What does an AI visibility audit cost?

Want the short version?

The Doxia Axis Free AI Visibility Audit is $0. Five business days from intake to dossier delivery. Fourteen pages. Six AI engines tested. Every gap quantified in dollars. No upsell, no obligation, no auto-enroll. The audit is the deliverable whether or not you continue.

That number — zero — is unusual in the category. Here's why we land there, and how it compares.

What does an audit cost at other agencies?

Three pricing patterns, depending on shape:

Boutique-agency audits — $1,500 to $7,500. Scope is usually one to two AI engines tested, a schema scan, and a 6-to-15-page deliverable. Turnaround is two to four weeks. The pricing reflects the senior-consultant time involved.

Big-4 advisory audits — $25,000 to $100,000+. Scope expands to include strategy framing, executive-readout decks, and recommendation roadmaps. Turnaround is four to twelve weeks. The pricing reflects partner-led delivery and tenured-staff time.

SaaS audit tools — $99 to $499 per month. Scope is automated. Crawl your site, score schema, score citability, output a dashboard. The pricing reflects software economics, not human-led diagnosis. The output is a list of metrics, not a sequenced recommendation.

The Doxia Axis audit doesn't fit any of those buckets. The scope matches the boutique-agency tier (six AI engines tested, full schema diagnostic, revenue-quantified findings, 14-page deliverable). The price doesn't.

So why is the Doxia Axis audit free?

Three structural reasons.

Reason 1 — the audit is the proof artifact. Most operators evaluating AI consultancies have no way to know whether the consultancy is good. Decks lie. Logos lie. Testimonials lie. A 14-page dossier with revenue-quantified findings, applied to the operator's actual business, is an artifact the consultancy cannot fake. It either earns the next conversation or doesn't. Charging $5,000 for the proof artifact would gate the proof behind a paywall, which inverts the trust direction.

Reason 2 — the unit economics work. The audit takes 12 to 18 hours of operator time to produce. About 60% of audits become engagements at Tier 1 ($500+) or higher; the remainder either walk away (clean outcome) or refer the audit forward (also clean outcome). The economics work because the audit is also the diagnostic that informs Tier 2 and Tier 3 scoping, so the work isn't wasted even when the engagement doesn't progress.

Reason 3 — qualification gate is real. Before we ship the audit, the operator passes a fit check on the /audit intake form. We turn down audits that don't fit the operator profile (pre-PMF teams, theatre buyers, anyone who can't give an operator direct access). The qualification gate keeps the audit volume sustainable.

The free price is not a marketing tactic. It's a function of how the engagement is structured.

What's in the audit dossier?

Fourteen pages. Same shape every time. The diagnosis is what changes.

| Page | Section | What it contains | |---|---|---| | 1 | Cover + scope | The query set we ran, the engines we tested, the time window | | 2 | Executive summary | Three numbers, three paragraphs, one named recommendation | | 3 | Crawler-access matrix | Each AI bot scored allowed / blocked / partial | | 4–5 | Schema-coverage scorecard | Every type, every page, every gap | | 6–7 | Content-shape grades | Section-by-section citability scoring | | 8 | Direct AI-engine test results | Verbatim quotes from each engine | | 9 | Competitive citation analysis | Three to five competitors, what each wins, why | | 10 | Revenue trajectory | 90-day citation-volume projection | | 11 | Revenue-quantified findings | Every gap in dollars | | 12 | 14-day sprint plan | Day-by-day deliverable schedule for the recommended fix | | 13 | Risk register | Three to five things most likely to go wrong | | 14 | Sources | Every external reference used |

The full sample of what each page actually looks like is at /case-studies/sample-audit. Pages 2 and 3 walk through the executive summary + crawler matrix. Page 4 walks through the schema-coverage scorecard. Pages 6 and 7 walk through the revenue gap analysis.

What does it cost in operator time?

About 90 minutes total over five business days.

• Intake form (15 minutes) — basic operator + business info, named competitors, current AI exposure questions
• Discovery call (30 minutes, optional) — operator answers any clarifying questions before audit production starts
• Mid-window check-in (15 minutes, optional) — operator reviews preliminary findings on day 3
• Walkthrough call (60 minutes) — operator reads the dossier with the producer present, asks questions, agrees on next steps

Most operators do the intake form, skip the discovery call, skip the mid-window check-in, and take the walkthrough call when the dossier ships. About 90 minutes of operator time is the ceiling, not the floor.

What about Tier 1, 2, 3, 4?

Once the audit ships, the recommendation in page 12 of the dossier names the next-tier engagement. Tier 1, 2, 3, or 4 each. Or none — and the audit stands alone.

| Tier | Starting price | Timeline | What ships | |---|---|---|---| | Tier 0 | Free | 5 business days | The 14-page audit dossier | | Tier 1 | $500+ | 7-day sprint | One specific fix shipped live | | Tier 2 | $2,000+ | 14-day sprint | Full workflow integration | | Tier 3 | $5,000+/month | Monthly retainer | Compounding sprint cadence (3-month minimum) | | Tier 4 | Custom-quoted | 60–120 day build | Enterprise build + embedded partnership |

Walk-away is unconditional at every rung. No auto-renewal. Pricing is per deliverable, not per hour. The full ladder lives at /pricing.

What does the audit not cost?

Three things some operators expect but don't get charged for.

• No success fee, no equity stake. Even on Tier 4 enterprise builds. The relationship is fee-for-service, full stop.
• No platform license markup. If the recommendation requires deploying a vendor tool (Glean, Harvey, etc.), the operator pays the vendor directly at the vendor's price. Doxia Axis doesn't take a reseller margin.
• No retainer commitment from the audit. Most audits convert to engagements; some don't. The dossier is yours either way. We track the conversion rate but don't gate the audit on it.

So what should you do?

If your business has the demand signal (post-PMF, recognizable revenue, real operator) and you want to know what AI search is doing to your category — request the audit.

• Just request it: /audit. Five-business-day turnaround.
• Want the methodology first? What is an AI visibility audit?
• Want to see what the deliverable looks like? /case-studies/sample-audit walks through five sample pages.
• Want to see it applied to four real businesses? /case-studies.

If your business doesn't have the substrate, the audit isn't free in the operator-time sense. We'll tell you that on the intake form before we accept the work.