A generative engine optimization agency is the firm you hire to get your brand into AI answers when buyers ask ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Perplexity what to buy. It finds the buyer questions you’re losing, works the pages and sources that decide what the assistants say, and measures whether you moved. The done-for-you routes are WebFX for large programs, ResultFirst if you want fees tied to performance, SEO.co for a scope written down before you sign, Stella Rising for consumer brands, The Ad Firm to run paid beside organic, and iBoost for small US businesses.
The other route is keeping the work in house with an AI visibility platform that shows which questions you’re losing and hands your own agent the playbook to win them, which is the Omnipresence route. We judged every entry on the same three things: named deliverables rather than capability marketing, whether they publish a price, and how they measure results. Every price and claim below was read on the agency’s own site on October 21, 2026.
The best generative engine optimization agencies at a glance
| Provider | Best for | What stands out | Starting price (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Omnipresence | Running GEO in house | Your own agent runs the playbook, audit to shipped page | $19/mo, billed annually |
| WebFX | Large done-for-you programs | The one entry with a figure in the open | $2,900+/mo |
| ResultFirst | Tying fees to performance | Payment tied to outcomes, deliverables named | Not published |
| SEO.co | A written-down scope | Six named deliverables | Not published |
| Stella Rising | Consumer brands | Five-pillar program, free audit up front | Not published |
| The Ad Firm | Paid and organic together | GEO beside its Google Ads practice | Not published |
| iBoost | Small US businesses | Per-platform packages, ChatGPT to AI Overviews | Not published |
Omnipresence
Best for: running GEO in house instead of outsourcing it
Omnipresence isn’t a done-for-you agency, and it’s honest about that. It’s the in-house route for a team that has an agent and wants to keep the work. The platform shows which buyer questions you’re losing on ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity, which pages won them, and what each answer cited.
Your own agent then runs the playbook on what it finds, from the audits to the rewritten page, and logs what changed. Plans run from $19 a month on Starter to $239 a month on Agency, billed annually, and there’s a 7-day trial on Pro with no card.
Pros
- Shows whether each assistant recommends you or just names you, for every buyer question you track
- Your agent runs the whole playbook: audits, rewrites, refreshes, outreach
- Questions you leave untouched act as the comparison, so the lift is provably yours
- No cap on tracked questions, one flat fee
Cons
- Built for teams that want to run the work through their own agent, so it isn’t a done-for-you service
WebFX
Best for: large, done-for-you programs
WebFX is the biggest operation on this list, and the pick when you want a large team executing for you rather than a boutique. Its AI search optimization service runs generative engine optimization alongside traditional SEO and paid media, which suits a brand that wants one agency for the whole stack. It’s the one entry with a figure in the open: WebFX’s own roundup of GEO agencies lists its plans at $2,900+ a month.
Pros
- A large, established digital agency, so you’re not betting on a two-person shop
- GEO sits beside traditional SEO and paid media in one shop
- The only entry here with a starting figure in the open
Cons
- At that scale you get account layers between you and the people doing the work
- $2,900+ a month puts it out of reach for smaller brands
ResultFirst
Best for: tying fees to performance
ResultFirst sells AI search optimization services on a pay-for-performance model, which makes it the pick if you want your spend tied to movement rather than months. The deliverables are the honest pattern: a baseline, a prompt universe, a prioritized roadmap, then page-level work. It doesn’t publish standard pricing; the scope decides it.
Pros
- Fees tied to performance rather than time on the clock
- Names its deliverables, so the scope is arguable before you sign
- Says plainly that it doesn’t guarantee AI results
Cons
- No published price
- Pay-for-performance is only as good as how the performance is measured, so pin that down before the work starts
SEO.co
Best for: a written-down scope
SEO.co is the defined-scope pick. Its generative engine optimization service lists six deliverables: AI-optimized content, entity and knowledge-graph work, schema, citable resources, visibility monitoring and digital PR.
It doesn’t publish standard pricing. It also takes the honest position on guarantees, stating that no agency can promise what an AI model will do.
Pros
- Six named deliverables you can hold the retainer to
- Digital PR included, which feeds the third-party pages assistants read
- Straight with you about what nobody can promise
Cons
- No published price
- White-label focus, so you may get account managers rather than the strategists who pitched
Stella Rising
Best for: consumer brands
Stella Rising is a consumer-growth agency with a five-pillar generative search offering, and the entry point is a complimentary AI visibility audit. That suits an established consumer brand that wants generative search handled beside its media and retail work, and the free audit means you see the diagnosis before any retainer. It doesn’t publish standard pricing.
Pros
- The visibility audit up front, so you can judge the diagnosis before paying
- Built around consumer-brand growth rather than search alone
Cons
- Capability-level marketing copy: no published deliverables or KPIs, so the scope comes together on the sales call
- No published price
The Ad Firm
Best for: running paid and organic together
The Ad Firm runs generative engine optimization inside a full-service digital agency that leans on Google Ads data, so it suits a brand that wants paid and organic handled in one place. It doesn’t publish standard pricing; the closest signal is the budget selector on its contact form, which starts at $2,000 to $5,000 a month. Its top GEO agencies roundup ranks The Ad Firm first, which is a fair reminder to read every list, ours included, against its stated criteria.
Pros
- GEO work connected to your paid search data, which most GEO-only shops can’t do
- Full-service, so one vendor covers the marketing stack
Cons
- No published packages or prices
- GEO is one service in a broad menu, so ask who actually works your account
iBoost
Best for: small US businesses
iBoost sells generative engine optimization and answer engine optimization (AEO) services to small businesses from its US site. Its packages are organized by platform, currently covering ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, Perplexity and AI Overviews, which suits a business that wants presence in one or two specific assistants. It doesn’t publish standard pricing.
