The Shortlist/Scale-ups
The 5 best GEO agencies for scale-ups
Published Sep 2, 2026
Paid got you here, and every extra euro now returns less than the one before it. At the same time your buyers have started asking ChatGPT and Gemini which tools solve their problem, and Google is pushing AI Overviews and AI Mode into the results you used to own. Organic is the one channel that does not get more expensive as it grows. Most scale-ups cannot yet defend it with numbers.
Five agencies that build it for companies past product-market fit.
At a glance
The shortlist, ranked
| # | Agency | Best for | Base | Entry price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Radyant | Scale-ups that want organic and AI Search built into a channel they can defend in a board meeting | DACH, delivering across Europe | From €7,000/mo |
| 2 | House of Growth | Scale-ups that need the non-owned surfaces worked, without a long contract | Europe, remote | Not published |
| 3 | Ironpaper | Scale-ups moving upmarket into committee-driven, longer sales cycles | New York, around 70 people across the US | Not published |
| 4 | Perceptric | Scale-ups where a founder or executive is still the strongest asset in the category | Remote, US-based | $3,000 to $10,000+/mo for SEO. $2,500 to $5,000/mo per profile for LinkedIn |
| 5 | Graphite | Series B and later scale-ups that want a large partner with a research team | United States, remote | Not published |
Methodology
How this was put together
We started with agencies that publicly sell AI Search, AEO or GEO work and name clients that were post-product-market-fit growth companies at the time of the engagement, rather than seed-stage startups or enterprises.
We weighted the things a scale-up actually needs: a published outcome in leads, demos or pipeline rather than traffic, senior people who will still be on the account in month seven, and enough capacity to grow with you for two years rather than one.
Everything comes from public sources. Where an agency publishes nothing on a point, we say so. Self-reported percentages are marked as stated by the agency. The order is our judgement about fit, and each entry says where it is the stronger pick and where it is not.
The agencies
Every entry in detail
#1
Radyant
- Best for
- Scale-ups that want organic and AI Search built into a channel they can defend in a board meeting
- Base
- DACH, delivering across Europe
- Entry price
- From €7,000/mo
- Terms
- 12-month commitment with an opt-out after 6 months. Fixed-scope projects from €10,000
Radyant's published work is mostly companies at exactly this stage, and mostly stated in the unit a scale-up has to report: pipeline and leads. Heyflow tripled MRR pipeline in six months. Enter went from nothing to more than 500 organic leads a month. ToolSense grew leads tenfold over two years. That last one matters here, because two years is the horizon that separates a channel from a campaign. Attribution setup is part of the service rather than an afterthought, which is what makes the board conversation possible at all.
Where it is stronger
- Nearly all published outcomes are stated in leads or pipeline, which is the unit a scale-up reports
- Attribution setup is part of the engagement, so the channel becomes defensible rather than assumed
- Multi-year results published, not just six-month wins
- Pricing and contract terms published, including the six-month opt-out
Where it is not
- The €7,000/mo entry price is real money at this stage and needs an internal owner to be worth it
- Europe-focused. A US-only expansion is better served by a US team
- No paid media, so the channel comparison your board wants still needs your paid partner in the room
Services
- AI Search optimisation across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot and Google AI Mode
- SEO strategy and technical SEO
- Digital PR
- Content production
- Programmatic SEO
- Conversion rate optimisation and attribution setup
Published proof
- Heyflow: 3× MRR pipeline in six months, and first place in AI Search visibility for its category
- Enter: from zero to more than 500 organic leads a month across solar, heat pumps and energy management
- ToolSense: 10× leads from SEO over two years
- deeploi: organic leads up 250%
- Planeco Building: 5× lead growth, from 45 to 225 leads a month, and AI Search citation rate doubled from 55% to over 110%
- Publishes original research including a persona study and a query fan-out study on branded search
#2
House of Growth
- Best for
- Scale-ups that need the non-owned surfaces worked, without a long contract
- Base
- Europe, remote
- Entry price
- Not published
- Terms
- Recurring agreements with no long-term lock-in
An AEO-first agency working the surfaces a growing company can still win: brand mentions, YouTube and Reddit alongside owned content. The published outcomes are the most board-ready on this list in one respect, because they are stated as a share of pipeline rather than as a percentage lift. Warmly attributes 33% of pipeline to AEO. No long-term lock-in, which matters when the plan changes every quarter.
