If you'd rather pay for enquiries than for hours you can't see, a free audit with us shows the searches your buyers make where you don't show up yet, and what the agents would do first. Below is what each pricing model costs and what to ask before you sign. We build Heddle, so we have a stake in this page.
What SEO costs under each pricing model
Monthly retainer. This is the default model, used by 78.2% of the providers Ahrefs polled. Ahrefs found that agencies average $3,209 a month, consultants $3,250 and freelancers $1,348. Local SEO averages $1,557. That survey was last updated in August 2024, so check its figures against the newer guides below.
Newer guides land in the same band. HigherVisibility says most businesses invest $1,500 to $5,000 a month in 2026, and it cites a Clutch survey that puts the average monthly cost at $3,199. The HOTH reports a Backlinko survey of more than 300 practitioners, in which the most common retainer range is $1,000 to $2,500.
Project. A project is one-off work with a finish line, such as an audit, a migration or a technical overhaul. In the Ahrefs data the most popular project fee is $2,501 to $5,000, and agencies average $9,508 per project. Foxxr quotes $2,000 to $15,000+ for project work. The Clutch average that HigherVisibility cites is $37,158 per project engagement. A spread that wide says the scope of a "project" varies far more than the hourly cost behind it.
Hourly. Ahrefs puts the average rate at $111 an hour. Ninety percent of providers charge $150 or less, and consultants average $171. HigherVisibility gives $100 to $300 an hour for a US agency, and Foxxr gives $100 to $150 for consulting.
Hourly billing suits work that needs judgement, such as a migration review or diagnosing a traffic drop. The HOTH makes the fair point that for content and links you're paying for output, and the hours behind output are hard to verify.
Software. Orbit Media lists SaaS pricing and result-based pricing as models alongside retainers. None of the guides cited here publish a market price range for software, so there's no honest average to quote. Software moves the cost from a provider's fee to your own team's hours, and those hours rarely show up on the invoice.
What drives the price up or down
HigherVisibility traces most of the gap between a cheap campaign and an expensive one to competitive intensity, scope of work and geographic reach. Its ranges by reach are $1,500 to $3,000 a month for a single city, $3,000 to $10,000 for a national campaign and $5,000 to $15,000+ for an international one. Site size and technical debt push the first months higher, because fixes come before growth.
Links are usually the largest single line item. The HOTH cites a BuzzStream analysis that puts the average guest post at $295 bought direct and $461 through a vendor, and prices climb steeply with site authority.
Content runs from $50 a post at commodity rates upward, depending on how much expertise the subject needs. Visibility in AI answers is now often sold as a separate line. The HOTH notes that this category has no independent pricing survey yet, so quotes for it vary widely.
Our position is that a low price isn't the warning sign many guides make it out to be. HigherVisibility calls anything under $1,000 a month a warning sign, and Orbit Media says it can't think of many situations where $50 to $3,000 a month works.
Both are agencies that sell SEO, and HigherVisibility says its clients typically invest $2,000 to $7,000 a month. Foxxr, also an agency, starts foundational local work near $500 for a single-location business in a light market. The better warning sign is a fee with no itemized deliverables, and The HOTH says the same.
What to ask before you sign
- What do I get each month, counted? Ask for the number of pages, links and fixes, so you can check the work actually happened.
- Where are you measuring from? A dated baseline of your rankings and traffic stops anyone from passing off luck, or a seasonal swing, as progress.
- Who owns the work if we stop? Ask about the content, the site changes, the analytics access and the ad accounts.
- Who actually does the work? Orbit Media says it has seen companies charge $10,000+ a month and still outsource everything to low-wage workers.
- Is ad spend, link buying or AI visibility inside the fee, or extra?
- What happens if someone promises you a ranking? Orbit Media lists promised results among the things to avoid. Rankings are Google's to give, so a promise of one tells you about the seller, not about your site.
Where Heddle fits and what it costs
Heddle has no price on its site. As the pricing page explains, each plan is quoted after a free search audit, because a business with a handful of searches worth winning needs less than one with hundreds of locations or products. There are three plans.
Search covers pages, fixes, links drafted for you to send and replies drafted to enquiries. The other two plans add video, and then Google Ads planning. Every business starts with Search. Ad spend is never part of the fee: you pay it straight to Google, and nothing is spent without your approval.
The fee pays for fourteen AI agents and the people who set them up and run them with you. Each agent runs at one of four levels: off, report, propose or merge. Every agent starts at report, and each one has a kill switch, a budget floor, a watchdog, a canary and signed approval links. Every built page goes through 27 checks before it ships.
Those checks cover uniqueness against sibling pages, claims backed by evidence and a buyer test. Several exist because of mistakes on our own sites. Two city pages on one of them once shared 67% of their sentences, so Heddle now measures every page against its siblings with an 80% ceiling. The agents page shows what each agent hands you.
On timing, every engagement runs the same eight stages, and each stage has a written definition of done. Your first pages go live in three to five weeks. The first decision on whether to expand or prune lands about two and a half months in, as how an engagement runs lays out. Heddle is set up in your own repository and accounts, so everything stays with you if you stop.
The honest gap is proof. The method runs on our own sites, but Heddle hasn't yet published a measured traffic or ranking result, and it names no clients' results.
Who should choose something other than Heddle
If you need a published price to put in a budget this week, pick a provider that lists one. The HOTH, for example, publishes fixed tiers. If you're a single-location business in a light market, a foundational local package at Foxxr's $500 level or a per-location service may be all you need. If your job has a finish line, such as a migration or a one-time audit, buy a project or a consultant's hours instead of an ongoing system.
Avoid Heddle if you want someone to send pitches and replies for you. Heddle drafts them, and a person on your team sends each one. It also needs a named person to approve each agent's work and read access to Search Console. If nobody can do that, it won't run well. And if you won't buy without published case results from paying clients, an agency with a track record you can check is the better choice today.