Buyer's guide · updated July 2026
What a GEO agency costs in 2026
The GEO market in France runs from €65 per month for a tracking tool to €15,000 per month for enterprise programs. This guide gives you the full market grid in euros, the six criteria you can check in one hour, and the four signals that disqualify a provider on the spot.
How much does a GEO agency cost per month?
A GEO agency in France costs between €890 and €1,780 per month at generalist agencies, €1,780 to €8,000 per month at specialists, and €8,000 to €15,000 per month for enterprise, multi-market programs. A tracking tool alone starts at €65 per month, with execution left entirely to you.
Those four bands describe one market, not one service. The gap between a €65 tool and an €8,000 retainer is not margin: it is the difference between software that watches your visibility and consultants who change it. What you are buying at each tier is execution, and the grid below shows exactly who executes.
GEO, Generative Engine Optimization, is the work of making your brand present and recommended in the answers of AI engines, measured prompt by prompt and engine by engine rather than through classic search rankings alone.
One test sums up this entire guide. A serious GEO agency publishes three things before it sells anything: its measurement method, its prices, and the indicator it agrees to be judged on. Every criterion and every warning signal below is a variation on that test.
All figures on this page are in euros, before tax, because that is how the French GEO market prices its work and how Botanik publishes its grid. If you budget in dollars, apply the day's EUR to USD rate as an indicative conversion: converted prices are not printed here, because the rate moves and the published prices do not.
The 2026 GEO market price grid
The 2026 GEO market splits into four tiers: tracking tools from €65 per month, generalists with a GEO option from €890 to €1,780 per month, GEO specialists from €1,780 to €8,000 per month, and enterprise programs from €8,000 to €15,000 per month. Who executes the work is what separates them.
| Tier | Monthly price (EUR, excl. VAT) | What you typically get | Who does the work |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tracking tool only | From €65/month | Visibility data, no execution | You |
| Generalist agency with a GEO option | €890 to €1,780/month | Often a single engine tracked | Project manager, frequently a junior |
| GEO specialist | €1,780 to €8,000/month | Multi-engine measurement, implementation, placement in cited sources, per-engine reporting | Dedicated senior consultant |
| Enterprise and multi-market | €8,000 to €15,000/month | Several markets and languages, BI integration, governance | Multidisciplinary team |
Where Botanik sits in the grid
From 3 days of audit work. Includes the Oracle audit, your visibility measured on up to 5,000 AI prompts, an Absent / Mentioned / Recommended score engine by engine, a full SEO audit, and a prioritized roadmap. Implementation is not included: Graine tells you where you stand and what to do first.
6-month commitment, from 2 days per month. Continuous AI monitoring, implementation done by the consultants themselves, content designed to be cited, placement in the sources engines cite, and monthly reporting that tracks your move from Absent to Recommended. Pousse is the tier Botanik flags as recommended on its own pricing page.
From 3 days per month. Everything in Pousse, run across several markets, plus local GEO with a geogrid per zone, PR and citations, and a dedicated engagement lead. Canopée is built for brands defending more than one market at once.
Botanik sells packages of several days, not single days, and the day rate never rises with volume or intensity. It is the same day rate as Junto, which distributes Botanik's services. Packages are calibrated after the audit, priced in days of support, before tax.
Botanik publishes one price grid, public and the same for every client: Graine, the seed, from €2,670 one-shot; Pousse, the sprout, from €1,780 per month; Canopée, the canopy, from €2,670 per month. All three are built on a single day rate of €890, whatever your volume.
How much does the Oracle audit cost?
The Oracle audit starts at €2,670, one-shot, for a minimum of 3 days of audit work, delivered in 3 weeks. Oracle is Botanik's visibility audit: your market measured on up to 5,000 real AI prompts, scored Absent, Mentioned or Recommended, engine by engine, with a full SEO audit and a prioritized roadmap.
The audit fee is not a sunk cost. If you continue to Pousse or Canopée within 60 days, the audit fee is deducted from your first month of support. That turns Graine into a paid diagnostic with a built-in credit: you get the full picture, and the cost rolls into the engagement if the picture convinces you to act.
