Is an SEO freelancer cheaper than an SEO agency?

An SEO freelancer is usually cheaper than an agency in the published surveys. Ahrefs polled 439 SEO providers and calculated an average monthly retainer of $1,348.63 for freelancers and $3,209 for agencies, assuming each charges the top of its price band. The survey page was updated on August 15, 2024 and does not say when the survey ran, so check the figures against real quotes from providers near you.

How much more do SEO agencies charge than freelancers?

SEO agencies charge 30% more on average than freelancers, according to an approximate figure from Backlinko's survey of over 300 SEO professionals, on a page updated December 29, 2025. The survey does not give its own date. Use the figure as a rough guide, then ask each agency and freelancer to price the same written list of tasks, so you compare like with like.

What hourly rate do SEO freelancers charge?

SEO freelancers and other providers most often charge $75 to $100 an hour, according to Ahrefs, whose survey of 439 SEO providers found that 24% charge in that band. The survey does not split hourly rates by freelancer or agency. Hourly pricing suits a narrow, defined task, such as fixing the problems found in a site review, better than open-ended monthly work.

Do SEO freelancers and agencies charge monthly or by the hour?

Most SEO freelancers and agencies charge a monthly retainer, a fixed fee for an agreed amount of work each month. In Ahrefs' survey of 439 SEO service providers, 78.2% charge this way. Hourly and project pricing also exist, so ask any provider which tasks the monthly fee includes and which are billed as extras before you compare prices.

Do SEO agencies work with small local businesses?

Many SEO agencies focus on small local businesses. SE Ranking and Duda built a pricing dataset from 260 agencies, published December 13, 2024, and 94% of those agencies focus on small or local businesses. SE Ranking warns its sample may be too small for firm conclusions, but it shows that a small business owner will find agencies built for clients of that size.

How many SEO agencies charge less than $1,000 a month?

In SE Ranking's dataset of 260 agencies, published December 13, 2024 with Duda, 64% of SEO agencies charge a monthly retainer under $1,000 and 2% charge more than $5,000. SE Ranking itself says the sample may be too small for firm conclusions. A low agency price is common in this data, so ask what the fee includes before you decide.

Is an SEO consultancy priced like an agency or a freelancer?

An SEO consultancy is priced like an agency in Ahrefs' survey of 439 providers. Ahrefs calculated an average monthly retainer of $3,250 for consultancies, close to the $3,209 average for agencies and above the $1,348.63 for freelancers, assuming everyone charges the top of their price band. Ask any consultancy who does the work and who only advises.

Is a freelancer or an agency better for a one-off SEO task?

A freelancer paid by the hour is often the better fit for a one-off SEO task, such as fixing the technical problems found in a site review. Backlinko reports that hourly SEO services average $50 to $100 an hour. An agency fits better when the work needs several skills every month, or must continue when one person is away.

Are SEO freelancers and agencies cheaper outside the United States?

SEO services priced under $500 a month come mostly from outside the United States, according to Backlinko's survey of over 300 SEO professionals. Backlinko found that 42% of providers in India and Latin America charge at that level, against 7% of providers in the US, the UK and Australia. Whoever you hire, check how you will communicate and whether they know your local market.

Should a freelancer or an agency do your search work?

Both can do good search work for a small business. The choice changes the price, the number of people on your account, and what happens when one person is away.

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A freelancer is one person; an agency is a team. In Ahrefs' survey of 439 SEO providers, freelancers averaged $1,348.63 a month and agencies $3,209, assuming each charges the top of its price band. Choose a freelancer for a narrow, steady task and an agency when the work needs many skills every month. Either way, keep every account in your own name.

Freelancer and agency: the same work, organised in two ways

Let us begin with what the two have in common. A freelancer and an agency sell the same work. Google's own page for owners who are thinking of hiring help lists what these providers offer: a review of your site's content and structure, technical advice on hosting, redirects and error pages, content development, keyword research, training, knowledge of specific markets, and advice on AI search. Anyone you hire for search work, one person or twenty, draws from this list.

