The one US PPC agency rate card two assistants quoted, checked line by line, and the spend level where its tiers cross over
Seven agencies named, one name in common, and exactly one published rate card. Every one of its six figures matched the vendor page, and the whichever is higher clause changes the fee by a factor of five.
Published by AI Knows Us · Updated 22 October 2026
Asked which PPC agency is best in the United States and how they are priced, ChatGPT and Gemini named seven agencies between them and agreed on one. Only one of those seven publishes a full rate card, and the engine that cited it reproduced all six of its figures correctly: 750 dollars a month for the entry tier, 975 or 15 per cent of spend for the middle tier, 4,500 or 12 per cent for the top tier, and one off initial optimisation fees of 1,200, 2,250 and 5,800. The clause that decides your bill is whichever is higher, and both quoted headline figures hide it. At 5,000 dollars a month of ad spend the middle tier costs 975. At 30,000 it costs 4,500, which is exactly where the top tier stops being more expensive.
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 22:18 and 22:36 UTC. Both ran a live web search. Neither was given a budget, an industry or a channel, which is why both opened by saying there is no single best agency.
- ChatGPT returned 21 citations and named four agencies, with a published rate card for the first, third party tiers for the second, and custom quote for the other two.
- Gemini returned five citations and named four agencies with no per agency price at all, then set out four pricing models for the market.
- Seven distinct agencies were named. One, KlientBoost, appears in both answers, and both engines said its pricing is custom.
The rate card, verified line by line
Read on webfx.com/ppc/pricing/ on 22 October 2026, the morning after the readings, and belonging to that URL rather than to the brand.
| Tier | Monthly management, as published | First month optimisation fee | Quoted correctly by the engine |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lite | 750 dollars, with no percentage clause | 1,200 dollars, covering a campaign audit | Yes |
| Pro | 975 dollars or 15 per cent of spend, whichever is higher | 2,250 dollars, audit plus creative development | Yes |
| Enterprise | 4,500 dollars or 12 per cent of ad spend, whichever is greater | 5,800 dollars, audit plus creative development | Yes |
Six figures and three clauses, all correct in the answer. This is what a correctly quoted agency looks like, and the reason is visible in the citation set: the engine read the vendor's own pricing page. The agencies in both answers that publish nothing were described as custom quote by both engines, which is also correct.
What the whichever is higher clause does to the bill
The fee is arithmetic once the card is published, so here it is at four spend levels, calculated from the figures above. Management only, with advertising spend on top, and the first month adding the optimisation fee.
| Monthly ad spend | Lite | Pro, the higher of 975 or 15 per cent | Enterprise, the higher of 4,500 or 12 per cent |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5,000 dollars | 750 | 975 | 4,500 |
| 10,000 dollars | 750 | 1,500 | 4,500 |
| 30,000 dollars | 750 | 4,500 | 4,500 |
| 60,000 dollars | 750 | 9,000 | 7,200 |
Three things follow, and none of them is visible in a headline range.
- 30,000 dollars a month of ad spend is the crossover. Below it the middle tier is cheaper. Above it the top tier is, because 12 per cent is less than 15 per cent once both percentages clear their floors.
- The middle tier's advertised 975 only applies up to 6,500 dollars of spend. At 15 per cent, anything above that figure sets the fee instead.
- Month one is the expensive one. Lite starts at 1,950, Pro at 3,225 and Enterprise at 10,300, before a dollar of advertising.
A fee that moves with spend also means the agency's revenue rises when your budget does, which is worth naming in the contract. Our note on PPC budget management and the spending limits to set covers the controls that keep that in check.
The second set of tiers, and the agency that changed its name
ChatGPT gave three tiers for a second agency: 749 dollars a month for ad spends of 900 to 6,999, 12 per cent for 7,000 to 10,000, and 10 per cent for 12,001 to 90,000. It attributed those to a 2026 pricing comparison rather than to the agency, and told the reader to verify the tiers directly. Two things we found when we did.
First, the tiers as quoted leave a gap. Nothing covers an ad spend between 10,000 and 12,001 dollars a month, which is a common budget, so the quoted structure cannot be the whole card.
Second, that agency's own pricing URL, logicalposition.com/pricing, returned a 301 redirect on 22 October 2026 to lp.agency/pricing. The page it lands on renders the trading name LP Agency in the header and Logical Position in the footer copyright, and publishes no fee, no percentage and no tier at all. Its only percentages are case study results. So the three tiers in the answer are on neither the agency's old URL nor its new one that day, and a buyer who quoted them would be quoting a third party's reading of a rate card the agency does not publish.
