SEO audit cost: consultant rates vs 7 audit tools

A one-off SEO audit from a consultant or agency costs $1,500 to $7,500, according to WhatShouldICharge (read October 2026). A small site that needs a focused technical check sits at the low end. A large site that needs crawl budget, indexation and migration work sits at the top. If you only need the checks run and repeated, audit tools start at about $29 a month, and several have a free plan or trial.

What a professional SEO audit costs

WhatShouldICharge’s pricing survey (read October 2026) puts a one-time SEO audit at $1,500 to $7,500, depending on site size and technical depth. The same survey says consultants who bill by the hour charge $75 to $200 for audits and advice. That means an hourly quote is usually the estimated hours multiplied by the rate, so ask how many hours they expect before you agree.

Ongoing work is priced separately. The survey puts monthly retainers at $300 to $1,500 for small local businesses and $1,500 to $8,000 for mid-market businesses. An audit tells you what is wrong. A retainer pays someone to keep fixing it.

Plan for the time as well as the money. A full professional audit commonly takes 30 to 45 days. A small website can be done in several days. Some agencies will cut the timeline to one week for an extra fee.

What pushes an audit price up or down

Before you compare quotes, check whether they cover the same scope. These are the things that move the price:

• Site size. More pages mean more crawling, more templates to review and more issues to sort.
• Scope. A technical crawl on its own costs less than an audit that also reviews content and links.
• Deliverables. Ask whether you get a prioritized action plan or only a list of findings. A list with no plan leaves you to work out the order of fixes yourself.
• Experience. Senior consultants and well-known agencies charge more.
• Turnaround. A rush job adds a fee on top of the base price.

Audit tools at a glance

Prices were read in October 2026. Semrush’s prices were shown in euros to visitors outside the United States. Free plans and trials are covered in each tool’s section below.

A tool’s price pays for the checks. It does not pay for the hours needed to fix what the checks find.

Desktop crawlers: Screaming Frog from $279 a year and Sitebulb from $180 a year

Screaming Frog is sold per licence, per year, at $279 each for 1 to 4 licences. You can download it for free and buy a licence when you need the additional features. That lets you try it on a small site before you pay.

Sitebulb has three plans: Lite at $180 a year, Pro at $425 a year for one user, and Sitebulb Cloud from $1,500 a year for two or more users. The 14-day trial is fully featured and does not ask for a card.

Both tools suit someone who is comfortable reading crawl data and deciding what to fix. They report the issues. You or a developer still make the changes.

SEO suites: Ubersuggest from $29, Semrush from €112.52 and Ahrefs from $129 a month

Style Factory’s review (read October 2026) gives Ubersuggest’s entry-level plan as $29 a month.

Semrush shows three plans: SEO at €112.52 a month, Starter at €158.40 a month and Pro+ at €238 a month, all billed annually. Each paid plan has a try-for-free option.

Warning: Semrush’s lower monthly figures apply only to annual billing, so you commit to a full year at that rate.

Ahrefs has Lite at $129 a month, Standard at $249 a month and Advanced at $449 a month.

All three suites include a site audit alongside keyword and backlink data. They are only worth the price if someone on your team will actually use that extra data. If you just want the audit, a crawler or a recurring tool costs less.

Quick checks: SEOptimer from $39 a month

SEOptimer has two plans. Pro is $39 a month and includes SEO audits, white-label PDF reporting, 10 SEO crawls and 3 users. Max is $59 a month and raises that to 50 crawls and 6 users, and adds a lead generation tool. A 14-day free trial is available.

Automated checks like these are a good first look at surface-level issues. On a complex site, they do not replace a consultant’s judgment.

Costs that come after the audit

Fixing what the audit finds usually costs more than the audit itself. Budget for developer or writer time, or for a retainer at the rates above, before you commission the report.

Audits also go out of date. Your site keeps changing, so a report is stale within months. If you repeat a $1,500 to $7,500 audit once or twice a year, you pay that fee each time.

On the tool side, the price can grow in three ways:

• per-licence or per-user pricing (Screaming Frog, Sitebulb Cloud)
• annual-only rates (Semrush)
• VAT added on top (WhoTheyFind)

We compare one-off setup tools with scheduled re-checks in WordPress SEO plugin vs automated monitoring.

Who should pay for a one-off audit and who should not

Hire a consultant or agency if you face a site migration, indexation problems on a large site, or a strategic question a tool cannot answer, and $1,500 to $7,500 fits your budget.

Buy a crawler or a suite if someone on your team will read the reports and make the fixes.

Choose a recurring automated audit if you want the checks repeated every week and the fixes proposed for you, rather than a single report that ages. For a wider view of the tools and channels that bring visitors to a young company, see How people find your startup in 2026.

WhoTheyFind: free plan, Standard at $99 a month

WhoTheyFind has a free plan.

Standard is $99 a month plus VAT. It covers the following:

• Weekly site checks. It reads your site the way Google and AI assistants do.
• Daily numbers. It pulls your search and traffic data every day.
• Fixes for approval. Each fix comes with a risk level, and nothing is applied until you approve it.
• Publishing through your platform. Approved changes go out through WordPress, Webflow, Shopify, Wix, Framer, Ghost, Notion or GitHub.
• Measurement of every change. It undoes any change that made results worse.

The how it works page walks through each step.

The limit is depth. WhoTheyFind runs scheduled checks and fixes. It is not a consultant’s strategic review for a migration. For most small sites, though, a year of Standard costs less than the low end of one consultant audit, and the checks repeat every week.

Start with the free audit to see what it finds on your site.

We read 14 pages on 12 October 2026 to write this guide. No product was tested. WhoTheyFind publishes this guide and is one of the options it lists.

SEO audit cost: common questions

How much does an SEO audit cost?

A one-time professional audit costs $1,500 to $7,500, according to WhatShouldICharge (October 2026). Audit tools start at about $29 a month.

What do SEO consultants charge per hour?

WhatShouldICharge puts hourly rates at $75 to $200 for audits and advice.

How long does an SEO audit take?

A full audit commonly takes 30 to 45 days. Small sites can take several days. Some agencies cut it to a week for an extra fee.

Why do SEO audit quotes vary so much?

Quotes depend on site size, scope, deliverables, the consultant’s experience and turnaround. A rush job adds a fee.

What is the cheapest SEO audit tool?

Ubersuggest’s entry plan is $29 a month. Screaming Frog offers a free download, and WhoTheyFind has a free plan.

Does an audit tool fix the problems it finds?

Most audit tools only report issues. WhoTheyFind proposes fixes, publishes the ones you approve and undoes changes that made results worse.

Do I need to repeat an SEO audit?

Yes. Sites change, so an audit goes out of date within months. Repeating a paid audit means paying the fee again each time.