The difference is in how the work is organised. A freelancer is one person who sells their own time. You speak to the person who does the work, and their skills are the skills you buy. An agency is a company with several people, so the work can be divided between different roles, and the person who talks to you may be someone other than the person who changes your website.

Before either choice, Google offers one sentence that every small business owner should read. On the same page, Google says that a small local business can probably do much of the work itself, and it recommends starting with its SEO Starter Guide. So the first question is which parts of the work you want to give to someone else, and only then who that someone should be.

What do the surveys say each one charges?

There is no official price list for search work, so the best figures come from surveys run by companies in the trade. Each one asked providers what they charge, and none of them states when the survey itself was run, so read the numbers as a guide to the market and check them against real quotes.

Ahrefs, a company that sells SEO software, polled 439 SEO service providers for a pricing study last updated on August 15, 2024. It found that 78.2% of them charge a monthly retainer, which is a fixed fee paid every month for an agreed amount of work. Ahrefs then calculated average monthly retainers of $1,348.63 for freelancers, $3,209 for agencies and $3,250 for consultancies. It must be said that Ahrefs reached these averages by assuming each respondent charges the top of their price band, so they are the highest averages the answers allow.

For work paid by the hour, Ahrefs found that $75 to $100 an hour was the most common rate, charged by 24% of the providers who answered.

Backlinko, an SEO education site owned by Semrush, surveyed over 300 SEO professionals for a page last updated on December 29, 2025. It reports that hourly SEO services average $50 to $100 an hour, and it gives an approximate figure for the gap between the two options: agencies charge 30% more on average than freelancers. Backlinko also found that retainers under $500 a month come mostly from providers in India and Latin America, where 42% of providers charge at that level, against 7% of providers in the US, the UK and Australia.

SE Ranking, another SEO software company, built a dataset with the website builder Duda from 260 agencies, published on December 13, 2024. Of those agencies, 94% focus on small or local businesses, 64% charge a monthly retainer under $1,000, and 2% charge more than $5,000 a month. SE Ranking itself warns that its sample may be too small to support firm conclusions, which is an honest note and a good reason to read the figures with care.

Survey figures for freelancers and agencies, as published on each survey page (the surveys do not state when they were run)
Survey and page date	What was measured	Result
Ahrefs, 439 providers, updated August 15, 2024	Average monthly retainer, freelancers	$1,348.63
Ahrefs, same survey	Average monthly retainer, agencies	$3,209
Ahrefs, same survey	Average monthly retainer, consultancies	$3,250
Ahrefs, same survey	Most common hourly rate, all providers	$75 to $100 (24% of providers)
Backlinko, over 300 professionals, updated December 29, 2025	Average hourly rate, all providers	$50 to $100
Backlinko, same survey	Agency price compared with freelancer price	30% more on average (Backlinko's approximate figure)
SE Ranking with Duda, 260 agencies, published December 13, 2024	Agencies with a retainer under $1,000 a month	64%
SE Ranking, same dataset	Agencies charging more than $5,000 a month	2%

What does the higher agency price pay for?

The surveys give prices and leave out the reasons, so here we must be careful. The honest way to learn what an agency's higher price pays for is to ask the agency, in writing, and to compare its answer with a freelancer's answer to the same question.

Some differences follow from size alone. An agency has more than one person, so it can divide the work between people with different skills, and someone else can continue the work when one person is ill, on holiday or leaves. It may also carry costs that a freelancer carries in a smaller form, such as managers, offices and its own paid tools. Whether those costs bring you better work depends on the agency, and only its answers to your questions will show it.

A freelancer works the other way. You pay for one person's time, you speak to that person directly, and the price in the surveys is lower. The limit is also simple: one person has a fixed number of hours in a month and a fixed set of skills. If your work needs writing, technical fixes, local listings and reporting every month, a single freelancer must be strong in all of them, or must hire help that you never meet.

Who, by name, will do the work each month, and what is each person's role?
Which tasks are included in the monthly fee, and which are billed as extras?
What happens to my work if the person doing it is away for two weeks?
Which paid tools do you use on my site, and will I see their reports?
Will every account be set up in my name, with you added as a user?

