questions the agent keeps finding
- Senior approval on every piece before it ships
- Plugin-published and re-checked on the live page
- On-site AI agent that captures and qualifies leads after hours
- Capacity dialled to your traffic, from local-shop volume to high-traffic sites
- Studio dashboard: every change proposed, approved, shipped and verified, live
- Monthly visibility report in plain English
- Premium dashboard with GEO Engine and Answer Lab, where the scope warrants it
- Named or dedicated account management, with a monthly strategy call
What the proposal shows.
- Every line item in your scope, grouped as above, with quantities stated. If it is not on the list, you are not paying for it.
- One monthly figure for the ongoing campaign. One-off foundation work is priced separately, and where a setup fee is waived or reduced, the proposal says so in writing.
- Monthly and, where offered, annual pricing side by side, with the exact annual saving shown. You pick the cadence at signing.
- A minimum term agreed up front, sized to the scope. After it, the agreement continues month to month and ends only on 60 days' notice. Nothing expires, nothing auto-renews, nothing needs re-signing.
- The ROI maths with its assumptions on the page: projected lead uplift derived from what is actually in scope, deliberately conservative, and computed against the fee you actually pay.
How aggressive should the scope be?
Aggression in this work is not a mood. It is a work-rate: pages under coverage, articles shipped, answer-gap pages built, corroboration earned each month. Three rules of thumb from our own client base:
- Match the market, not the mood. In a contested metro niche, an undersized scope is the expensive option: it pays for effort that never reaches the threshold where citations move. We will say so in the proposal rather than sell you a number that cannot win.
- Bank the compounding. Foundations take about three months to build regardless of scope. A heavier scope does not skip that period; it stacks more on top of it, so the gap closes faster once it starts closing.
- Aggression buys inputs, never dates. No scope makes ChatGPT cite you by Friday, because nobody controls the engines. Anyone who attaches a date to a price is guessing with your money.
The practical version: start from the audit, scope to what your market requires, and review quarterly. Dialling quantities up or down is a conversation with your account manager, not a renegotiation.
Agency vs tools vs in-house, priced honestly.
A scoped engagement is not the only way to do this, and we sell both sides of that line. Self-serve monitoring tools cost less and tell you what is wrong; they do not ship the fixes. An in-house hire works brilliantly if you can find one person who covers technical SEO, content, entities and outreach at once. The honest comparison lives on the pages we keep for exactly this decision:
Red flags when you compare quotes.
Whatever you decide about us, take this checklist to every quote you collect. Our research report on the gap between what agencies promise and what ships, The Execution Gap, is where these come from:
- A price with no scope. If the quote does not say which pages, engines, deliverables and quantities it covers, the number cannot be compared with anything, including itself next quarter.
- Guaranteed rankings or guaranteed AI citations. The engines are third-party systems; a guarantee is a sales device, not a deliverable.
- Lock-ins that outlive the work. A minimum term sized to the foundations is fair; a cage is not. Ask what happens after the term, and how much notice ending takes.
- No change log. Ask any provider to show you last month's changes shipped to a real client site, with dates. Reports summarise; logs prove.
Pricing questions, answered straight.
How much does AI SEO cost in Australia?
At Brain Buddy AI, engagements start from $1,990 AUD a month, and the scope decides the rest. There is no honest single number beyond that floor, because the work is scoped to your site, your market and how hard you want to push: a bespoke package assembled from a published parts list, presented as one monthly figure with every line item shown. The free audit measures your site and market, and the proposal that follows carries your actual number. Any agency that quotes a full price before scoping is guessing.
Why don't you publish a full price list?
Because a rate card misprices both ends: it overcharges the solo operator with a tidy site and undersizes the clinic in a contested metro suburb. What we publish instead is the floor, from $1,990 AUD a month, and the entire scoping model: the parts list every package is built from, the dials that move the number, and exactly what the proposal shows. You see every line item you are paying for, which is more transparency than a tier badge ever gave anyone.
What actually determines the price?
Four dials: how contested your market is, the state and size of your site, how much ground the scope covers (locations, service lines, engines, page coverage), and the velocity you want (articles per month, new pages per month, how much ships each week). Each dial changes quantities on real line items, so the price moves for reasons you can point at.
What does a proposal actually include?
Every line item in your scope, grouped the way we build it: one-off foundation work, then the ongoing monthly campaign across SEO, AEO and GEO, content, the AI lead agent, reporting and account management, with quantities stated. One monthly figure covers the ongoing work. Any one-off foundation build is priced separately, and the ROI maths is shown with its assumptions.
Is there a lock-in contract?
Each agreement has a minimum term agreed up front, sized to the scope, because foundations take time to pay back. After the minimum term nothing expires and nothing needs renewing: the agreement simply continues month to month and ends only on 60 days' notice. We would rather keep you because the work is working than because of paperwork.
Are there setup fees?
Only when the one-off foundation build genuinely warrants one, and it is always shown separately on the proposal rather than buried in the monthly. Where we waive or reduce it, the proposal says so in writing.
Can I pay monthly or annually?
Both. Proposals are priced monthly, and where an annual option is offered it usually carries a saving, shown on the proposal with the exact figure. You choose the cadence when you sign.
Can the scope change after we start?
Yes, and it should. Scope is reviewed with you as results land: quantities dial up where the market demands more, and down where the foundations are done. Changing scope is a conversation with your account manager, not a renegotiation.
Is AI SEO priced separately from normal SEO?
No. SEO, AEO and GEO share the same foundations, so they are scoped and priced as one programme. You are not paying once to rank in Google and again to be cited by ChatGPT.
How do I get my number?
Run the free audit. It scores your site, probes the real engines with your buyers' questions, and measures two of the four dials on the spot. Bring it to a short call and your scoped proposal follows within three days, with every line item and one figure. Sixty seconds to start, no card.
Now you know how the number is made.Go get yours.
The free audit measures two of the four dials on the spot: how contested your market is, and where your site stands. It probes the real engines with your buyers’ questions, and your scoped proposal follows within three days of the call, every line item behind one figure. Sixty seconds to start, no card.