Where it is stronger
- Reports pipeline share, which is the number a board actually asks for
- Reddit and brand-mention work as core services
- No long-term lock-in
- Genuinely AEO-first rather than an SEO agency that added a page
Where it is not
- No published pricing at all
- No enterprise or regulated references, so it may not grow with you past a certain point
- Does not say who staffs the account or at what seniority
- No published research into retrieval behaviour
Services
- AI Search and SEO strategy
- Long-form content and on-page optimisation
- Brand mention building
- Reddit marketing
- Paid search and landing pages
Published proof
- Warmly: 33% of pipeline attributed to AEO
- Team-GPT: a six-figure enterprise deal closed via AI Search
- Rows: 100k organic sessions per month
- Jamie: 74 high-intent topics captured in LLM answers
- States 100+ companies worked with, including Warmly, Rows, Team-GPT, Relay.app and Permify
#3
Ironpaper
- Best for
- Scale-ups moving upmarket into committee-driven, longer sales cycles
- Base
- New York, around 70 people across the US
- Entry price
- Not published
The right shape for a specific transition: a scale-up whose deals used to close in three weeks and now involve procurement, security review and four stakeholders. Ironpaper is built around long and complex sales processes, with ABM and heavy marketing-operations capability in HubSpot and Pardot. That operations depth is usually the thing that breaks first when a company moves upmarket, because the old attribution stops describing the new deal.
Where it is stronger
- Built for the longer sales cycles a scale-up inherits when it moves upmarket
- Strong marketing operations, which is where upmarket attribution breaks
- Around 70 people, so it can grow with you
- ABM capability for the named-account motion that usually follows
Where it is not
- No separate AI Search practice. The positioning is demand generation and GEO is not a published method
- No published pricing of any kind
- US-centric team and client base, with little published European work
Services
- B2B demand generation and lead generation
- Account-based marketing
- Content strategy and thought leadership
- Website design and conversion optimisation
- Sales enablement
- Marketing automation in HubSpot and Salesforce Pardot
Published proof
- Named clients including Steelcase, Solartis and Mobilewalla
- Published case result: MQLs up 86% over six months
- Published case result: a 3,660-position gain in search rankings
- HubSpot Diamond certified partner, Google Partner and Databox Premier certified
#4
Perceptric
- Best for
- Scale-ups where a founder or executive is still the strongest asset in the category
- Base
- Remote, US-based
- Entry price
- $3,000 to $10,000+/mo for SEO. $2,500 to $5,000/mo per profile for LinkedIn
- Terms
- Three- to twelve-month contracts
A small shop combining B2B SEO, GEO and executive thought leadership. At this stage that pairing is often underrated: the founder still has more credibility in the category than the brand does, and models quote named people. The Katalon case covers traffic, ARR and citations across major LLMs, which is more specific than most agencies this size publish. Pricing is broken out per service line.
Where it is stronger
- Works towards LLM citations directly rather than as a side effect
- Turns founder credibility into something models can quote
- The most detailed published pricing here
- Small enough that the people you meet do the work
Where it is not
- The smallest published evidence base here, essentially one detailed case
- No digital PR or earned-mention service beyond LinkedIn
- Capacity is limited, so it will not grow with you far
- US-based with no published European work
Services
- Revenue-focused SEO
- AI SEO and GEO for LLM citations
- LinkedIn executive thought leadership
- PPC as an optional add-on
Published proof
- Katalon: 300% traffic growth, 80%+ ARR increase attributed to SEO, and citations across major LLMs
- Named clients including Katalon, Momos, AltexSoft, ScoutQA and DeepIDV
- Publishes pricing bands for each service line
#5
Graphite
- Best for
- Series B and later scale-ups that want a large partner with a research team
- Base
- United States, remote
- Entry price
- Not published
The established option, working with US software companies at Series B and up, including Webflow, n8n and Hinge Health. AEO sits next to SEO and performance marketing, and they publish genuine research on how AI is changing search with a named internal research team. If your board wants a recognisable name and you have the budget, this is the low-risk pick. It is also the least specific about what happens on your account day to day.
