Six social media agencies two assistants named, and what their own pricing pages say

Asked which social media marketing agency is best in the United States, ChatGPT and Gemini produced six agency names between them and agreed on two. The agreement is worth less than the prices. Of the four monthly figures the two answers attached to those names, one matched the vendor's own pricing page word for word, one matched only its starting number, and two ceilings appear on neither engine's source nor the vendor's page. So the usable answer for a US buyer is not a shortlist of six. It is the four prices a social agency actually publishes, the URL each one sits on, and the date it was read.

What was asked, and what came back

One question, put to the ChatGPT and Gemini product surfaces through a data provider on 21 October 2026, at 22:20 and 22:37 UTC. The question was the plain buyer question, what is the best social media marketing agency in the United States, and it named no agency and no product, because a question carrying a name gets that name back.

• ChatGPT ran a live search, returned 55 source citations, and named four agencies with a price or a project minimum against each.
• Gemini ran a live search, returned three source citations, and named four agencies, each with a monthly retainer range.
• Six distinct firms were named. Two of them, Sociallyin and LYFE Marketing, appear in both answers. The other four appear in one answer each.

Both answers opened by saying there is no single best agency and that fit decides. Both then produced a ranked list anyway, which is the shape a buyer acts on.

The six names and who named them

Agency	Named by	Position in that answer	What the engine said it costs
Fresh Content Society	ChatGPT	First	Project minimum of 10,000 dollars, quoted from a directory listing
Sociallyin	Both	Second for ChatGPT, second for Gemini	ChatGPT, 5,000 dollar project minimum. Gemini, retainers averaging 3,000 to 10,000 a month or a 5,000 minimum project
LYFE Marketing	Both	Third for ChatGPT, fourth for Gemini	ChatGPT, packages at 750, 1,350 and 1,550 a month plus a 300 dollar setup fee. Gemini, entry packages of 750 to 1,150 a month
Sculpt	ChatGPT	Fourth, moved to first for a B2B buyer	Organic social from 8,500 a month, paid social from 5,000 a month
VaynerMedia	Gemini	First	Retainers starting at 25,000 to 50,000 or more a month
Disruptive Advertising	Gemini	Third	Performance models or retainers from 2,500 to 5,000 a month

The prices, read on the vendor pages the next morning

Every figure below was fetched by us on 22 October 2026, and each belongs to the URL it was read on rather than to the brand. Where a server refused the request, that is recorded as what the server did on that date.

• Sculpt, confirmed word for word. wearesculpt.com/services/social-media-marketing/ renders Organic social media marketing starts at 8500/mo and Paid social engagements start at 5000/mo, with media spend excluded from both. ChatGPT quoted both figures and the exclusion correctly. This is the cleanest price claim in either answer.
• LYFE Marketing, floor confirmed, ceiling absent. lyfemarketing.com/pricing renders a table of service ranges, and the social media marketing row reads 750 to 7,000 per month. Both engines got the 750 floor right. Neither ceiling, 1,550 from ChatGPT or 1,150 from Gemini, appears on that page, and the page states no setup fee at all. ChatGPT attributed its three package figures to an industry comparison rather than to the vendor, which is the honest way to carry a number it did not read on the source.
• The same vendor page disagrees with itself twice. Its web design row is headed 1,000 to 5,000 per year while the body text beneath says web design costs 1,000 to 5,000 per month, and its email row is 500 to 1,400 per month in the table against 51 to 1,000 per month in the body. Both readings render. A buyer quoting either figure in a negotiation should name the row and the date.
• The two directory facts. ChatGPT reported a 4.9 out of 5 rating from 14 reviews and a 10,000 dollar project minimum for Fresh Content Society, and 4.8 out of 5 from 73 reviews with a 5,000 minimum for Sociallyin, attributing both to a directory updated on 21 October 2026. A review count of 14 and a review count of 73 are not the same evidence, and the engine placed the firm with 14 first.

Where the two answers came from

The citation sets are the part a buyer never sees, and they explain the price gap better than the names do.

ChatGPT's 55 citations were led by the agencies' own websites: twelve each from lyfemarketing.com, wearesculpt.com and freshcontentsociety.com, then four from one directory and two from another, two from a small business publication and two from a vendor's agency directory. Three quarters of its evidence came from the four companies it was ranking. That is why its Sculpt figures match the vendor page exactly, and it is also why its list reads like the set of agencies that publish the most about themselves.

Gemini's three citations were a web agency's blog, a marketing company's top fifteen listicle and a consultancy's agency breakdown. No agency pricing page and no directory appeared in its citation set, although its written source list named a directory and Sculpt's own pricing page. Its retainer ranges therefore describe a market rather than a rate card, and its one overlapping price claim, the LYFE ceiling of 1,150, is on neither its own cited sources nor the vendor's page.