You can read how the audit measures your market before paying for it. The method is published as Méthode Oracle v2.3, updated July 2026, and licensed CC BY 4.0 for free reuse with attribution. Engines are queried under equal conditions, same prompts, via API, with 5 runs per prompt and per engine, and the median is what gets reported.
The three states carry published thresholds. Absent means cited in under 5% of a prompt's runs. Mentioned means cited in at least 5% of runs without being the first recommendation. Recommended means being the first recommendation in at least 25% of runs. Any agency selling you a score should be able to show you thresholds this precise.
Six criteria to check before you sign
Ask: "Where is your measurement methodology, and which version do you use?" A serious agency publishes its method before it sells anything. Botanik's answer is public: Méthode Oracle v2.3, updated July 2026, reusable under CC BY 4.0 with attribution.
Ask: "Which engines do you track, and which are excluded?" The good answer is a named list, for example ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Mistral, with the collection frequency. A vague answer about "the AIs" means you cannot verify the scope before signing.
Ask: "What do I have in hand at 30, 60 and 90 days?" 30 days is the deadline by which a deliverable must exist, not a discovery phase. An agency that cannot date its deliverables is selling activity, not results.
Ask: "Who measures the result, and what is the agreed starting point?" The measurement must come from a third-party tool, not from the agency grading its own work, and the starting point must be a baseline signed before the first action.
Ask: "Who will work on my account, and is it the person in front of me?" The name on the proposal should be the name doing the work. At Botanik, staffing is 100% senior: no juniors, no subcontracting.
Ask: "If I stop in six months, what do I keep?" The right answer is everything: your content, your access, your data. A provider that keeps your assets inside a closed tool is charging you an exit tax it never disclosed.
Six criteria separate a serious GEO agency from an expensive subscription, and you can verify all six in one hour, without a sales meeting. Each one maps to a question you can ask in writing. A provider that answers all six cleanly is shortlist material; the answers below show what good looks like.
Four signals that disqualify a provider
The clearest disqualifier in the market. If the method of measurement is not public, you cannot audit the numbers you will be shown, and every reported win is an opinion with a logo on it.
"+30% guaranteed" without a contractual indicator, a signed baseline and a measurement window is a sales promise, not a guarantee. A real guarantee names what is measured, who measures it, from what starting point, and over what period.
Prices available only after a sales call are the first signal of rent-seeking. Public pricing forces an agency to defend the same grid in front of every buyer; hidden pricing lets it charge whatever each buyer will tolerate.
A dashboard shows the problem; it does not fix it. If the deliverable is a login, you are paying a subscription at consultant prices. Tracking tools start at €65 per month; a consultant should be doing something a tool cannot.
Four signals disqualify a GEO provider on their own: no published methodology, a guarantee without written conditions, quote-only pricing, and a dashboard presented as the deliverable. Any one of the four, alone, is enough to remove an agency from your shortlist, whatever the price on the proposal.
What do you have in hand after 30 days?
After 30 days with a serious GEO agency you hold three things: a score per engine, a signed baseline measured by a third-party tool, and a prioritized roadmap. Botanik publishes its own 30-, 60- and 90-day calendar, and applies one internal rule: no engagement starts without a signed baseline.
- 01Day 30: measured, signed, prioritizedYour score, Absent, Mentioned or Recommended, engine by engine. Your baseline signed and measured by a third-party tool, not by Botanik. Your roadmap, prioritized. If a provider offers a discovery phase instead, the 30-day rule has already been broken.Deliverable : Per-engine score, signed baseline, prioritized roadmap
- 02Day 60: published and placedContent and structured data are live on your site. Placement work is underway in the sources the engines cite. You receive the first dated competitive comparison, so progress is measured against the market, not against a slide.Deliverable : Live content and structured data, source placement underway, first dated competitor comparison
- 03Day 90: proven, or stoppedPer-engine reporting against the signed baseline, your progress tracked against 3 competitors, and an explicit decision point built into the calendar: continue, adjust, or stop. A provider that never schedules the stop option is selling a subscription, not a result.Deliverable : Per-engine report vs baseline, 3-competitor tracking, a continue / adjust / stop decision
Why do GEO agencies ask for a 6-month commitment?