The trade-offs side by side

Here is the same comparison in one place. The last two rows are the same for both, because Google's advice applies to every provider, whatever its size.

Freelancer or agency for search work: the trade-offs, with survey figures from the pages dated above
Question	Freelancer	Agency
Price in the surveys	Lower: Ahrefs' average of $1,348.63 a month	Higher: Ahrefs' average of $3,209 a month; Backlinko's approximate gap is 30%
Who does the work	The person you hired	A team; ask who, by name
Range of skills	One person's skills, plus anyone they hire	Several people, so several skills are possible
When the person is away	The work waits for that person to return	Another team member can continue, if the agency plans for it
Who you speak to	The person doing the work	An account manager or the person doing the work, depending on the agency
How you pay	By the hour or with a monthly retainer; 78.2% of all providers in Ahrefs' survey charge a retainer	The same choice; the survey figure covers freelancers and agencies together
Your accounts	Created in your name, with the freelancer added as a user	Created in your name, with the agency added as a user
Your responsibility	Google says you are responsible for the actions of anyone you hire	The same rule applies

Whoever you hire, keep the accounts and the decisions

Two rules from Google apply to both choices in the same way, and in the end they matter more than the price. The first is responsibility. Google's page on hiring an SEO says that if a provider creates deceptive or misleading content on your behalf, your site could be removed entirely from Google's index, the list of pages Google can show in its results, and that ultimately you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire.

The second is access. Google advises that when a provider offers an SEO audit, which is a first review of your site, you should grant only read access to Search Console, the free Google service that shows how your site appears in search, and keep the right to change settings for yourself at that stage. Google also suggests asking any provider to share every change it makes to your site, with the reasoning behind each recommendation.

In practice this means the domain name, the hosting account, Search Console, Google Analytics and your Google Business Profile are all created in your name, and the freelancer or the agency is added as a user. If you ever change provider, you remove one user and everything else stays with you. Our page on switching agencies explains that handover step by step.

When is a freelancer the better choice, and when is an agency?

The situation of your business usually points one way. A freelancer tends to fit when these things are true:

The job is narrow and clear, for example fixing the technical problems a review found, or writing a set number of service pages.
You want to pay by the hour for a defined task. Backlinko reports an average of $50 to $100 an hour for hourly SEO services.
You like to speak directly to the person doing the work, and you can wait when that person is away.
An agency tends to fit when the work needs several skills every month: writing, technical changes, local listings and reporting.
An agency also fits when you serve several locations or markets and the work must continue when one person is away.
And an agency fits when you want one company to answer for the whole result, with a named contact.

Is there a third choice between the two?

There is one more, and we should say plainly that it is ours. Big companies have always had a web team, a search team and writers, with paid tools behind them, and a small business could only buy a small piece of that from one freelancer or one agency. Licheo gives a small business a team of specialist AI agents instead: one works on speed and structure, one writes, one adds the labels that tell search engines and AI assistants what you do, one shapes pages to turn visitors into customers, and one works on being named in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews.

The website, search and AI work that big companies pay whole teams for, done for your small business. You learn no tools and manage no dashboard. Nothing goes live until you approve it, the work continues every month, and Licheo works without long contracts. Contact us for pricing.

The same two rules apply to us as to any freelancer or agency. The accounts stay in your name, and no one, Licheo included, can promise you first place on Google. Google says so on its page about hiring help: no one can guarantee a #1 ranking.

How to decide in one afternoon

You can make this decision with a pen, a list and four conversations. Work through these steps in order.

Write down the tasks you want done each month, in plain words, before you speak to anyone.
Ask two freelancers and two agencies for a written quote against that same list.
Compare each quote with the survey figures above, remembering that the surveys do not state when they were run.
Ask each provider the five questions from the section on price, and note who answers clearly.
Check that every account will be in your name before you sign anything.
Run our free Get Found Check on your own site first, so you know its grade before anyone begins.

