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Content cost calculator
Compare what a month of content really costs across four routes: an agency, a freelancer, your own time, or an AI tool with a human editing pass.
Cost per article is the only comparable unit across these four routes, and the AI route only wins when the editing estimate is honest. Enter your volume and rates below to see cost per article, per month and per year for each option.
The tool
Your results appear here as soon as you change a value.
How to use it
- Set your real volume Not your aspirational volume. Cost per article changes very little with volume for freelancers and agencies, and enormously for a fixed-price AI subscription.
- Price your own time properly Use loaded cost, not salary divided by hours. If you would otherwise be selling, your hourly cost is closer to your revenue per hour.
- Be honest about editing One hour per AI article is realistic once your prompts and brand voice are dialled in. It is optimistic in month one, when two to three is normal.
- Compare the annual figures Monthly differences look small and annual differences do not. The gap between routes is usually five figures a year at eight articles a month.
How the numbers work
Everything here runs in JavaScript in your browser. No input is sent anywhere, nothing is stored, and there is no account, no email gate and no export limit. The maths is deliberately simple so you can check it: where a benchmark is used, the source is named on the page rather than hidden behind a "based on industry data" claim.
Where this calculator uses published research, it uses these: the position-CTR meta-analysis from First Page Sage (updated May 2025), the 34.5% AI Overview click reduction measured by Ahrefs across 300,000 keywords, and Pew Research Center's click-behaviour study. Tool prices come from vendor pricing pages read on 2 August 2026. All of them are averages, and averages are a starting point, not a forecast: your own Search Console data beats every benchmark on this page.
Frequently asked questions
How much should an SEO article cost?
In 2026, agencies typically charge $300 to $900 for a researched long-form article, freelancers $120 to $500, and an AI tool plus one hour of editing lands between $20 and $90 depending on volume and your hourly rate.
Is AI content cheaper than a freelancer?
Per article, almost always. Per result, only if you edit. Unedited AI output competes with every other unedited AI output on the same keyword, which is a crowded and unrewarding place to be.
How many hours does editing AI content take?
Between one and three hours for a 1,500-word article, depending on how much fact-checking the topic needs. Anything claiming numbers, dates, prices or quotes needs verification, and that is where the time goes.
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Read more on this
- Edit AI content so it actually ranks
- AI SEO software vs hiring an agency
- Build an AI SEO content workflow
Last verified 2 August 2026. Prices, plans and features on this page were read on each vendor's own site on that date. Vendors change pricing often, so confirm before you buy. Spotted an error? Tell us and we will fix it.