Pricing guide
What AI visibility costs in Australia.
The four price bands in the Australian market in 2026, what each one should include, real published prices where they exist, and the red flags in a quote.
Disclosure first: Answerable sells AI visibility services in Australia and our own prices appear on this page. Treat that section as what it is, a price list, and treat the rest as a market map you can check.
The short answer
In Australia in 2026 AI visibility work falls into four bands. A free scan costs nothing. A one-off diagnostic audit runs roughly $400 to $2,500. Monthly monitoring runs roughly $150 to $800 a month, or from about US$29 a month if you buy a self-serve tool instead of a service. Done-for-you programmes are usually $2,000 to $10,000 a month and are scoped, not listed.
Two things drive most of the spread. The first is whether a human does the work or you get a dashboard. The second is whether the seller has to run live queries against paid AI engines every month, which is a real recurring cost, or is simply re-rendering a report.
The four price bands
| Band | Typical price | What it should include | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free scan | $0 | A score, the engines checked, and at least one real quote of what an assistant said about you | Scores with no published formula, and email gates that turn the tool into a lead form |
| One-off audit | $400 to $2,500 | Every AI answer in full, who is named ahead of you, the causes, and a fix list in priority order | A generic checklist with your logo on it, or an audit that never quotes an actual AI answer |
| Monitoring | $150 to $800 / mo | The same questions re-asked on a schedule, change alerts, and history you can export | Monitoring sold before anyone has fixed anything, and prompt sets you cannot see |
| Done-for-you | $2,000 to $10,000 / mo | Named deliverables, work you own outright, and a re-scan on the same questions to show movement | Retainers with no re-measurement, and any guarantee of an AI ranking |
Those bands describe the Australian market as we encounter it, in Australian dollars. They are our characterisation, not a survey, and we have not published a dataset behind them, so weigh them accordingly. The tool prices in the next section are different: those are list prices we checked directly on the vendors' own pages.
What published tools actually charge
Software is the one part of this market with public prices. The figures below are list prices taken from each vendor's own pricing page on 31 July 2026, in US dollars, before Australian tax and before currency conversion. They buy tracking, not work. A tool tells you whether you are named. It does not change whether you are named.
| Tool | Published price | What the price buys |
|---|---|---|
| Otterly.AI | US$29 to US$489 / mo | Three tiers on monthly billing: Lite US$29, Standard US$189, Premium US$489. AI answer and mention tracking. |
| Ahrefs | US$129 to US$449 / mo | Lite US$129, Standard US$249, Advanced US$449. Brand Radar is in all three; a Brand Radar AI add-on starts at US$199 a month. |
| Semrush | US$139 to US$549 / mo | SEO US$139, Starter US$199, Pro+ US$299, Advanced US$549 on monthly billing, with AI visibility features inside the plans. |
| Answerable Watch | A$199 / mo | Our own monitoring product, listed here for comparison. Same questions re-scanned monthly, with change alerts. |
Several vendors in this category, including Peec AI, do not display prices publicly, so we have left them out rather than repeat a figure from a third-party comparison post. If a price is not on the vendor's own page, treat any number you read about it as hearsay.
What Answerable charges
Our ladder is a free scan, a $495 one-off audit, $199 a month monitoring available after an audit or fix, and custom-scoped done-for-you work. All prices are in Australian dollars. There is no lock-in and you can stop after any step. The same list is published as machine-readable markdown at answerable.com.au/pricing.md.
- Scan, free. Your AI visibility score plus one real quote of what AI said about your business today. No email required.
- Audit, $495 one-off. All 12 AI answers in full, who gets named ahead of you, and a prioritised fix plan.
- Watch, $199 a month. The same questions re-scanned every month, change alerts, and a live dashboard. Available after an Audit or Fix.
- Fix, custom. Done-for-you website, search, content and proof work, scoped to your gaps, plus a re-scan on the same questions.
The full plan detail is on the pricing section of our homepage, and the scoring formula behind the score you are paying to move is published in full on the technology page.
What a fair quote should contain
Whoever you buy from, a quote in this category should be able to answer all six of these in writing before you pay.
- Which AI engines will be queried, and how often.
- The actual questions that will be asked, and confirmation that they do not contain your brand name. A question that names you cannot test whether an engine names you unprompted.
- How a mention is counted, and whether a model or a rule does the counting.
- What the baseline is today, in a number, before any work starts.
- Which deliverables you own outright at the end.
- What happens if the number does not move.
Red flags in an Australian AI visibility quote
- A guaranteed AI ranking or placement. No vendor controls what a model generates. This one is disqualifying on its own.
- A score with no published formula. If you cannot recompute it, you cannot audit whether it moved for a real reason.
- Statistics with no denominator or date. A percentage without the population it was counted over is not evidence.
- A retainer with no re-measurement. If nobody re-asks the questions, nobody can tell you it worked.
- Prices quoted only in US dollars by a firm selling into Australia, with no mention of GST or conversion.
- Monitoring sold before a diagnosis. Watching a number you have made no attempt to change is a subscription, not a strategy.
So what should you actually spend?
Start at zero. Run a free scan or ask the engines by hand, and find out whether you have a problem worth money. If you are already named in a fair share of answers, spend the quarter elsewhere. If you are never named, buy the smallest thing that tells you why, which is a one-off audit, and only then decide whether to do the work yourself or pay someone. Across the 300 Australian businesses we scanned, 13% were blocking AI crawlers in robots.txt, which is a free fix that no retainer should ever be charged for.
For context on how common the underlying problem is in Australia, the per-industry numbers are in the study and the headline figures on the statistics page.
Sources
- Otterly.AI pricing, checked 31 July 2026: otterly.ai/pricing
- Ahrefs pricing, checked 31 July 2026: ahrefs.com/pricing
- Semrush pricing, checked 31 July 2026: semrush.com/pricing
- Australian scan figures: The State of AI Visibility in Australia 2026, 300 businesses, 30 July 2026, raw data under CC BY 4.0.
- Answerable prices: pricing.md, the machine-readable version of the list above.
Questions
Common questions about cost
How much does an AI visibility agency cost in Australia?
What does Answerable charge?
Is $2,000 a month reasonable for AI visibility work?
Can I just buy a tool instead of hiring someone?
What should a fair AI visibility quote include?
What is the cheapest thing that actually helps?
Keep reading
Related pages
Straight answer
Is AI visibility worth it?
What the evidence supports, what nobody can guarantee, and when not to buy.
Read more →Diagnostic
Why doesn't ChatGPT mention my business?
Six causes, ranked by how often we found each across 300 Australian businesses.
Read more →Method
How the score is made
The formula in full, and which 30 of the 100 points a model produces.
Read more →Find out if you have a problem worth paying for.
The scan is free and there is no email gate. It shows your score, the engines we asked, and one real quote of what AI said about your business today.