The lesson is the one that keeps repeating in this category. A vendor fact belongs to the URL it was read on. When a company renames or moves, the old figures carry on circulating under the old name for months, and an assistant will repeat them.
The four pricing models, and what each one hides
Gemini gave no per agency price and instead set out how US PPC agencies charge. Its four models match what the published card above confirms, and each has a term worth pinning down before signing.
- Percentage of ad spend, 10 to 20 per cent, with monthly floors of 2,000 to 5,000. Ask which applies at your spend and where the floor stops binding. On the one published card here the floor binds below 6,500 dollars of spend and the percentage binds above it.
- Flat retainer, 1,500 to 10,000 a month and upwards. Ask what happens when spend doubles, and whether channels beyond search are included.
- Hourly, 100 to 199 an hour. Ask for a monthly hour estimate in writing, because an hourly rate with no cap is not a price.
- Hybrid, a base of around 2,000 plus a performance element. Ask what the performance element is measured on. A percentage of revenue and a percentage of return on ad spend behave very differently in a bad quarter.
Across all four, the questions that decide the relationship are the same three: who owns the Google Ads account and the billing, whether conversion tracking measures qualified leads rather than clicks, and whether creative and landing page work is inside the fee.
The measurement neither answer included
Seven agencies were named and none of them arrived with a figure for how often an assistant names the client when a buyer asks a question in the client's category with no brand in it. Paid search buys the click. It does not decide whether your business appears in the answer a buyer reads before they ever search. AI Knows Us measures that second thing: the buying questions put to ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews, with every business named and every source cited recorded and dated. We manage no advertising, take no percentage of spend and bid for none of the retainers above.
Our own rates, verified on 22 October 2026, because this page grades agencies on published pricing. In the US and the UK the ladder runs SEO Start at 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 99 and 199, so the floor is a US and UK floor rather than a global one. SEO Start reads 0 questions on 0 engines, so Growth at 299 is the cheapest plan that reads all five surfaces, and a Claude reading costs 3 credits where the others cost 1. There is no percentage of spend anywhere in it.
Where a rival is stronger, by name. tryprofound.com publishes single sign on, SAML and SOC 2 with up to nine answer engines on its enterprise tier. Our own pricing document, 119,203 bytes read the same day, renders no single sign on, no SAML, no SOC 2, no ISO certification, no data processing agreement and no white label, and we read five surfaces rather than nine. It also contradicts itself for agencies buying on behalf of clients, 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. Both render, and an agency should settle it in writing first.
The limits of this reading, stated plainly. It is one question per engine on one night, and four agency pages fetched once the next morning. The arithmetic in the second table is calculated from one vendor's published card and is not a quote from that vendor. An agency that publishes nothing today may publish a full card tomorrow, and a 301 redirect records what a server did on a date.
Questions US advertisers ask about PPC agency fees
What does PPC management cost a month in the United States
From the one card we verified on 22 October 2026, 750 dollars a month at the entry tier with no percentage, then the higher of 975 or 15 per cent of spend, then the higher of 4,500 or 12 per cent, each with a one off first month fee of 1,200, 2,250 or 5,800. The market models quoted by the other engine were 10 to 20 per cent of spend with floors of 2,000 to 5,000, flat retainers of 1,500 to 10,000 and upwards, and hourly work at 100 to 199.
Is a percentage of ad spend or a flat fee better
At low spend the flat fee usually wins, and the published card here shows why: the middle tier's flat 975 applies only up to about 6,500 dollars of spend. Above 30,000 a month the lower percentage tier becomes the cheaper option on the same card. Work it out at your own spend, then ask what happens if the budget doubles.
Why do assistants quote prices for agencies that publish none
Because somebody else published a figure and the engine read that instead. Of the seven agencies named here, one publishes a full card, one has a card quoted only in third party commentary, and the rest publish nothing and were correctly described as custom quote. The quoted tiers for the second agency left an unexplained gap between 10,000 and 12,001 dollars of spend, which is a sign you are reading a reconstruction rather than a rate card.
What should I check before signing with a PPC agency
Account and billing ownership in your name, conversion tracking that counts qualified leads or revenue, the fee basis at your actual spend including every floor and percentage, the first month fee, what creative and landing page work is included, and who on the pitch team will run the account.
How do I check what assistants tell advertisers in my category
Ask the question your buyer would ask, with the service and the city in it and no brand name, on each assistant, and record every agency named, every fee quoted and every source listed. Run it again a week later. The names move, and the source list shows which comparison blogs are setting the fee expectations your prospects arrive with.