The practical rule from this pair of readings: a social agency that publishes a rate card gets named with a correct number, and an agency that publishes nothing gets named with a number somebody else invented for it.

How to use six names and four prices

1. Separate the three price shapes before comparing anything. A project minimum of 10,000 dollars, a monthly retainer of 3,000 and a published package of 750 answer three different questions. Only the retainer and the package are comparable, and only on identical deliverables.
2. Ask every firm to quote the same month. Fix the number of posts, the networks, the creative production, the paid budget managed, the reporting cadence and who owns the accounts. Four of the six firms here publish no rate at all, so the proposal is the only document that will carry a number.
3. Price the ad spend separately. Sculpt states plainly that media is not included. Where a published figure does not say so, assume the spend is extra and get it in writing.
4. Check the review count behind a rating. Both headline ratings here are above 4.8, and one rests on 14 reviews and the other on 73.
5. Treat the order as a reading, not a ranking. On this question the two engines agreed on two names out of six, and the firm one engine put first was absent from the other engine entirely.

The measurement neither answer contained

Every one of the six firms sells work on social platforms and on search. Not one of them arrived with a figure for how often an assistant names the client when a buyer asks a question that never mentions the client. That is the gap this page sits in. AI Knows Us sells the measurement and not the social work: no posting, no creative production, no media buying, no retainer competing with the six firms above. We ask the buying questions a customer would ask on ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews, and report which names come back and which sources produced them.

Our own published rates, verified on 22 October 2026 so this page holds us to the standard it asks of agencies: in the US and the UK the ladder runs SEO Start 149 dollars a month, Growth 299, Scale 599, SEO Scale 699, Inbound 1,099, Outbound 1,299, Agency 1,299 and Everything 1,799. Outside the US and the UK the first two tiers are cheaper, at 99 and 199, so there is no single global floor. SEO Start reads 0 buyer questions on 0 engines, which makes Growth at 299 the cheapest plan that reads all five surfaces, and a Claude reading costs 3 credits against 1 for the others.

Where a rival is stronger, by name. tryprofound.com publishes single sign on, SAML and SOC 2 against up to nine answer engines on its enterprise tier. Our own pricing document, 119,203 bytes read on 22 October 2026, renders no single sign on, no SAML, no SOC 2, no ISO certification, no data processing agreement and no white label anywhere in its text, and we read five surfaces rather than nine. It also contradicts itself on multi brand work, listing businesses covered as 1 1 1 1 1 1 10 1 across the plans while the row beneath reads more than one business, no, in every column including Agency. Both render, and an agency buying on our behalf of several clients should settle that in writing first.

The limits of the measurement on this page, stated plainly. It is one question per engine on one night, which fixes what each engine said at that moment and does not describe a month of behaviour. Our own audit of 635 readings on the same pipeline found our domain in 0 of 19,793 citation URLs, so we are publishing a method here and not a leaderboard position.

Questions US buyers ask about social agency prices and AI answers

Why did two assistants give different prices for the same agency

Because they read different documents. For LYFE Marketing, ChatGPT took three package figures from an industry comparison and named it, while Gemini gave a range whose ceiling is on no source either of them cited. The vendor's own pricing page, fetched the next morning, carries a 750 floor and a 7,000 ceiling for that service. Ask for the figure in a proposal and ignore both ranges.

Is the agency named first the best one for my business

Treat first place as a reading of what the engine found, not a verdict. ChatGPT's first name rested on a 14 review directory listing and a project minimum, and Gemini's first name was an enterprise shop quoting 25,000 a month and upwards. Neither is the right answer for a 2,000 dollar a month budget.

What does a US social media agency cost a month

From the pages verified on 22 October 2026, published monthly rates for social work start at 750 and run to 7,000 for managed social media marketing at one firm, with organic social from 8,500 and paid social from 5,000 at a B2B specialist, and media spend excluded in both of those. The quoted ranges for firms that publish nothing, 2,500 to 5,000 and 25,000 to 50,000, come from third party commentary rather than the vendors.

Should I shortlist from a directory or from an assistant

Use both and check the overlap. Three quarters of ChatGPT's evidence for this answer came from the websites of the firms it ranked, and its directory sources carried the ratings. An assistant is reading the same small set of pages a directory shows you, so the value is in which pages it chose, not in the ordering.

How do I check what assistants say when a buyer asks about my category

Write the question a customer would type, with your city or your segment in it and your company name left out, put it to each assistant, and write down every company name that comes back along with the sources listed underneath. Repeat it a week later. The names move, and the source list tells you which agency blogs and which directories are assembling your shortlist.