Who offers a one-off AI visibility audit rather than a monthly retainer?
Five we could verify: AnswerHalo at $500, Pilot Digital at $3,950, Discovered Labs at €4,370, Attributa from $7,500, and DerivateX free for B2B software companies between $5M and $50M ARR. A one-off ends when the findings land. A retainer buys someone doing the work every month. Most of this category sells the retainer, and the audit is the door into it.
Every figure below opened and checked on 23 August 2026| Provider | What it is | What you get | One-off or retainer | Price | What you can check yourself |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AnswerHalo Coaches, consultants and small expert businesses | A one-time visibility audit, delivered by email | 25 buyer questions asked across 5 assistants, run twice. 125 checks, 250 stored answers | One-off. A monthly watch exists and is optional | $500, one time. A free 25-question check comes first, at $0 | Every figure opens the stored, dated answer it was counted from |
| DerivateX B2B software companies, $5M to $50M ARR | A free AI visibility audit, run by hand | 20 prompts across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity, plus Google AI Overviews and AI Mode | One-off, and openly the front door to retainer work | Free. Their own page says no fee and no obligation | Findings within 48 business hours of them confirming you are a fit |
| Discovered Labs B2B companies, Europe-facing pricing | Search Visibility Diagnostic, a two-week engagement | Google, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, plus a prioritized 90-day plan | One-off, and 100% credited to your first retainer month if you sign within 14 days | €4,370 one-time. Retainers run €5,995 to €15,995 a month | A 60-minute findings walkthrough with a co-founder |
| Pilot Digital Businesses wanting a report and a plan, not a program | A one-time AI Search Visibility Audit | 20+ test prompts across OpenAI, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini, 5 competitors benchmarked, a 15+ page report and a 90-day roadmap | One-off. Ongoing tracking is a separate $199 a month | $3,950 one-time, published on their own page | Raw data exports come with the report |
| Attributa Companies buying a project, not a report | Fixed-scope projects of 4, 8 or 12 weeks | Work delivered over the engagement, not a document at the end | One-off projects, alongside retainers from $2,500 a month | $7,500, $20,000 or $45,000 one-time, by project length | Every price is published on their own pricing page |
| O8 Agency Larger sites with real technical complexity | A three-week audit covering technical work, content and AI search | A prioritized plan, plus approved quick fixes made during the audit itself | One-off, and creditable against later work | No price published. Their own FAQ says pricing is scoped after an assessment of your site | Nothing, until you have asked them and been quoted |
A note on how that table was built
We asked five assistants this question twice, a day apart. They named 35 companies each time and agreed on almost none of them, so a name is in the table only because we opened its site and confirmed it sells a one-off audit today.
One name had no website we could find at all and is not here. Another, O8 Agency, was quoted to us at a flat one-time $1,500. O8's own page carries no price anywhere, and their published answer says pricing is scoped after an assessment, because a 60-page site and a 5,000-page platform are different jobs. They do sell the audit, so they are in the table with the truth in the price column.
A number an assistant gives you for a company that publishes none is somebody else's estimate wearing that company's name. It is usually lifted from a third-party roundup the company never agreed to.
When a retainer is the better buy
If the honest answer to "who is going to write and publish the pages" is nobody, an audit will not fix that. You get a correct, well-evidenced document describing work that then does not happen. A retainer buys the hands.
Buy the monthly arrangement if you want somebody producing content, pitching for mentions on sites the assistants already read, and re-measuring on a schedule. That is what most of this category sells. Attributa runs retainers from $2,500 a month, Discovered Labs from €5,995, and DerivateX's free audit exists to start that conversation.
We do not do that work for you, and it is the clearest reason to buy something other than an AnswerHalo audit. We measure, and we specify what to publish. Somebody on your side still has to publish it. If that person does not exist, a retainer with a firm that writes and places for you is the better purchase, even though it costs more.
When a one-off is the better buy
A one-off tells you whether you have a problem worth spending money on, before you commit to spending money on it every month.
