SEO content cost
What SEO content actually costs.
Per-word list prices run from $0.06 to $0.16 a word at the writing services that publish them — roughly $90 to $240 for a 1,500-word post. Here is what that money actually buys, and what a quote should include before you accept it.
No per-word quotes
What the market charges, where it is published.
Per-word rates read from each supplier's own pricing page in October 2026. These are list prices for writing alone — not for the plan, not for publishing, and not for the review afterwards.
| What you are buying | Published rate | What comes with it | Where we read it |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI-assisted per-word service | $0.06 / word | Plus a $49.50/month platform fee, 1–3 day turnaround | Verblio pricing page |
| 100% human per-word service | $0.16 / word | No platform fee, subject-matter writers, unlimited edits | Verblio pricing page |
| Agency per-word plan | From $0.08 / word | Monthly subscription discount, unlimited revisions | WordAgents pricing page |
| An AI writer that posts into your CMS | $13 – $99 / month | A word or article quota you can exceed | Each vendor's own page, on /vs |
| Xt4b | $19 / site / language / month | Plan, writing, images, hosting and publishing | Our pricing page |
The same post, in each column
A 1,500-word post is about $90 at the hybrid rate, $120 at the agency rate and $240 at the human rate — and the same $19 on Xt4b whether the post is 1,200 words or 2,400. Survey-based freelance medians, if you want them, are published by the Editorial Freelancers Association.
Four ways it gets priced.
None of them is wrong. They buy different things, and the cheapest line on a quote is usually the one with the least brief behind it.
- Per word
- The most quoted and the least informative. A rate per word says nothing about research, structure or whether the piece answers the query.
- Per article
- Priced on the brief: query, intent, outline, sources and the images that come with it. Comparable between suppliers, if the brief is the same.
- Monthly retainer
- A number of posts per month, at a lower rate per piece — but check what happens in a month where two posts are ready and the third is not.
- In-house
- The cost is a salary plus the tooling, the editing and the person who remembers to publish. Predictable, until the writer leaves.
Compare like for like.
Same six questions, asked of every pricing model. The gaps are where the extra invoices and the unpaid hours appear.
| Model | Knows the query | Metadata written | Images included | Internal links | Publishing + upkeep | Cost is predictable |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Per word | – | – | – | – | – | ✓ |
| Per article | Sometimes | ✓ | Extra | Extra | – | ✓ |
| Monthly retainer | ✓ | ✓ | Sometimes | Sometimes | Sometimes | ✓ |
| Hiring in-house | ✓ | ✓ | Extra | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Xt4b ($19 / site / language / month) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
How to read this
“Sometimes” and “Extra” are not failures — they are things to put in writing before you sign. A quote that excludes metadata and internal links is still a valid choice; it is just not the same purchase as one that includes them.
What actually moves the number.
Six things separate a quote for the same word count. Ask which of them are in the price.
- Research depth
- Finding the query, checking who already ranks for it and what they cover is the part that decides whether the post can win.
- Subject-matter review
- A reviewer who knows the industry costs more than a second pass of grammar checking, and that is what keeps the post credible.
- Revision rounds
- Two rounds priced in is normal. Unlimited revisions usually means the brief was never agreed, and it shows up in the timeline.
- Images and layout
- Cover art, inline images, tables and the structure a reader scans. Frequently quoted separately, which is why quotes often differ.
- Internal links
- Linking to pages that exist — and pointing them at what you sell — is editorial work, not formatting.
- Publishing and upkeep
- Metadata, canonical tags, the sitemap and the check that two posts are not chasing one query. This is where cheap content quietly costs more.
Where the money leaks.
Nobody is overcharged for content as often as they are charged twice for the same page. These are the six leaks worth closing first.
- Rewrites because the brief arrived after the draft did
- Two posts published for the same query, so both underperform
- Drafts that were approved and then never published
- Pages that link to URLs your site no longer serves
- Images quoted as an extra, added late, at the worst rate
- A backlog nobody has the hours to review or ship
What a quote should include.
Two suppliers can quote the same number for the same word count and deliver different work. This is the list that makes a quote comparable — send it back to them and see which items come off.
Only one thing on it is about writing. The rest is the work that surrounds the writing, and it is the part that disappears first when a price is cut.