Where it is stronger
- Publishes genuine original research, which very few agencies at any size do
- Scale and track record, and the least risky option for a cautious board
- Capacity to run several workstreams as you grow
- Deep software-category experience
Where it is not
- No published pricing or contract terms
- No published client outcome stated in AI citations or AI visibility
- Says little about who staffs an engagement beyond leadership names
- No earned-mention or digital PR service named in-house
- US-focused
Services
- Answer engine optimisation
- SEO strategy and execution
- Performance marketing
- Content strategy and production
Published proof
- Named clients including Webflow, n8n and Hinge Health
- Publishes original research on AI's effect on search, including a study titled "AI is 4x-5x Bigger Than You Think"
- Names a Chief AI Officer and data specialists on the team, and describes an internal AI research team
- Long-established growth agency with an extensive published body of SEO and content work
The number your board will ask for
Not traffic. Not visibility. They will ask what organic contributes to pipeline, and whether it gets cheaper per lead as it grows. Both questions are answerable, and neither is answerable retroactively, which is why attribution has to be set up in the first month rather than the fourth quarter.
The honest complication with AI Search is that a lot of it does not leave a clean trail. Someone asks a model which tools do what you do, gets three names, types yours into their browser, and arrives as direct or branded search. Your analytics will credit that to brand. This is the single biggest reason organic looks weaker than it is at this stage.
So the measurement has to combine three things: the prompts you show up in and where, your branded search volume over time, and a self-reported attribution question on your forms. None of them is sufficient alone. Together they are enough to defend a budget, and an agency that cannot describe that setup before starting will not produce it later.
Buying for two years, not two quarters
Organic is the channel where the compounding is the point, and that changes what you should optimise for when choosing. A six-month sprint that produces a spike and then plateaus is worse value than a slower build that is still growing in year two. ToolSense growing leads tenfold over two years is a more useful reference than any six-month percentage.
That makes capacity a real criterion rather than a detail. One of the agencies here is effectively one or two senior people, which is excellent value right now and a constraint eighteen months from now. Ask directly what happens when the programme needs three workstreams instead of one.
It also makes contract terms worth reading. A twelve-month commitment with a six-month opt-out is a reasonable trade at this stage: long enough that the agency can plan, short enough that a bad fit does not cost you a year. A rolling monthly with no commitment sounds safer and often produces work planned in monthly increments, which is the wrong shape for a compounding channel.
Who we left off, and why
We left out agencies whose named clients are all seed-stage or all enterprise. Both are different jobs. At seed the problem is that nobody has written about you. At enterprise the problem is approval. At scale-up the problem is turning something that works into something that compounds, and that is a third thing.
We left out agencies whose only AI Search evidence is their own writing about AI Search. Confidence in writing about GEO says very little about whether an agency has moved a client's citations.
We left out AI visibility monitoring tools. Buy one anyway, and buy it before the agency starts so your baseline predates the work. It will make you a much better client, because you will be able to tell whether the reporting matches reality.
FAQ
Questions buyers actually ask
- What does GEO cost for a scale-up?
- Only two of the five publish a figure: from $3,000/mo at one end, and €7,000/mo for a senior European programme across several workstreams with fixed-scope projects from around €10,000. For a company past product-market fit that wants organic to become a real channel rather than a side project, $5,000 to $8,000 a month is the honest range.
- How do we prove organic is working when AI Search leaves no referrer?
- Combine three signals. Track the prompts your buyers ask across the models and record where you appear and which sources are cited. Watch branded search volume over time, because a model naming you produces a search for your name rather than a click. And add a self-reported attribution question to your forms, asking how people first heard about you. None of the three is enough alone. Together they are enough to defend a budget.
- Should we hire in-house instead at this stage?
- Usually both, in a specific order. One internal owner first, then an agency for the specialist work. The strongest predictor of a wasted retainer at this stage is that nobody inside the company owns it, so the agency ends up setting its own priorities and reporting on what it chose to do. A first in-house hire plus a specialist partner beats either alone, and it is also the cheaper mistake if the hire does not work out.
- Is it worth doing this while paid still works?
- That is the best time, because organic takes two to four quarters to carry weight and you want it ramping before paid efficiency becomes the problem in a board meeting rather than after. Starting when paid has already broken means running a slow channel under fast pressure, which is where companies buy content volume and get traffic without pipeline.
- How long before it carries real weight?
- Expect two quarters to see it working and four before it is a channel you would plan around. AI citations move on the models' own refresh cycles, earned coverage takes time to land, and content compounds slowly at first. Anyone promising a step change in a quarter is describing a hope. The useful early signal is not volume but whether you appear at all in prompts where you previously did not.
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