Most monthly arrangements here start at $2,500 and run past $10,000. Over a year that is $30,000 to $120,000, usually committed without a baseline, on the general sense that AI search matters now. It might. It might also turn out that assistants already name you for the questions your buyers ask, in which case the correct spend is nothing.
The other case is that a lot of what an audit finds is fixable once. Missing prices, an unclear description of who you serve, a service page written for people who already know you: those are afternoon jobs, not monthly ones. Paying every month to have them noticed repeatedly is an expensive way to buy an afternoon of work.
There is a real cost to the one-off. You get a picture of one moment. Assistants change their answers, sometimes within a week, and a report is a photograph rather than a live feed. If you want to watch a number move, buy something that watches. If you want to know where you stand and what to do about it, the photograph is the thing.
Our own reason for selling it this way is fit rather than principle. For a coach or a small expert business, a $2,500 monthly retainer is not a smaller version of the right product. It is the wrong one.
What $500 actually buys
Twenty-five real buyer questions from your niche, across five assistants, run twice. That is 125 checks and 250 stored answers, emailed the next day.
What arrives
- Your score across all 25 questions and all five assistants.
- Every rival named in your place, with how often. A rival is listed only if both passes found it and at least two of the five assistants named it.
- The questions where nobody is named at all, which are the cheapest ones to take.
- What to change, in the order the evidence supports.
- Every figure linked to the stored, dated answer it came from.
What does not arrive
- Any promise of a ranking, a citation, a mention rate or a date for one.
- Pages written and published on your behalf.
- A login. Everything arrives by email, and there is nothing to sign into.
- A call. The whole business runs by email, by design.
How to choose in 60 seconds
You have never measured, and you do not know if you have a problem
Start with something free. Our 25-question check is $0, and B2B software companies between $5M and $50M ARR can have 20 prompts run free by DerivateX.
You want the measurement, and you intend to do the fixing yourself
This is what a one-off is for. Ours is $500 and arrives by email the next day. You keep the findings and decide what to act on.
You want somebody to publish, place and pitch on your behalf every month
Buy a retainer, not an audit. We do not do that work for you, and a report will not close that gap however good it is.
You have a large site, several languages, or a migration behind you
A $500 audit is the wrong size of tool. O8 or Discovered Labs are built for that, and both scope it properly before quoting.
You have a budget approver who needs a number before you can start
Pick from the providers who publish one. Five of the six in the table above do, which makes the choice a comparison instead of six emails.
Questions this page gets asked
- Who offers a one-off AI visibility audit rather than a monthly retainer?
- AnswerHalo at $500, Pilot Digital at $3,950, Discovered Labs at €4,370, Attributa from $7,500, and DerivateX free for B2B software companies between $5M and $50M ARR. O8 Agency sells a one-off audit and publishes no price for it. Every figure was checked on the provider's own site on 23 August 2026.
- How much does an AI visibility audit cost?
- Anywhere from nothing to $45,000, and the spread is real rather than a haggling range. Free audits exist as a route into retainer work. Published one-off prices we verified run $500, $3,950, €4,370 and $7,500 and up. Several providers publish no price at all and scope each engagement first.
- What is the difference between an audit and a monthly retainer?
- An audit ends. You pay once, you get findings, and you decide what happens next. A retainer buys somebody doing the work every month: publishing, placing, pitching and re-measuring. An audit tells you where you stand. A retainer is the standing arrangement to change it.
- Do I need a retainer after the audit?
- No, and most of our buyers do not take one. The audit is a complete thing on its own. We sell an optional monthly watch at $399, or $300 if you add it when buying the audit, and it re-runs the same questions rather than doing publishing work for you.
- How do I know the audit findings are real?
- Because you can open them. Every figure in an AnswerHalo report links to the stored, dated answer it was counted from, so you read the assistant's own words rather than our summary of them. If a figure does not open and we cannot restore it within five business days, the report is free.
Last checked 23 August 2026. Competitor prices change without notice, so open each one yourself before you decide anything.
Find out where you stand before you buy anything.
Twenty-five buyer questions on ChatGPT, a score, and the names that come back instead of yours. It costs $0, the report lands within the hour between 7am and 5pm Central, and if it shows you are already named everywhere it will say so.