Original Orkkid research. We reviewed the public websites of 60+ Australian SEO and AEO agencies. Here is what they actually publish about pricing, contracts, AI offerings, and more, with tables.
Ask ten Australian SEO agencies what they charge and you will get ten sales calls before you get one number. That is not an accident. It is an industry-wide pricing strategy, and we wanted to measure it.
Over the course of building our eight 2026 agency rankings, we reviewed the public websites of more than 60 Australian SEO and AEO agencies, from Perth boutiques founded in the 1990s to national machines with 200+ staff. Fifty-four external agencies (plus our own studio) made the final published rankings. This post aggregates what that whole sample actually publishes: who states a price, what the published retainers look like, who commits to no lock-in contracts, how old the market really is, and how many describe a genuine AI search offering rather than a renamed SEO retainer.
Every data point below comes from the agencies' own public websites as recorded in our rankings research, and we re-verified the five published pricing pages live on 30 July 2026. No survey answers, no estimates, no invented numbers.
If you are here because you are budgeting, pair this with our full guide to how much SEO costs in Australia and our SEO services overview.
Key findings at a glance
- Only 5 of the 54 external agencies profiled in our rankings (9%) publish actual dollar pricing on their websites. The other 91% require a sales call to learn what anything costs.
- Every agency that publishes a "typical campaign" range overlaps the $2,000 to $5,000 per month band. Whatever the sales theatre elsewhere, the published market has quietly agreed on a price zone.
- The median published entry price is $2,000 per month. Published floors run from $800 (SEO Melbourne, local campaigns) to $2,990 (Bonfire, Perth).
- Only 5 of 54 agencies (9%) publicly commit to no lock-in or no long-term contracts. The rest are silent on contract terms.
- 32 of 54 agencies (59%) now describe some AI, AEO, or GEO offering, but only 2 of 54 (4%) mention llms.txt anywhere in their public services.
- Not one external agency in our sample states a founding year after 2019. The youngest dated founding year among the 54 is 2019 (Rise SEO in Brisbane).
- 11 of the 24 agencies that state an exact founding year predate 2010, and the oldest (SEO Perth Experts) dates to 1998.
- Melbourne dominates the headquarters map with 20 of 54 agencies, ahead of Sydney (13), Brisbane and South East Queensland (11), and Perth (8).
You are welcome to cite any of these findings. Details on attribution are at the end.
Who actually publishes pricing (and what they charge)
Of the 54 external agencies profiled across our eight rankings, exactly five publish concrete dollar figures for SEO retainers. We re-checked each of these pages live on 30 July 2026, so the figures below are current, not archival.
| Agency | HQ | Published pricing | Contract terms | Verified |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bonfire | Perth | SEO from $2,990/mo | "No hidden fees or long-term contracts" | 30 Jul 2026 |
| Red Search | Sydney | Typically from $2,000/mo; $5,000 to $10,000+ for competitive or national campaigns | No lock-in contracts | 30 Jul 2026 |
| Edge Marketing | Brisbane | $2,000 to $5,000+/mo depending on scope | Not stated | 30 Jul 2026 |
| Local Digital | Parramatta and Burleigh Heads | From $1,500/mo, up to $10,000+/mo | Not stated | 30 Jul 2026 |
| SEO Melbourne | Melbourne | Local SEO from $800/mo; managed campaigns $2,000 to $5,000/mo; enterprise $5,000+ | No lock-in contracts | 30 Jul 2026 |
A sixth agency, Dilate Digital in Perth, advertises "clear fixed monthly fees" with no lock-in contracts but does not publish the fees themselves, so we counted it in the contracts data but not the pricing data.
Two of the five are also refreshingly blunt about the floor of viability. Local Digital's SEO page states that "a bare bones small campaign will start from $1,500 per month" and warns that "you're not going to get game changing growth and a torrent of customers by spending $500 or $750 a month on your SEO". Red Search notes ongoing engagements "typically start at $2,000 per month". When the only agencies willing to publish numbers all land in the same zone, that zone is the real market.
What the published numbers agree on
Line the five up and a clear consensus emerges, which we can state plainly because it comes from the agencies' own pages rather than survey self-reporting:
- Published entry prices: $800, $1,500, $2,000, $2,000, $2,990 per month. Median: $2,000.
- Published "typical campaign" bands: every one of them includes or overlaps $2,000 to $5,000 per month.
- Published ceilings: two agencies (Red Search and Local Digital) state that competitive or national work runs to $10,000 or more per month.
