How many marketing agencies that rank on Google publish their prices?

How did we check the agencies?

We started from the Google US results our rank tracker pulled on October 5, 2026 for 212 searches made by people looking to hire marketing help. The searches lean toward ecommerce, PPC and paid social, with smaller groups for home services, dental and legal practices, B2B lead generation, tracking and AI receptionists. From the sites in those results we removed directories, list articles, software and ad platforms, forums, social networks, news sites and businesses that do not sell marketing. That left 178 agencies and marketing service providers; 161 of them held one of the first three organic results for at least one search.

On October 19 we read each agency's homepage and up to two pricing pages, found through links labeled pricing, plans or packages. We counted a price only when the page showed a specific amount for the agency's own service: a monthly fee, a "starting at" price, a project price, an hourly rate, an audit fee or a percentage of ad spend. Client results, ad budgets, revenue figures, budget selectors in forms and articles about typical market rates did not count. The full method and its limits are at the end of this page.

What do the 178 agency websites show?

The results by agency, without names, are a free download: agency-pricing-transparency-2026-10.csv (178 rows). The contract and invitation counts in the last five rows are approximate; the limits section explains why.

Do agencies that publish prices offer different terms?

23 of the 54 agencies that publish a price (43%) also say they work month to month or without a long-term contract. Among the 124 that publish no price, 22 say so (18%). Only 18 of the 178 sites (10%) state a minimum term, such as a 6 or 12 month commitment, and our check missed some terms that appear only in pricing grids, so read that figure as a floor.

This data cannot tell you whether the agencies without a price use longer contracts or simply do not say. What it does show is that a buyer who wants the terms before a sales call is more likely to find them on a site that also shows the price.

What is on a pricing page that shows no price?

60 of the 178 agencies (34%) have a page whose address says pricing, plans or packages. On 21 of those 60 (35%) we found no fee for the agency's own work. Those pages showed, among other things: plan or package names without numbers, an ad-spend or budget selector that leads to a quote, a statement that every client is priced individually, a guide to what the market charges, and in one case placeholder text left over from a website template.

Across all 178 sites, the invitations that replace a price are common: 48 offer a free audit (27%), 52 invite a free proposal or quote (29%) and 21 say to contact them for pricing or that pricing is custom (12%).

Does it differ by type of agency?

Not by much where we have enough agencies to compare. Agencies whose rankings were mainly for ecommerce and PPC searches publish a price at 33 of 115 (29%). Agencies ranking for home-service marketing searches publish at 10 of 30 (33%). The other groups are too small to compare: 2 of 6 for practices and 1 of 6 for B2B lead generation. Counting only marketing agencies, and leaving out web developers, sales-outsourcing firms and AI builders, the share is 46 of 150 (31%).

What this means if you are hiring an agency

• Plan to ask. Seven in ten agencies here (124 of 178) show no fee, so ask for a price range on the first call, before you share account access or sit through a full pitch.
• Read what a published price covers. A monthly or other recurring fee is the usual format among agencies that publish (41 of 54). Check whether it includes ad spend, setup fees, creative and reporting.
• Get the contract term in writing. A quarter of the sites (45 of 178) say month-to-month or no long-term contract, and one in ten (18 of 178) state a minimum term. The rest do not say on these pages.
• Treat a free audit as a first step, not a verdict. 48 of 178 agencies offer one. Judge it by what it finds in your account, not by the offer.

Method and accuracy

• Searches: 237 hiring searches from our October 2026 keyword research, minus 25 that name a place outside the US and 1 brand search, leaving 212. Google US desktop results via DataForSEO, pulled October 5, 2026.
• Sites: the first three organic results for each search, plus sites from DataForSEO's competitor list for the same searches (120 domains ordered by visibility) wherever they held a position from 1 to 20. That gave 350 domains. We removed 11 directories and list publishers, 108 software and platform sites, 12 forums and social sites, 16 news, reference and course sites, 5 marketplaces and 7 businesses that do not sell marketing. 13 more sites blocked automated visits or could not be reached and were left out rather than counted as not publishing. 178 agencies remained.
• Pages: each homepage, then up to two pages linked as pricing, plans or packages, or the addresses /pricing, /plans and /packages when no link existed. No more than three pages per site, no more than one request per second per site, a standard browser identity, robots.txt rules followed, no logins and no forms. Pages with little visible text were re-read in a full browser so prices drawn by scripts would show.
• Rules: a written set of patterns that look for a currency amount next to fee wording (per month, starting at, package, setup fee, audit) and reject amounts next to revenue, ad spend, budgets, client results and market-rate wording.
• Accuracy: we tested the rules on 37 agency sites they had never seen. They were wrong on 2 (5%), and both errors were missed prices, so the code tends to undercount. We then read every site the code marked as publishing a price and every amount it rejected on the others, and corrected 6 of the 178 by hand, plus 3 pages that only looked like pricing pages. A random sample of 50 sites, re-read in a full browser, found no hidden prices.
• Disclosure: Barlo Digital is an agency and publishes its own prices. Our site did not appear in these results and is not in the sample.

What can this data not tell you?

• It is a ranking sample, not every agency. It covers agencies Google showed for 212 hiring searches on one day, mostly in the first three organic results. Agencies that rank lower, or for other searches, are not in it.
• The searches lean toward ecommerce and paid social (161 of the 212). Groups outside ecommerce and PPC and home services rest on 2 to 16 agencies each.
• We read the homepage and the pricing pages only. A price on a service page, in a PDF, behind a form or inside a calculator is not counted. The figure is what a buyer sees at the front door and on the pricing page, not whether an agency will ever share a price.
• One country and one date. These are US Google results from October 2026. Some ranking agencies are based abroad: 8 of the 54 that publish quote in a currency other than US dollars.
• A published price is any specific fee, from a small starter offer to a large retainer. It does not mean the price is complete or that a buyer would pay it.
• The contract and invitation counts are approximate. On our random sample of 50 sites the code misread 4 for minimum terms and 4 for free-audit, proposal or pricing invitations, so those rows are indications, not exact counts.

Fair questions

Does an agency that hides its price charge more?

We did not measure price levels, so this data cannot say. It only records whether a fee is shown.

Why count a small starter offer the same as a large monthly retainer?

The question is whether a buyer can see any fee before talking to the agency. Both answer it.

Will you repeat this?

Yes. We plan to run the same method each quarter so the share can be tracked over time.