Jason Burns / jasonburns.co.uk
Available - taking new work Contact
Calculator SEO + AI search budgets, calibrated to the UK market

SEO + AI search pricing calculator
that tells you the truth.

A realistic UK monthly band for SEO + GEO (AI search) work, what each end of it actually buys, and a comparison against doing it yourself, hiring a freelancer or going to an agency. Built from 110+ real engagements I have priced or quoted between 2015 and 2026.

// inputs

Tell the calculator about your situation.

Changes update the result instantly. Nothing gets submitted anywhere.

Business stage
Geographic reach
Industry competition
Website size
Primary goal
Internal team capability
Time horizon
Include GEO (AI search optimisation)?

Getting cited inside ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. Most agencies do not price this in yet.

GEO addon priced for visibility in

The +18 to 25 percent GEO premium covers entity, schema and citation work for the AI search engines below. Toggle GEO off if you only care about classic Google.

  • ChatGPT by OpenAI ChatGPT
  • Claude by Anthropic Claude
  • Perplexity by Perplexity AI Perplexity
  • Gemini by Google Gemini
  • Copilot by Microsoft Copilot
  • Llama by Meta Llama
  • Grok by xAI Grok
  • Mistral by Mistral AI Mistral
  • DeepSeek by DeepSeek DeepSeek
// how this calculator works

No black box. Here is the calibration.

Every other SEO pricing calculator I tested hides its methodology. This one shows the multipliers, the data behind them, and where the numbers came from.

The anchor

£1,800 per month is the starting baseline. This is the entry retainer for the kind of senior independent work I personally do, and the floor below which legitimate UK agency SEO becomes hard to deliver without cutting corners on either technical, content or authority work. The fixed day rate behind the calculator is published on the pricing page.

Where the multipliers came from

Each input applies a multiplier to the anchor. Multipliers come from two sources: my own quote history across 110+ UK engagements priced or quoted between 2015 and 2026, cross-referenced against the published price lists of 18 UK SEO agencies sampled in May 2026 (a mix of independent shops and mid-market agencies, names available on request).

Why the band, not a number

A single number implies a precision SEO pricing does not have. The low end of the band represents lean delivery at the right tier (one specialist, focused scope), the high end represents the same scope delivered with a richer team or more aggressive timeline. Reality always sits somewhere inside the band.

The GEO premium

Toggling AI search inclusion adds 18 to 25 percent to the monthly. This is calibrated against the additional work GEO actually requires: entity graph audit, Wikidata setup, schema enrichment, citation seeding on Reddit / LinkedIn / podcasts, AI search visibility monitoring. None of this exists in a pre-2025 SEO retainer.

// price bands

What each monthly band actually delivers.

Calibrated against real UK engagements, not aspirational agency pitches.

Under £800/mo
Maintenance only
  • One freelancer, part-time
  • Basic on-page work, monthly check-in
  • No real authority or technical investment
  • Risk: If competitive, you fall behind. If non-competitive, you might be paying for nothing.
£800 - £1,800/mo
Specialist freelancer
  • Solo operator with 5+ years experience
  • Technical + on-page + content briefs
  • Minimal authority work (no PR, light link earning)
  • Best fit: established sites in low-competition niches
most common landing zone
£1,800 - £4,500/mo
Senior consultant or small agency
  • Real strategy + execution + reporting
  • Technical SEO, content, internal links, authority work
  • GEO can be included at this tier without sacrificing core SEO
  • Best fit: most UK B2B + medium e-commerce
£4,500 - £10,000/mo
Mid-size agency or dedicated team
  • Account director + 2-3 specialists
  • Digital PR, content production, technical audits
  • Multiple test programmes in parallel
  • Best fit: competitive e-commerce, fast-growth SaaS, ambitious B2B
£10,000+/mo
Enterprise SEO programme
  • Multi-market, multi-language coordination
  • Dedicated tech team for migrations + experiments
  • Original research, large-scale digital PR, paid amplification
  • Best fit: enterprise, regulated industries, complex platform sites
// red flags

Six pricing mistakes UK buyers make most.

01

Picking the cheapest tier in a high-competition vertical

Finance, legal, insurance, gambling and pharma all need 1.5 to 2x the standard budget to make any move. A £1,200/mo retainer in those spaces buys reports that confirm you are losing.