This matches the FAQ guidance we give in our own rankings: credible local campaigns from roughly $1,500 to $3,500 per month, mid-market and eCommerce from $3,500 to $10,000, enterprise above that. The published market and our editorial benchmarks agree, which is precisely why "$499 page-one guarantee" offers should set off alarms. Our Australian SEO cost guide breaks down what each tier should actually include.
The 91% who make you call
The more striking number is the inverse: 49 of the 54 agencies profiled publish no dollar figure at all. That includes some of the most transparent operators in the country on every other dimension. StudioHawk publishes awards, client names, and team structure but no prices. Prosperity Media publishes average client retention above five years but no prices. Online Marketing Gurus publishes portfolio performance numbers but no prices.
There are defensible reasons to scope before quoting. Competition, site condition, and content debt genuinely change the work. But the near-total absence of even indicative ranges puts the entire burden of price discovery on the buyer, one discovery call at a time. Our view: an agency confident in its value can publish a floor, the way Bonfire and Red Search do, and let the scoping conversation start from an honest anchor.
Contracts: five say no lock-in, most say nothing
Contract terms are the second thing buyers ask about and the second thing agency websites go quiet on. Across the 54 external agencies:
| Stated contract position | Agencies | Count |
|---|---|---|
| Explicit no lock-in / no long-term contracts | Red Search, Dilate Digital, SEO Melbourne, Perth Digital Edge, Bonfire | 5 (9%) |
| Stated initial commitment, then flexible | Digital Hitmen (six-month sprint, then month-to-month) | 1 (2%) |
| No public statement on contract terms | Everyone else | 48 (89%) |
Note the overlap: three of the five agencies that publish pricing also publish a no-lock-in commitment. Transparency clusters. Agencies comfortable showing you the price are also comfortable being accountable month to month, which is worth remembering when you build a shortlist.
Silence, to be clear, does not mean lock-in. Plenty of agencies offer flexible terms once you ask. But a public commitment is a stronger signal than a verbal one, because the agency has to honour it for every client who reads the page.
How many have a real AI search offering
Since we run an AEO practice ourselves, we tracked this closely across all eight rankings. Of the 54 external agencies:
| AI search positioning | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Describe some AI, AEO, GEO, or AI SEO offering | 32 | 59% |
| No visible AI search offering | 22 | 41% |
| Mention llms.txt in their public services | 2 | 4% |
The 59% headline flatters the market. It counts everything from genuinely detailed methodologies to a single "AI SEO" line in a services menu. The subset with a dedicated, concretely described AEO or GEO service (named methodology, itemised deliverables, platform coverage) is smaller, roughly two dozen, and dominated by agencies like Uprise Digital (four-stage AEO methodology), SEO Melbourne (CITE Framework), Hyperdot (GEO as "AI visibility infrastructure"), Nifty Marketing Australia (itemised AEO audit process), and Ronin in Brisbane (cross-platform AI search analytics).
The llms.txt number is the sharpest tell. Only Uprise Digital (which lists llms.txt setup as a deliverable) and SEO Melbourne (which has one live on its own site) mention it at all. If an agency sells "AI SEO" but its own site shows no evidence of AI-specific technical work, you are probably looking at a renamed retainer. Our Top 10 AEO Agencies in Australia explains the questions that separate the two.
One pricing data point worth flagging for the AEO market specifically: when we re-verified pricing pages in July 2026, Bonfire had stood up a dedicated AI Search Optimisation service, published from $2,990 per month with no fixed term. That is one of the first published AEO-specific price points in the Australian market, and it lands inside the $2,000 to $6,000 specialist AEO range our rankings research had already identified.
Founding years: an industry that stopped spawning
Of the 54 external agencies, 24 state an exact founding year on their websites (another handful state approximations like "15+ years", which we excluded from the table below).
| Founding period | Count | Agencies include |
|---|---|---|
| Before 2000 | 1 | SEO Perth Experts (1998) |
| 2000 to 2004 | 2 | Emote Digital (2001), Edge Marketing (2002) |
| 2005 to 2009 | 8 | Webprofits, Excite Media, SponsoredLinX, SEO Melbourne (all 2006), PWD (2007), Reload Media, Rocket Agency, WME Group (all 2008) |
| 2010 to 2014 | 4 | Prosperity Media, Supple Digital (2012), King Kong, Digital Eagles (2014) |
| 2015 to 2019 | 9 | StudioHawk, Local Digital (2015), Impressive, Overdose, Digital Hitmen, Hyperdot (2016), SIXGUN (2017), Perth Digital Edge (2018), Rise SEO (2019) |
| 2020 onwards | 0 | None in our external sample |
Two things stand out. First, this is a mature market: nearly half the dated agencies were founded before 2010, meaning the people quoting you have survived every major algorithm update since Panda. Second, the pipeline of new entrants visible in rankings-worthy positions has effectively stopped at 2019. The agencies competing for 2026 clients were almost all built for the Google-only era, which explains why AI search readiness is such an uneven layer bolted onto older foundations. (We founded Orkkid in 2024 around AEO precisely because of that gap, which is our bias and also our point.)
