What does programmatic SEO cost per project and per month?

Programmatic SEO at specialist agencies internationally usually costs about 5,500 to 27,000 euros for the setup, plus about 600 to 5,500 euros per month for maintenance. A fixed price per page says little: most of the work happens before the pages, in choosing the questions, the data and the quality control.

You received a quote for “500 pages” and the price looks too good to be true, or absurdly high. Or you are torn between an AI writing tool costing a few tens of euros a month and an agency asking a project price. Below you will read what programmatic SEO costs at an agency, where that money goes and how to compare two quotes fairly. What the method itself involves is covered in programmatic SEO for B2B.

What does programmatic SEO cost on average?

In Belgium we found hardly any published prices for programmatic SEO. Agencies that do publish them are mainly in the United Kingdom and the United States. Their prices give a good picture of the market:

Third-party market prices, excluding VAT. Not Customer Impact prices. Published by American (in dollars) and British (in pounds) providers: we converted to euros at the ECB rate of 28 September 2026 (1 euro = 1.1378 dollars = 0.85785 pounds) and rounded.

The range is wide because “programmatic SEO” means a template with a spreadsheet at one agency, and a full programme with research, data, multiple languages and monthly checks at another. So never compare price alone, but price and scope together. The same goes for what regular SEO costs.

What it costs you depends on the number of topics, languages and data sources. After a free intake, we send you a tailored quote.

Where does the money go?

A fair price consists of four blocks. You pay for two of them once, the other two keep coming back.

1. Analysis. Which questions do your buyers really ask, which deserve their own page and which do not? A good analysis also cuts: pages you do not build cost nothing.
2. Setup. Collecting and checking the data, designing the template and building it into your CMS. If you already have the data, this block is smaller.
3. Production per page and per language. Writing, fact-checking and proofreading. Every extra language is not a translation but a market of its own, with its own search terms.
4. Maintenance. Refreshing data, updating pages that slip, and measuring whether you are found in Google and in AI answers.

That last block is often forgotten: periodically refreshing data is a recurring cost that rarely appears in a first quote.

Price per page or price per project: what is fair?

A price per page looks clear, but it rewards volume. And volume is exactly what can go wrong with programmatic SEO. Google describes scaled content abuse as “when many pages are generated for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings and not helping users”. A thousand pages that help nobody are not an investment but a risk to your whole site. Read more about this in doorway pages.

Whichever model you choose: ask what happens to pages that deliver nothing, and do not pay for volume that helps nobody.

AI tool, freelancer or agency: what do you pay and what do you get?

An AI tool makes text cheap, but text was never the expensive part. Deciding what to write and whether it is correct is the work. If you only want standalone articles, a copywriter is often cheaper: what having SEO copy written costs is covered in hiring an SEO copywriter.

Worked example: what does a page really cost?

Take a Belgian B2B service provider that wants to answer 150 customer questions in Dutch and French: 300 pages. We calculate with the published prices of a British specialist agency, converted to euros:

• Low scenario: about 5,800 euros setup plus 12 x about 580 euros maintenance = about 12,800 euros in year one, or about 43 euros per page.
• High scenario: about 23,300 euros setup plus 12 x about 2,330 euros maintenance = about 51,300 euros in year one, or about 171 euros per page.

From year two the setup falls away and you only pay for maintenance. So the price per page drops over time, but only as long as every page answers a question someone really asks.

We see in practice that it can move fast. At Hedgehog Company, 18 articles, each in English and Dutch, went from 0 to 2,314 impressions in 19 days. For YouPower we put 552 pages live in three languages in 11 days, with a first enquiry on day one. We will only publish a traffic result there after the next measurement. On our own site, Google clicks grew in 12 weeks from 101 to 843 per 28 days. To estimate the return for your own numbers, use the SEO ROI calculator.

What should a programmatic SEO quote include?

• How many topics and why these: a list of questions, not just a number of pages.
• Where the data comes from and who checks it.
• Price per language, with dedicated keyword research per language instead of a translation.
• How facts are checked before publication.
• What monthly maintenance includes: refreshing, updating and measuring, including in AI answers.
• Who owns the pages, the data and the template if you stop.

When we are not the right choice

• Your budget only covers a few pages a month. Then a handwritten content plan on your 20 most important questions beats a thin programmatic build.
• You want thousands of pages as cheaply as possible. We do not build pages that help nobody; a tool does that more cheaply, with the risk included.
• You are mainly after local visibility in one city. Then first read what local SEO costs.

Want to know what it costs for your site? Request a quote for our programmatic SEO offer: after a free intake you will know what it costs for your site. For a broader overview of agency prices, see what a marketing agency costs.

Frequently asked questions

Why not just 5 euros per AI article?

Because then you pay for text, not for the choice of questions, the data and the checks. A page with a wrong fact or without real value can cost more than it delivers, especially at scale.

What if the pages do not rank?

Then that should surface in the monthly measurement. Pages that do not perform are updated, merged or removed. Ask upfront how an agency handles that.

Does an extra language cost as much as the first?

Usually less, because the analysis and the template already exist. But a language is not a translation: every market needs its own search terms and checks. So expect a separate price per language.

Who pays for refreshing the pages?

That is part of the monthly maintenance budget. If it is not in the quote, you will pay for it later anyway, or your pages will go stale. What GEO maintenance costs separately is covered in what GEO costs.