A 6-month commitment exists because engines, classic and AI alike, take 3 to 4 months to re-crawl, re-cite and re-rank. Below 6 months, you pay to sow without ever harvesting. That is the stated reason behind the 6-month term on Pousse, Botanik's monthly support plan.
The timeline Botanik publishes for its own work: first citations move in 6 to 10 weeks, and a durable move from Mentioned to Recommended plays out over 4 to 6 months. Any provider promising faster should be asked which of the six criteria above their promise survives.
The commitment question has a cheaper cousin: "why not just a tool at €65 per month?" Botanik's own pricing page answers it bluntly: take the tool if you have a team to act on what it shows. If you do not, you are paying to watch the problem.
What we won't do
Botanik puts its refusals in writing, because negative commitments are the ones a buyer can actually enforce. The list below is not marketing: each line maps to a published mechanism, from the CC BY 4.0 method license to the 15 to 25% of fees indexed to a contractual indicator.
We won't sell on a quote-only basis. The grid is public and the same for everyone: Graine from €2,670 one-shot, Pousse from €1,780 per month, Canopée from €2,670 per month, all on a single €890 day rate. Hidden prices serve the seller, never the buyer.
We won't put a junior on your account, and we won't subcontract it. Staffing is 100% senior, at every tier.
We won't publish a number without its method. Every number Botanik publishes carries its measurement tool and its period, and any example line that does not come from a real mission is labeled as an example, in plain text.
We won't guarantee anything without written conditions. The local visibility guarantee (+30% on your zone, or the variable share of our fees is not due) holds under three written conditions: an indicator defined contractually at the start, measurement by a third-party tool, and a 1-month measurement window. If the three are met and the threshold is missed, the variable share is waived.
We won't hide partial results. The results register includes a "Partial" status and publishes it at the same rank as "Achieved".
We won't lock you in. Full reversibility: your content, your access and your data belong to you, with no penalty and no closed tool.
We won't take our full fee regardless of outcome. 15 to 25% of Botanik's fees are indexed to an indicator defined in the contract, with a signed baseline, third-party measurement, and a quarterly calculation window starting in the 4th month. Note the distinction: the local +30% guarantee is checked over a 1-month window, while this general variable share is calculated quarterly. They are two separate mechanisms.
How much does Botanik charge per day?
€890 per day, before tax, whatever your volume. It is the same day rate as Junto, which distributes Botanik's services. Work is sold as packages of several days, calibrated after the audit, never as single days, and scaling up intensity never raises the day rate.
Is the audit fee deducted if I sign for ongoing support?
Yes. Continue to Pousse or Canopée within 60 days and the audit fee is deducted from your first month of support. The deduction is part of Botanik's published terms, not a negotiated favor.
What does a GEO tracking tool cost, and is it enough?
Tools start at €65 per month, and the tool tier tracks without executing. Take the tool if you have a team to act on what it shows; without one, you pay to watch the problem.
What exactly does the +30% local guarantee cover?
+30% local visibility on your zone, or the variable share of Botanik's fees is not due. Three written conditions apply: the indicator is defined contractually at the start, the measurement is made by a third-party tool, and the measurement window is 1 month. It is distinct from the general performance share, which uses a quarterly calculation window starting in the 4th month.
How is the performance-based share of fees calculated?
15 to 25% of Botanik's fees are variable, indexed to one indicator written in black and white in the contract. A baseline is signed at the start, a third-party tool does the measuring, the same one used in the audit, and the calculation window is quarterly, from the 4th month.
Are these prices available in dollars?
Botanik publishes its grid in euros, before tax. For a dollar figure, apply the current EUR to USD exchange rate as an indicative conversion. Converted prices are not printed because the exchange rate moves and the published price does not.
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