How Much Does Local SEO Cost? Free vs Paid
Local SEO packages start at a median €490 a month excl. VAT across 11 European agencies. What Google gives you free, what you pay for, and what to DIY.
How much does local SEO cost? Across 11 European agencies that publish a monthly local SEO package, the median starting price was €490 a month excl. VAT, with a range from about €137 to €2,500. We read them on the agencies’ own price pages on 23 October 2026. The Google Business Profile at the centre of local SEO costs nothing, so the money buys time: someone keeping your listing accurate, building directory citations, handling reviews and writing pages for the areas you serve.
Most search results for this question quote US prices in dollars. Here we split local SEO into the parts that are free and the parts you pay for, with European prices in euro. For general SEO retainers, audits and pricing models, see our overview of SEO pricing across Europe.
In short
- Published local SEO packages in our sample start at a median of €490 a month excl. VAT (11 agencies, range €137 to €2,500).
- Creating and claiming a Google Business Profile is free, and Google says there is no way to pay for a better local ranking.
- What you pay an agency for is labour: profile upkeep, citations, review handling and local landing pages. Tools such as BrightLocal start at $41 a month.
- A single-location business can do most of the basic work itself.
- Caladona’s Local SEO add-on is €290/mo excl. VAT, and local SEO is already part of the €690/mo SEO plan.
How much should I pay for local SEO?
Of the 11 packages in our sample, 7 started between about €350 and €900 a month. Six started below €500, and four started at €800 or more. The price roughly follows the scope, as the package pages show:
| Published starting price per month | Packages in our sample | Examples of what the package pages list |
|---|---|---|
| Under €300 | 2 | Profile setup, local keywords, technical basics, monthly visibility report |
| €300 to €499 | 4 | Profile optimisation, review handling; some add local or city pages |
| €500 to €999 | 3 | Adds on-page work and citation building; one adds articles and link building |
| €1,000 and up | 2 | Ongoing profile care, local keywords, local landing pages and content, reporting |
One German package in the sample adds a €490 setup fee to its €490 monthly price, so the first year costs more than later ones. Several general SEO packages in the same dataset include local SEO and Google Business Profile work without a separate price, so if your website also needs ranking work, compare whole packages instead of local add-ons alone.
Method: published starting prices from the agencies’ own pages in eight countries, seen on 23 October 2026. Pounds and Swedish, Norwegian and Polish currencies were converted at the ECB reference rate of 22 October 2026. Prices are excl. VAT where the page says so, and agencies are not named.
What is the average cost of local SEO?
The mean of the same 11 packages is about €759 a month, almost €270 above the median, because two retainers at €1,490 and €2,500 pull it up. The median is the better guide to a typical package.
The US guides at the top of this search quote $500 to $3,000 a month. Ahrefs polled 439 SEO providers in several regions and found that those serving local markets charge an average of $1,557 a month (Ahrefs, updated August 2024). That is about €1,390 at the ECB rate of 22 October 2026. Ahrefs calculated its averages from the top of each price band respondents picked, so its figure will usually sit above a median of published European starting prices.
Google Business Profile is free. What do you actually pay for?
Google lets you add or claim your business “at no charge” (Google Business Profile Help). It also says money can’t buy position: “There’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google” (Google). Local results depend mainly on relevance, distance and prominence, and Google bases prominence partly on how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have.
So the spend goes on the work around the profile:
| Item | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Google Business Profile | Free | Add, claim and verify at no charge |
| Google Search Console | Free | Shows which searches your site appears for and how often people click |
| Updating the profile, photos, review replies | No cash cost | Your own time, or an agency’s |
| Citations (directory listings) | Free if you submit them yourself; BrightLocal’s Citation Builder starts at $3.20 per site, or $2 with bulk credits | Keep your business details identical everywhere |
| Reviews | Free to ask for | Google wants a review to “reflect an actual experience with a business” |
| Local landing pages | Your writing time or a copywriter’s fee | One page per service or area you want to rank for |
| Rank and listing tracking | From $41 a month (BrightLocal, one location, monthly billing) | Optional for a single location |
Google’s content policy says a review or rating should “be genuine and unbiased” (Google Maps content policy). The same policy bans offering incentives for reviews and asking only happy customers, so be careful with any provider that offers to “generate” reviews.
Technical problems on your website are a separate job from local SEO; see what an SEO audit costs.
Local SEO tool prices
You don’t need a paid tool to manage one profile. A tool becomes useful when you track rankings across a town, run several locations, or want citations built for you. BrightLocal’s prices for one location:
| BrightLocal plan (1 location) | Monthly billing | Annual billing |
|---|---|---|
| Track | $41/mo | $369/yr (about $31/mo) |
| Manage | $54/mo | $485/yr (about $40/mo) |
| Grow | $65/mo | $584/yr (about $49/mo) |
For 2 to 5 locations the monthly prices rise to $62, $76 and $87. Citation Builder is pay-as-you-go and works with a free account. Prices are in USD, read on BrightLocal’s pricing page on 23 October 2026, with VAT not shown, so expect VAT on top where it applies.
What you can do yourself
Google’s own advice for improving local ranking (Google Business Profile Help) is work you can start yourself and then keep up:
- Verify your profile.
- Fill in your full address (if customers can visit you), hours including special hours, business category, and attributes such as parking or Wi-Fi.
- Reply to reviews.
- Add photos and videos.
Beyond Google’s list, you can also:
- Ask your customers for reviews, not only the happy ones, and don’t offer anything in return.
- List your business in the main directories for your country and sector with the same name, address and phone number as on your website.
- Give each service and each area you cover its own page on your website.
Outside help makes more sense when you have several locations, compete in a crowded category in a city, or know the upkeep won’t happen. Results also take time; see how long SEO takes.
Is doing local SEO worth it?
For the free part, usually yes. A verified, complete profile with genuine reviews costs you time, and Google says complete and accurate information makes a business more likely to show up in local results. Distance, meaning how far you are from the person searching, is the factor you can’t change.
Paying an agency is worth it when the work would otherwise not get done, or when competitors in your area clearly invest in theirs. There is no reliable industry-wide ROI figure for local SEO, so measure your own. Your Business Profile reports calls, direction requests and website clicks (Google), but only for verified profiles. Search Console shows clicks to your site. Compare those leads with what the same visits would cost as Google Ads clicks.
What Caladona charges for local SEO
Our Local SEO add-on costs €290/mo excl. VAT and covers “Google Business Profile, local citations and review management.” You can add it to any plan or buy it on its own.
If you also want ranking work for the rest of your website, our SEO plan at €690/mo excl. VAT already includes “Local SEO & Google Business Profile”, along with a technical SEO audit and fixes and 4 SEO articles a month, so you wouldn’t need the add-on as well.
€290 is below the €490 median in our sample, but the scope differs. Most packages we compared are standalone SEO packages with a local focus, several with on-page work or content. The add-on covers the profile, citations and reviews.