What Does AI Search Optimisation Cost in India? An Honest Breakdown
“What does GEO cost?” is the most common question we get, and most agencies dodge it. We can’t give you a single number either — but we can give you something more useful: the honest cost drivers, the shapes engagements usually take, and how to tell a fair scope from a padded one. As a new agency, transparent pricing is how we earn trust, so we’ll show our working.
What actually drives the cost of GEO?
Three variables decide the price more than anything else:
- 1Starting structure — a clean, server-rendered site with some schema needs far less foundation work than a slow, JavaScript-heavy one with none.
- 2Content volume — how many pages need answer capsules, FAQs and rewrites, and how much new answer-first content you need to create.
- 3Competitiveness — how contested your category's AI answers are; crowded categories need more authority-building to break in.
How are GEO engagements usually structured?
Rather than quote rupee figures we can’t stand behind for your specific case, here are the three shapes most honest GEO work takes. Treat these as frameworks, not price tags — the right one depends entirely on your audit.
| Shape | What it covers | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| One-off foundation | Audit, schema, answer capsules, crawler/llms.txt fixes | Sites with good content but no AI structure |
| Monthly programme | Foundation + ongoing content, authority building, tracking | Brands competing for contested category answers |
| Audit only | Diagnosis + prioritised roadmap you execute in-house | Teams with their own developers and writers |
How do I spot a fair scope versus a padded retainer?
A fair proposal ties price to defined deliverables and shows you what changes on your site. Be wary of long lock-ins with vague outputs, “guaranteed” AI citations (no one can guarantee what a model says), and reporting that never mentions which engines cite you. Good GEO reporting is concrete: AI share of voice, schema coverage and the pages that moved.
- 1Green flags: defined deliverables, visible on-site changes, plain-English AI-share-of-voice reporting, no hidden retainers.
- 2Red flags: guaranteed citations, long lock-ins with vague scope, no engine-level measurement, pricing with no link to work done.
Can I do some of this in-house to save money?
Yes — and you should. Allowing AI crawlers, adding basic schema and writing answer capsules are well within a capable in-house team, and an audit-only engagement can hand you the roadmap to execute. You pay an agency for speed, prioritisation and the authority-building that’s hard to do alone. We’ll tell you honestly which parts you can handle yourself.
“The honest answer to ‘what does GEO cost?’ is ‘less than you fear if your foundations are good, more than a template if your category is contested’ — so start with a diagnosis, not a quote.”
If you want a number grounded in your actual site, start with a free AI visibility audit — we’ll scope the smallest effective engagement, and you can read how we run GEO on our AI Search Optimisation page.
Frequently asked questions
There is no fixed price — cost depends on your site's current structure, the volume of content to fix or create, and how competitive your category's AI answers are. Honest engagements are scoped as a one-off foundation fix, an ongoing monthly programme, or an audit-only roadmap. The fairest starting point is a free audit that defines the smallest effective scope.
It can be either. If your content is strong but unstructured for AI, a one-off foundation fix may be enough. If you're competing for contested category answers, ongoing work to build authority and publish answer-first content compounds over time. Beware retainers with vague deliverables — fair pricing always ties cost to defined outputs.
Often yes, because the highest-impact moves — allowing AI crawlers, adding accurate schema and writing answer capsules — are inexpensive and sometimes doable in-house. An audit-only engagement gives you a prioritised roadmap to execute yourself, and you can scale into a managed programme later if the category warrants it.
The AI Search team at Caught by Apricot helps brands become the cited answer inside ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews through structure, schema and entity authority.