By Gecko Studio · updated October 2026
"How much does an SEO consultant cost?" is a fair question that almost nobody answers clearly, for one reason: the honest answer is "it depends on scope". But "it depends" is no use when you have to set a budget. So here are numbers, ranges and, above all, a way to judge whether what you are being quoted is expensive or cheap for what you need.
Start with the figure that best answers "how much work are we talking about?": of our 21 clients on a monthly fee, half buy 5 hours of SEO a month or fewer, and only one goes above 12. The price comes from there — from the hours your website needs — not from a fixed rate card.
The two ways to hire (and their ranges)
Before price, understand what you are buying. There are two main formats:
| Format | What it includes | Indicative range | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| One-off consulting | Diagnosis plus a prioritised roadmap for your own team to execute | Hundreds to a few thousand euros, depending on site size | Businesses with an in-house team that implements |
| Monthly retainer | Strategy plus ongoing execution, billed monthly | From about €445/month + VAT, depending on scope | Businesses without a team, or large projects |
Ranges vary a lot with site size, sector and competition. A shop with thousands of products in several languages does not need the same hours as a ten-page services site, and you can see that in what each client buys.
How many hours a month our clients buy
On a monthly retainer, what you purchase is hours of work. This is how the 21 clients on a monthly fee split in October 2026:
| SEO hours per month | Clients |
|---|---|
| 3 h | 3 |
| 5 h | 9 |
| 6 h | 3 |
| 10 h | 3 |
| 12 h | 2 |
| 18 h | 1 |
The median is 5 hours a month. Fifteen of the 21 work with 3 to 6 hours: small and mid-sized businesses with a manageable website. Those above 10 hours are large sites, online shops or multilingual projects.
What this gives you when requesting a quote: if you run an ordinary services website and someone proposes a volume of hours far above that band, ask what will be done with them. And the other way round: if you have a large multilingual shop and are offered a couple of hours of maintenance, it will not be enough.
What makes one consultant cost more than another
Not every "SEO consultant" does the same job, even with the same title. What really explains price differences:
- Real diagnosis vs a template. Genuinely analysing your site takes hours. Handing you a generic tool report takes minutes. The price reflects it.
- Do they execute, or only recommend? Fixing problems costs more than listing them, and is worth far more.
- Experience with your type of site. Someone who has solved a case like yours goes straight to the point; someone learning on your project bills you for the learning.
- Business measurement. Setting up sales tracking and reporting against revenue is extra work many skip, and it is exactly what tells you whether you are recovering the investment.
Why the cheap consultant ends up expensive
It is the pattern we see most often from clients arriving "to fix what was done before":
- You pay little for a generic plan that does not start from your real website.
- Actions get carried out that do not move the needle (or that break something), because there was no diagnosis.
- Months pass without results, plus the opportunity cost of not tackling the right things.
- You pay twice: the cheap fee the first time, and the cost of undoing the damage.
The way to avoid it is not to look for the most expensive option, but to insist that spending starts with a diagnosis that puts a number on the real work — in hours per month — before you commit a budget.
How to budget your case without surprises
- Diagnosis first. An audit tells you what needs doing and how much work it implies. At Gecko you can even start with a free SEO audit for a first picture.
- Choose the format depending on whether you have a team to execute.
- Ask for hours, not just price: how many per month, what they will be spent on and what you expect to recover. If nobody frames it that way, commercial judgement is missing.
For how the audit itself is priced, see SEO audit cost: real price ranges for 2026. When you want a number for your own website, SEO consulting at Gecko Studio has no lock-in period and always starts from a diagnosis — or talk to us and we will tell you honestly how many hours your site needs.