What the brief should contain- Which query the post is for, and why that one
- The intent, the outline and the angle before writing starts
- Meta title and description written for the search result
- Images, or a clear line about who supplies them
- Internal links to pages that already exist
- A publish date, and who presses publish
- At least one editorial review round, stated in the quote
How to compare two quotes.
Four questions that turn two prices into a decision you can defend to whoever approves the budget.
- 01
Send the same brief to both
One query, one outline, the same length and the same deliverables. Quoting from a vague brief is how two prices end up meaningless.
- 02
Count what is actually included
Metadata, images, internal links, publishing. Anything listed as an extra is not a cheaper quote, it is an incomplete one.
- 03
Ask what a slow month costs
Retainers and packages price the quiet months too. Ask what happens when fewer posts are ready than the package assumes.
- 04
Ask who publishes, and where
Content that arrives as a document still needs a person to format, link, publish and update the sitemap. Find out whose job that is.
Why the same work can cost less here.
Not because the writing is cheaper per word, but because there are fewer handoffs around it — and handoffs are what most of a content budget pays for.
- 01
One brief instead of five handoffs
The query, intent, outline and links are fixed before writing, so the piece is not reinterpreted by each person it passes through.
- 02
The unglamorous work is included
Images, metadata, canonical URLs, internal links and the sitemap are part of the pipeline — the items that usually appear as extras on a quote.
- 03
Publishing is in the price
A post is finished when it is live on your domain and indexed, not when a draft is emailed across and added to someone's to-do list.
It is priced differently too: $19 per website, per language, per month, rather than a quote per article. Two languages on one site is two lines on the invoice, and a language you stop publishing in is a line that goes away.
Paying per handoff
- A strategist writes the brief, a writer interprets it
- An editor and a designer are separate line items
- Metadata and internal links are quoted as extras
- Publishing waits for someone with dashboard access
Paying for the pipeline
- One brief, carried from query to published URL
- Images, metadata and links are part of the same run
- Canonical tags, sitemap and internal links resolved automatically
- A subscription instead of an invoice per article
More on content
- Outsource blog writing
The five things that set the quote, and the five costs it leaves out.
- Content retainer pricing
Four models, where the margin goes, and how to make the line defensible.
- Xt4b vs the alternatives
Koala AI, Byword, Autoblogging.ai, Article Forge, GrowthBar, BabyLoveGrowth — honest comparisons, plus where Frase and MarketMuse fit alongside.
- The best AI blog tools
The category sorted by the job it solves — and the row where Xt4b loses.
Questions about the number.
Including what a post costs at the rates that are actually published, and who published them.
So what does a single post cost?
At the published rates above, $90 to $240 for a 1,500-word post — before the review, the internal links and the publishing. What no rate card tells you is how much of that survives: a word is the one unit that stays the same whether the piece answers the query or not, which is why the checklist above is the part worth comparing.
Is cheaper content ever the right call?
Sometimes, for pages that support a purchase rather than compete for a query — a product description, a location page. It is the wrong call for the posts you expect to earn traffic for years, because those are won on how completely they answer the query.
Is it cheaper to hire a writer in-house?
A salary looks predictable until you add the tooling, the editing and the publishing nobody owns. In-house wins on subject knowledge and loses on coverage: one person writes one article at a time, and the plan has to shrink to fit them.
Should I tie the cost to the traffic it brings?
No, and a supplier who does is guessing. What you can measure honestly is whether each post is indexed, ranks for anything at all, and earns impressions for the query it targets — which is what a connected Search Console shows per site.
How should I budget the first three months?
Budget the review time as well as the writing, because a plan you cannot read is a plan you cannot approve. Expect the first weeks to produce pages that are visible but not yet competitive: coverage is what changes that, not the price per word.
What does Xt4b cost, and how is it priced?
$19 per website, per language, per month. A site publishing in two languages is two lines on the invoice, each running its own plan and calendar. There is no per-article quote, and the first plan costs nothing to read: it lists the queries you are missing and the first week of dates.
Does anything here guarantee a return?
No. Xt4b publishes content on a schedule you approve and reports what it earns; it does not promise rankings, traffic or revenue, and neither should any quote you are given.
See the plan, then the quotes
Put a plan next to the quotes.
Create an account and connect a domain: you get the queries your site is missing and the first week of the plan, before anything is written or quoted.
No per-word quotes$19 / site / language / month7 days free, no card30-day money-back guarantee