Part of a larger guide

This page is one part of Who does your marketing. The other parts:

Questions people ask

Is an SEO freelancer cheaper than an SEO agency?: An SEO freelancer is usually cheaper than an agency in the published surveys. Ahrefs polled 439 SEO providers and calculated an average monthly retainer of $1,348.63 for freelancers and $3,209 for agencies, assuming each charges the top of its price band. The survey page was updated on August 15, 2024 and does not say when the survey ran, so check the figures against real quotes from providers near you.
How much more do SEO agencies charge than freelancers?: SEO agencies charge 30% more on average than freelancers, according to an approximate figure from Backlinko's survey of over 300 SEO professionals, on a page updated December 29, 2025. The survey does not give its own date. Use the figure as a rough guide, then ask each agency and freelancer to price the same written list of tasks, so you compare like with like.
What hourly rate do SEO freelancers charge?: SEO freelancers and other providers most often charge $75 to $100 an hour, according to Ahrefs, whose survey of 439 SEO providers found that 24% charge in that band. The survey does not split hourly rates by freelancer or agency. Hourly pricing suits a narrow, defined task, such as fixing the problems found in a site review, better than open-ended monthly work.
Do SEO freelancers and agencies charge monthly or by the hour?: Most SEO freelancers and agencies charge a monthly retainer, a fixed fee for an agreed amount of work each month. In Ahrefs' survey of 439 SEO service providers, 78.2% charge this way. Hourly and project pricing also exist, so ask any provider which tasks the monthly fee includes and which are billed as extras before you compare prices.
Do SEO agencies work with small local businesses?: Many SEO agencies focus on small local businesses. SE Ranking and Duda built a pricing dataset from 260 agencies, published December 13, 2024, and 94% of those agencies focus on small or local businesses. SE Ranking warns its sample may be too small for firm conclusions, but it shows that a small business owner will find agencies built for clients of that size.
How many SEO agencies charge less than $1,000 a month?: In SE Ranking's dataset of 260 agencies, published December 13, 2024 with Duda, 64% of SEO agencies charge a monthly retainer under $1,000 and 2% charge more than $5,000. SE Ranking itself says the sample may be too small for firm conclusions. A low agency price is common in this data, so ask what the fee includes before you decide.
Is an SEO consultancy priced like an agency or a freelancer?: An SEO consultancy is priced like an agency in Ahrefs' survey of 439 providers. Ahrefs calculated an average monthly retainer of $3,250 for consultancies, close to the $3,209 average for agencies and above the $1,348.63 for freelancers, assuming everyone charges the top of their price band. Ask any consultancy who does the work and who only advises.
Is a freelancer or an agency better for a one-off SEO task?: A freelancer paid by the hour is often the better fit for a one-off SEO task, such as fixing the technical problems found in a site review. Backlinko reports that hourly SEO services average $50 to $100 an hour. An agency fits better when the work needs several skills every month, or must continue when one person is away.
Are SEO freelancers and agencies cheaper outside the United States?: SEO services priced under $500 a month come mostly from outside the United States, according to Backlinko's survey of over 300 SEO professionals. Backlinko found that 42% of providers in India and Latin America charge at that level, against 7% of providers in the US, the UK and Australia. Whoever you hire, check how you will communicate and whether they know your local market.
Am I responsible if my SEO freelancer or agency breaks Google's rules?: Yes, you are responsible for what your SEO freelancer or agency does to your site. Google's page on hiring an SEO says that if a provider creates deceptive or misleading content on your behalf, your site could be removed entirely from Google's index, the list of pages Google can show in its results, and that ultimately you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire. Ask to see every change before it goes live.

Sources

SEO Pricing: How Much Does SEO Cost? 439 People Polled, Ahrefs. Updated August 15, 2024 (survey date not stated), accessed 27 September 2026.
SEO Pricing: How Much Does SEO Cost? (New Data + Cheat Sheet), Backlinko (Semrush). Page updated December 29, 2025 (survey date not stated), accessed 27 September 2026.
SEO pricing survey insights: How much does SEO cost in 2025?, SE Ranking (with Duda). Published 2024-12-13, accessed 27 September 2026.
Do you need an SEO?, Google Search Central. Updated 2026-06-05, accessed 27 September 2026.

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