Where Australia's ranked agencies are headquartered
Across the 54 external agencies, headquarters cluster like this:
| Headquarters | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Melbourne | 20 | 37% |
| Sydney (including Parramatta and Wollongong) | 14 | 26% |
| Brisbane and South East Queensland | 11 | 20% |
| Perth | 8 | 15% |
| National / no single stated HQ | 1 | 2% |
Melbourne's lead is real and shows up in the AEO data too: more Melbourne agencies have stood up dedicated AEO or GEO service lines than any other city, from Cremorne to Camberwell. Brisbane is the opposite story. Its agency bench is solid but its AEO layer is thin, which is why we called Brisbane a first-mover market in our Brisbane AEO rankings. Perth remains the most self-contained market, with long-lived local firms (three of its eight date to 2007 or earlier) and the country's most prominent published price point in Bonfire's $2,990 per month.
Methodology
Sample. The agencies researched for our eight 2026 rankings: Top 10 AEO Agencies in Australia, 15 Best SEO Agencies in Melbourne, and our city rankings for Sydney SEO, Brisbane SEO, Perth SEO, Sydney AEO, Melbourne AEO, and Brisbane AEO. We reviewed the public websites of more than 60 Australian agencies during that research; agencies we could not verify enough about were excluded from the rankings, leaving 85 published profile entries covering 55 unique agencies (54 external plus Orkkid). The counts and percentages in this post use the 54 external agencies as the denominator unless stated otherwise.
Data. Each agency's own public website: pricing pages, service pages, about pages, and stated claims. We recorded only what agencies publish about themselves. Where an agency was silent on a dimension (price, contracts, founding year), it is counted as "not stated", never estimated.
Dates. The underlying profiles were researched for our 2026 rankings (published April to June 2026). The five published pricing pages were re-verified live on 30 July 2026, and the figures in the pricing table reflect that verification. SEO Melbourne's published range shifted slightly between our original profile ($1,000 to $4,000) and the July 2026 check ($800 local entry, $2,000 to $5,000 typical); the table uses the verified current figures.
Limitations. This is a sample of rankings-worthy agencies, not a census of every SEO provider in Australia, so it likely overstates the transparency of the full market: agencies that made our rankings were selected partly for verifiable public information. Published pricing can change at any time. And one agency in the sample is us, which is why we excluded ourselves from every count.
Frequently asked questions
How many Australian SEO agencies publish their pricing?
In our sample of 54 ranked external agencies, five (9%) publish concrete dollar figures: Bonfire, Red Search, Edge Marketing, Local Digital, and SEO Melbourne. The remaining 91% require a sales conversation before disclosing any price.
What do Australian SEO agencies charge per month in 2026?
Based on what agencies themselves publish, entry prices run from $800 to $2,990 per month with a median published floor of $2,000, typical managed campaigns cluster between $2,000 and $5,000 per month, and competitive or national programs run to $10,000 or more. See our full cost breakdown for what each tier should include.
Are no-lock-in SEO contracts common in Australia?
Publicly committed ones are rare: 5 of 54 agencies in our sample (9%) state no lock-in or no long-term contracts on their websites. Many more offer flexible terms in practice, but only a small minority put it in writing where every prospect can see it.
Why do most agencies hide their pricing?
The charitable reading is that scope genuinely varies, so a published number could mislead. The less charitable reading is that unpublished pricing lets agencies quote to the client rather than to the market. Our data suggests transparency clusters: the agencies that publish prices are largely the same ones that publish no-lock-in commitments.
Can I cite this research?
Yes, please do. Cite it as "Orkkid, SEO Agency Pricing in Australia research, 2026" with a link to this page. Every number is traceable to the agencies' public websites via our published rankings, so your fact-checkers can follow the trail.
Use this data, then pressure-test the quote
If you take one thing from this dataset: the published Australian market prices serious SEO at $2,000 to $5,000 per month, and anyone quoting far below that band is cutting something you will pay for later. Ask every agency on your shortlist why their number sits where it does, what the contract terms are in writing, and what their AI search deliverables actually contain.
Or start with evidence instead of pitches: book a free website and AI citation audit. We will show you where you rank, where AI engines are and are not citing you across 30 industry prompts, and what a coordinated SEO and AEO program would target first. The report is yours either way.