No. 32 · What agencies cost · Brain Buddy AI / Sydney

Every published average is someone's guess.

You came here for a number. We are not going to invent one, and you should be wary of the pages that do, because no independent dataset of Australian agency rates exists to quote from. What we can give you is more useful: how agencies actually charge, what moves the figure, how to read the quote in front of you, and our own floor, which we publish.

Section 01

Why there is no honest single number

Search this question and you will find plenty of confident ranges. Follow any of them back and they nearly always end at another agency's blog post, which took it from a third, which made it up. Nobody surveys Australian agency rates in a way you could audit, so a national average is a rumour with a dollar sign attached.

The deeper reason is that agency pricing is not really a price. It is a scope with a number attached. Two businesses in the same industry, the same city and the same revenue band can need wildly different amounts of work depending on the state of their website, how competitive their market is, and how fast they want to move. The number follows the scope, which is why an agency that quotes before scoping is either guessing or planning to revise.

Section 02

The four ways agencies charge

All four are legitimate in the right situation. What matters is matching the model to the work, and knowing how each one fails.

Model	Suits	How it fails
Monthly retainer	Ongoing work that compounds: SEO, AEO, content, maintenance	Drifts into a subscription nobody reviews, with output falling quietly
Project fee	A defined build with an end: a site, a migration, a foundation package	Anything discovered mid-build becomes a variation, and variations are where budgets go
Hourly	Advisory, audits and small interventions	Punishes efficiency, because the incentive runs the wrong way on speed
Percentage of ad spend	Paid media management at scale	The agency earns more when you spend more, whether or not you should

The problem in most bad engagements is not the model. It is that no itemised scope sits underneath it, so nobody can say what the money bought.

Section 03

What actually moves the number

When an agency scopes properly, these are the dials that decide where you land. Ask which apply to you and you will understand your own quote better than the person presenting it expects.

How competitive your market is. More established competitors means more work to displace them, and displacement is the expensive part.
The state of your website. A site with clean foundations starts from a different place than one needing technical repair before anything else can work.
How many services and locations you have. Every service line and every suburb you serve is another set of pages, entities and queries to cover.
How much content is needed. Content is usually the largest variable line, and the one most often left vague in a proposal.
How fast you want to move. Speed is a real cost. The same scope compressed into half the time needs more people on it.
Whether the work is verified. Checking that a change actually took effect on the live page costs more than not checking, and is the difference between work and the appearance of work.

Section 04

How to read the quote in front of you

You do not need a benchmark to evaluate a quote. You need it itemised. Ask for the scope as line items with quantities: how much of each activity, performed by whom, at what frequency. Then apply your own arithmetic.

Take the monthly figure and divide it by whatever you believe an hour of senior specialist time is worth in your market. That gives you a rough ceiling on the hours the retainer can buy once the agency has covered its own costs. Now compare that with the hours the proposal implies. If the two cannot both be true, either the hours are junior, the work is thinner than described, or something in the scope is not real. This is a method rather than a benchmark, which is exactly why it works on any quote, whatever the going rate happens to be.

The broader version of this test, covering contract terms and what you own at the end, is in how to choose a marketing agency.

Section 05

What we charge, and why we publish only a floor

Our engagements start from $1,990 AUD a month. That figure is a floor rather than a price: the scope decides the rest, and there is no honest single number beyond it, because the work is scoped per project rather than sold off a rate card.

What you get instead of a rate card is the model itself. Every package is assembled from a published parts list covering foundations, ongoing SEO, answer and generative engine optimisation, content, the AI lead agent, and reporting, with quantities dialled to your situation. You see one monthly figure with every line item shown, a minimum term agreed up front, then month to month on 60 days notice. Setup fees apply only to foundation builds and can be waived. After an audit call, a scoped proposal comes back within three days.

We would rather publish the floor and the method than a range we cannot stand behind. The full scoping model is here.

Frequently asked.

How much does a marketing agency cost in Australia?

There is no honest single answer, and we would rather say that than invent a range. Agency cost is set by scope, and scope is set by your market, the state of your site, how much content is needed and how fast you want to move. What we can tell you is our own floor, because it is published: engagements start from $1,990 AUD a month, scoped per project from a parts list, with every line item shown. Any agency quoting the category with a confident national average is quoting a number nobody measured.

Why will nobody give me a price on their website?

Two different reasons, and they are worth telling apart. Some agencies hide pricing so the number only appears after a sales conversation designed to raise it. Others withhold it because the work genuinely varies and a headline figure would mislead you. You can tell which is which by asking for the model rather than the price: an agency in the second group can explain exactly how the number is built and will show you a parts list. An agency in the first group keeps steering back to a call.

Is a cheap monthly retainer ever worth it?

Sometimes, but do the arithmetic before you decide. Take the monthly figure and divide it by what you believe an hour of senior specialist time is worth in your market. That gives you the rough hours the retainer can buy once the agency has covered its own costs. Then ask the agency how many hours you actually get and who performs them. If the answers cannot both be true, you have learned something important. Cheap is not automatically bad, but cheap plus vague usually is.

What is a fair way for an agency to charge?

All four common models are legitimate in the right situation. Retainers suit ongoing work that compounds. Project fees suit a defined build with an end. Hourly suits advisory and small interventions. A percentage of ad spend suits paid media management, though it creates an obvious incentive to increase spend. The problem is rarely the model and almost always the absence of an itemised scope underneath it.

Should the first month cost more?

Often, and that can be legitimate. Foundation work is front-loaded: technical fixes, entity and schema work, and content structure all land early and keep paying off afterwards. A setup fee for genuine build work is reasonable. A setup fee that buys a strategy document and a kickoff meeting is a discovery phase you paid to attend. Ask what is actually built in month one, and how much of it is still working in month six.

How do I compare two very different quotes?

Convert both to scope. Ask each agency for line items with quantities: how much of each activity, performed by whom, at what frequency. Two proposals at an identical monthly figure can differ enormously in senior time, and the price alone will never show it. Once both are itemised the comparison becomes arithmetic. An agency that will not itemise has answered a different question about how it works.

What does Brain Buddy AI charge?

From $1,990 AUD a month, scoped per project from a published parts list rather than sold off a rate card: one monthly figure with every line item shown, a minimum term agreed up front, then month to month on 60 days notice. Setup fees apply only to foundation builds and can be waived. A scoped proposal comes back within three days of the audit call. The full model, including the dials that move the number, is on our pricing page.

Is an agency cheaper than hiring in-house?

It depends on how many disciplines you need and how consistently you need them. One salary buys one person with one skill set, plus recruitment, tools, management and leave cover. An agency spreads several specialisms across a monthly figure, but you get a share of each rather than all of anyone. The honest test is whether the work is a steady full-time load in one discipline, in which case in-house usually wins, or an uneven load across several, in which case it usually does not.

Get a number that fitsyour actual scope.

Start with the free audit. It scores your site, checks whether AI crawlers can reach you, and shows who gets named in your market today. If you then want a proposal, it comes back scoped and itemised within three days of the call.

Run the free audit See the scoping model