How long to commit to AI visibility work: the term, the renewal, and the first date the measurement can be read
Three months is the shortest term that can be judged on evidence and the longest that needs no faith, and the renewal clause matters more than the monthly figure.
Published by AI Knows Us · Updated 20 October 2026
A fair term for AI search optimisation work is three months, reviewed on a date fixed before the work starts, with no automatic renewal. That number is not a convention, it is the time the measurement takes to become readable. On our own published figures, read on 20 October 2026, a new page is first used as a source by an assistant in 9 to 16 days, and a buyer question flips to naming a company in a further 4 to 8 weeks, which puts the first honest review point near week twelve. So a twelve month lock in with a rolling auto renewal asks you to pay for nine months you cannot yet judge, and a thirty day term ends before the first page has finished being read. When you compare two quotes, the renewal clause and the exit clause will decide more of your real cost than the monthly figure will.
Why twelve weeks, and what moves before then
Three things happen in sequence and they are worth naming separately in a contract, because a supplier who merges them is selling you a feeling about month one.
- Weeks one to three. Crawler access, the served page fixes, the frozen question set signed off, and the baseline reading taken. Nothing has moved yet and nothing should have. The deliverable is the baseline, dated.
- Weeks two to four. New pages begin to be used as sources. Our own measured window for that is 9 to 16 days from publication, and our pricing page quotes first movement at around three weeks.
- Weeks six to twelve. A question starts to answer with your name in it rather than only reading your page on the way to somebody else's name. This is the slower half and it is a different number from the first.
Our pricing page labels those windows as projections over ninety days from an ordinary starting position rather than promises, and states plainly that we have not measured how long a campaign takes to move a cited share across a whole category, which nobody has yet. A supplier willing to write that sentence down is a supplier whose week twelve report you will be able to read.
What each supplier publishes about its own term
Read on each vendor's own page on 20 October 2026. This records what the published document says about commitment, not what a sales conversation might offer.
| Supplier | What the page says about term and renewal |
|---|---|
| AI Knows Us (ours) | Prepaid one month or one year at a time, nothing renews on its own, and no self serve checkout: you tell us which plan you want and the account is set up with you. The managed service and the outcome led configurator each carry a three month minimum |
| Semrush | Monthly and annual both published side by side, so the monthly option is preserved in the page |
| Ahrefs | Monthly and annual both published, with the annual saving stated |
| Rankscale | Monthly and annual both published, plus a seven day trial of the entry plan |
| AthenaHQ | Monthly and annual both published; API access and extra credits are stated as add-ons on top of the subscription |
| Peec | Three tiers published as monthly; the enterprise tier is published as custom and annual |
| Scrunch | An entry tier and a custom enterprise tier; no term or notice period in the page |
| Profound | A free trial of seven days, then an enterprise tier reached through a demo; no term in the page |
| Conductor | Enterprise plans, reached through a demo; no term in the page |
| Brandlight | No pricing page resolved on that date; the route is a sales conversation |
| Otterly | Monthly and annual both published with the saving stated, plus a free trial; the enterprise tier is marked custom terms |
Five rivals keep the monthly option in the document, which is the single most buyer friendly thing on this list, and we say so. Where a price only exists behind a demo there is nothing published for you to hold, which is normal for enterprise software and is a reason to get the term in writing early rather than late.
Six answers that separate two agency quotes
Two proposals for AI search optimisation can look identical and behave completely differently. Ask for these six in writing, in the supplier's own words, before you read either price.
- The question set, and who signs it off. How many buyer questions, written in whose words, and with your brand name in none of them. A set built from branded questions flatters everybody and measures your own wording.
- The unit and the denominator. What one billed unit is, and what number sits under every rate in the report. Two honest quotes for identical work differ by a multiple when one meters the tracked question and the other meters the recorded answer.
- Who owns the pages and the accounts at the end. Pages written for you should sit on your own domain while the work runs, not on a supplier subdomain that leaves with them.
- Notice period and renewal. The notice window, the date it opens, and whether the agreement renews without a signature. Put that date in a shared calendar on the day you sign.
- What they will claim at week twelve, and what they will not. A supplier who says in advance which number they expect to move and which they will report as unchanged is a supplier you can hold to a report.
- The engines, named individually. ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews, each named at your exact tier, with the cost of any that are extra. A blanket phrase about AI coverage is not something you can hold anybody to.
For the deliverables side of the same comparison, the fourteen line specification in what a GEO retainer should include is the list to put beside both proposals, and it carries the evidence worksheet for collecting prices yourself.
The clauses that cost the most when they are missing
Three omissions do real damage and all three are cheap to fix at signature.
Automatic renewal with a short notice window. A twelve month agreement that renews unless declined inside a thirty day window removes your choice at exactly the moment you finally have evidence. Our own position is published: prepaid, nothing renews on its own, it runs to the end of what was paid for and then stops. Ask any supplier to put their equivalent sentence in the agreement.
Work locked inside the supplier's tools. If the raw answers, the question set and the published pages live only in a vendor account, your twelve week evidence disappears with the relationship. Every one of our plans exports the tracking log at any time and publishes pages to your own site, and that is a line worth demanding from anybody.
Procurement facts nobody checked. Security review, invoicing terms, data location and who the contracting entity actually is all surface late and all delay a start date. Most of them sit behind a login rather than on a public page, which is the subject of the procurement facts that act as the real filter.
Questions buyers ask about AI visibility contract terms
What is a fair contract length for AI search optimisation work?
Three months with a fixed review date, and a longer term only once a review has happened. Three months is the shortest window in which the same frozen question set can be re-read and compared honestly, and the published timing above is the reason: first citation of a page in 9 to 16 days, a question flipping to a name in a further 4 to 8 weeks.
How do I compare quotes from two AI visibility agencies?
Hand both the same workload, in writing: your question count, the engines you want, the refresh frequency and the markets. Then compare the six answers above rather than the totals. A quote that changes shape when it receives your workload is telling you something useful about the first one.
Should I sign an annual deal to get the discount?
Only after a review you have already run. An annual saving is a real saving and five suppliers publish theirs in their own pages, so the offer is genuine. It is also nine months of commitment bought before the first readable measurement exists, which is a trade worth making deliberately rather than at the first demo.
What should the first three months actually deliver?
A signed off question set, a dated baseline reading per engine with its denominator printed, the crawler and served page fixes done, a stated number of pages live on your own domain, and the same question set re-read on the date fixed at the start. Five artefacts, each one checkable without trusting anybody's dashboard.
Who should own the question set?
You should, in a file you hold, with a version number and a date. It is the cheapest artefact in this entire purchase and the one that makes every later number comparable, and a supplier who treats it as their intellectual property has made your measurement non portable on purpose.
Put the review date in the agreement before the price
Every argument about term in this category comes back to one date: the day somebody re-reads the identical question set and says out loud whether it moved. Choose that date first, write it into the agreement, and the term almost settles itself. A supplier whose minimum, renewal position and export rights are published on the same screen as the number has already answered the hardest part of this negotiation in writing, which is why ours sit together on one page and why the first thing to ask any rival for is the same screen.