Pros
- Per-platform packages, so you can start with the assistant your buyers use
- Serves small businesses, a segment most of this list prices out
Cons
- No published price
- Per-platform packaging (ChatGPT SEO, Gemini SEO) can resell the same fundamentals twice, so ask what actually differs per package
What a generative engine optimization agency actually does
A generative engine optimization agency does three jobs: finds the buyer questions your customers ask assistants, works the pages and sources that decide the answers, and measures whether you got recommended. Then it repeats the loop. The agencies worth hiring can name the page, the query and the fix.
Our position, from running this work and measuring it: about 80% of GEO is strong SEO fundamentals. Keyword research, content depth, technical SEO, internal links, authority. The genuinely new 20% is the retrieval layer: passages a model can lift, facts it can extract, and a presence in the third-party pages it reads before answering.
Anyone telling you they’ve cracked AI search, or that it’s a wholly new discipline you must buy separately, is selling you something. The 20% is real and worth paying for, and the other 80% is SEO you already know how to judge.
The work runs in stages, and a competent agency can describe each one. First, be in the running: your pages have to be retrievable for the buying-intent queries your buyers actually type, which is where the fundamentals do their work. Second, win the shortlist: the assistant deep-reads a set of pages and names a few brands, so you need to be named across the third-party sources it keeps reading.
Third, pass the credibility check: in our Credibility Layer study of how ChatGPT recommends local businesses, every recommendation came out of a 30-search credibility audit, and rank barely touched the outcome. Then the loop closes with measurement.
The win worth paying for is being recommended rather than mentioned. A mention is your name somewhere in the answer; a recommendation is the assistant putting you forward when a buyer asks.
They take different work: citations come from pages a model can lift, recommendations come from being the consensus pick across the sources it reads. This is what Omnipresence records, across the buyer prompts you choose, each asked many times on four assistants.
And the receipts land on the side of the pages. In our 10x AI Visibility Refresh study, the correlation between Google rank and AI citation over 91 days was basically zero (Spearman rho 0.000), and 41 cited pages had no Google impressions at all.
The same study took citations up 10x in 91 days across 98 refreshed posts, with nothing new published. What decides whether a page gets lifted is narrower still: our 3 Numbers That Decide If AI Cites Your Page study found AI scores one chunk of a page at a time, so the passage that answers the question has to stand alone.
How to choose a generative engine optimization agency
Vet any generative engine optimization agency on five questions, in this order.
1. Ask what they actually do, page by page
Ask for the pages it will work, the queries those pages should win, and the fix for each. A proposal that talks about AI visibility and never names a page is a relabeled audit. If the first deliverable isn’t a list of pages and queries, the rest is boilerplate.
The work list behind this is what we build at Omnipresence: for each buyer question, the searches the assistant ran, the pages it read, which page won, and yours marked against them. An agency should hand you something equivalent in week one, or you’re paying for a score.
2. Ask how they measure
Measurement has three parts, and a weak agency fails one of them. Recommended or just mentioned: being put forward as a pick is the outcome, a name in passing is not. Sample size: one run of one question is basically a coin flip, so ask how many times each question gets asked.
The third part is a comparison set: a few questions left untouched, so you can tell your lift from a platform-wide shift.
We handle this by asking each question many times across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity and reporting a rate that doesn’t swing on one answer, with the untouched questions sitting alongside as the comparison. If an agency can’t describe its own version of that, it doesn’t know its number.
3. Treat a guarantee as a red flag
Nobody controls what a model says, and the honest agencies say so on their own pages: both ResultFirst and SEO.co state plainly that they don’t guarantee AI results. So a promised placement is the tell. If the word ‘guaranteed’ shows up in a proposal, end the conversation there.
4. Ask where the 20% is
Under our 80/20 read, the new part of this work is the retrieval layer: passages a model can lift, extractable facts, and the third-party pages it reads. Ask which deliverables are that 20% and which are SEO fundamentals at a markup.
A good agency answers in a sentence. A vague one relabels keyword research and hopes you don’t notice.
5. Decide what stays in house
The last question is about you. If you have a team and an agent, keeping the work in house costs a fraction of a retainer and keeps the learning inside.
If nobody on your side will run the work, hire from this list and hold the firm to the four questions above. And if you want to see which buyer questions decide your category before you commit to anything, you can point Omnipresence at one brand for a week.
Frequently Asked Questions about Generative Engine Optimization Agencies
How much does a generative engine optimization agency cost?
Most don’t publish pricing, so scope decides. The one open figure on this list is WebFX’s $2,900+ a month, and the budget selector on The Ad Firm’s contact form starts at $2,000, which suggests most engagements start somewhere in the low thousands a month. Expect the price to move with the number of pages, queries and third-party sources in scope, and get the deliverables written down before you sign.
How long does GEO work take to show results?
Plan on a quarter before you judge it. The work compounds: pages get reworked, sources get earned, and assistants have to re-read your category before the answers shift. Keep a few questions untouched as your comparison so you can tell a real move from a platform-wide shift, and be suspicious of anyone quoting a faster timeline than that.
Should you hire a specialist GEO agency or add GEO to your SEO retainer?
Most of the work is SEO fundamentals, so a good SEO agency that adds the retrieval layer honestly can do the job. The risk is the relabel: the same retainer, repriced as something new. A specialist earns its premium when it can name pages, queries and third-party sources your current agency doesn’t touch.
Is a GEO agency worth it if you already rank in Google?
Ranking and being recommended are different jobs. We’ve measured Google rank and AI citation over a 91-day window and found basically no relationship between them, so position alone doesn’t put you in AI answers. If your buyers ask assistants what to buy, the AI work is separate work, and it’s worth doing whether or not you rank.