02

Paying for "100 backlinks per month" packages

Anyone offering this in 2026 is selling spam links. Google has actively penalised these since 2012 and the AI search engines treat them as a negative signal. Genuine authority work earns 2 to 6 high-quality mentions a month.

03

Assuming GEO is included

Most agency retainers were written before 2024 and do not include AI search optimisation work. Always ask explicitly what their GEO scope covers - if the answer is vague, it is not included.

04

Confusing day rate with retainer

A consultant charging £450 a day is not £450 a month. A working retainer at that day rate is typically 4 to 8 days of senior time, so £1,800 to £3,600 a month. Cheap day rate quotes hiding a fractional commitment is the most common bait and switch.

05

Buying on monthly cost, not output

£3,000 a month from an agency that produces two thin reports and emails them is worse than £1,500 from a freelancer who ships actual fixes. Always ask what specifically gets delivered each month, and check the deliverable history of the people doing the work.

06

Underspending on a migration

Domain or platform migrations are not "ongoing SEO" - they are sprint work that costs 1.5 to 2x a normal month. Trying to absorb a migration into the standard retainer is how sites lose 40 percent of organic overnight.

// questions

Calculator FAQs.

How accurate is this SEO pricing calculator?
It outputs a realistic UK market band based on the inputs you provide. The bands are calibrated against 110+ UK client engagements I have personally priced or quoted between 2015 and 2026, plus public agency pricing benchmarks. It will not be exact for your situation - no calculator can be - but it will land within 10 to 20 percent of what an honest quote should look like.
Why is the calculator not just one number?
Because SEO pricing is a range, not a number. The same brief will cost different amounts at a freelancer, a small agency, a senior independent and a large agency. The calculator shows the range plus what each end of it actually buys you, so you can decide which fits.
Why is GEO (AI search) optimisation a separate option?
Because most agencies still price as if it is 2023 and AI search does not exist. Getting cited in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews is real work - entity-graph cleanup, schema markup, answer-first content, citation seeding. Bolting it onto an existing SEO retainer typically adds 15 to 25 percent to the monthly cost. Toggle it on if AI search matters to you.
What is the cheapest legitimate SEO budget for a UK business in 2026?
About 800 pounds a month gets you a sole freelancer doing on-page work and basic content briefs. Below that you are usually getting templated reports and automated link building - both of which are now active liabilities under the Helpful Content system. If your budget is genuinely sub-800, you are better off doing the SEO basics yourself with one or two hours of advisory per quarter than paying for low-end retainers.
Is this calculator going to send me a sales pitch?
No. There is no form to submit to see the result - it calculates live as you change inputs. If you want a real personalised quote from me you can use the contact form, but the calculator output is the calculator output. Nothing is gated, nothing is emailed.
Does the calculator know my specific industry?
It uses three competition bands (low, medium, high) because finer granularity would imply false precision. Finance, legal, insurance, gambling and pharma sit firmly in the high band and need 50 to 100 percent more budget than the standard band suggests. Niche B2B and most local services sit in the low band.
// what the budget actually buys

A number is not a plan. Pick the service that fits your number.

The calculator gets you to a defensible budget. The services below are what that budget actually buys, depending on where the priority sits - SEO depth, AI search visibility, or wider digital strategy.

SEO Management

When SEO is the main lever

Senior monthly SEO retainer with technical, content and authority work. The default fit for the calculator's middle two bands (£1,800 - £4,500 / £4,500 - £10,000 monthly).

See SEO Management GEO Consulting

When AI search is the priority

Entity work, Wikidata, schema, AI-friendly content and citation seeding. If you toggled the GEO addon on, this is the service that does the 18 to 25 percent of extra work the calculator added.

See GEO Consulting AI Consulting

When SEO is one piece of a wider AI plan

For businesses where the real budget conversation is about AI strategy as a whole - AI search, internal workflows, AI-led content production - and SEO is one workstream inside that.

See AI Consulting

Want a quote calibrated to your actual site?

The calculator gets you in the right ballpark. A 30-minute call gets you a specific proposal with named deliverables, a delivery cadence, and a sensible 90-day plan to start.

Book the 30-minute call