Jahanzaib

Free tool

AEO ROI calculator

I built this to answer two questions with your own numbers: what more visibility in AI answers could be worth, and whether a hire, an agency or a specialist costs less in year one. Every lift field starts empty, and every formula is on the page.

Runs in your browser. The link holds your numbers and nothing else, so anyone you send it to can read them.

Your traffic today

Sessions from search engines in a typical month, from GA4 or Search Console.

In GA4, sessions by source from AI assistants such as chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai and copilot.microsoft.com.

Your funnel

%
%
$

Revenue from one new customer: an order, or the first year of a contract.

%

What you keep from that revenue after the cost of delivering it.

Your cost

$

Retainer, salary share, tools and content: everything AEO costs you each month.

$

Optional. An audit or setup fee paid once. Empty counts as zero.

mo

Your own assumption. The gain grows in a straight line to full over this many months. Enter 0 to count it in full from month one.

Your assumptions

These start empty on purpose. Any number I put here would be a guess about your business, so the range appears only once you enter your own low, mid and high cases.

%

The share of your tracked buyer prompts where an assistant names or cites you today.

Target share of AI answers
%
%
%

The share you expect to reach. AI visits scale in proportion to the change.

Organic search lift
%
%
%

Extra search sessions as a percentage of today. Enter 0 in all three to count AI visits only.

Fill in every field to see your range

Still empty:

  • Organic search sessions per month
  • Session to lead conversion rate
  • Lead to customer rate
  • Average order or contract value
  • Gross margin
  • Monthly AEO budget
  • Months until the gain is fully in place
  • Organic search lift, low case
  • Organic search lift, mid case
  • Organic search lift, high case
  • AI assistant referred sessions per month
  • Current share of AI answers
  • Target share, low case
  • Target share, mid case
  • Target share, high case

AI referral traffic is small for most sites, so an honest range can include zero. To measure your share of answers, my guide to tracking AI search visibility walks through it, and the glossary defines answer share.

How this is calculated
Extra AI visits (share basis) = AI referred sessions x (target share minus current share) / current share
Extra AI visits (direct basis) = the extra AI visits you entered
Extra organic visits          = organic search sessions x organic lift %
Extra leads                   = (extra AI visits + extra organic visits) x conversion rate %
Extra customers               = extra leads x lead to customer rate %
Revenue per month             = extra customers x average order or contract value
Gross profit per month        = revenue per month x gross margin %
Net per month                 = gross profit per month minus monthly AEO budget
Ramp                          = month m counts min(1, m / ramp months) of the full gain
Year one cost                 = setup cost + monthly budget x 12
Year one net                  = ramped gross profit over months 1 to 12 minus year one cost
Payback month                 = first month where ramped gross profit so far covers
                                setup cost + every monthly budget paid so far
                                (never, when gross profit per month is not above the budget)
Low, mid and high             = the same formulas run on your three lift values, sorted

There are no hidden constants: every number in the result comes from a field above. The maths is plain TypeScript with tests for empty, zero and out of range inputs.

Coverage

What it models

  • Extra visits from AI answers

    Scales the AI assistant visits you get today by the change in answer share you expect, or takes the extra visits you expect directly.

  • Organic search lift

    The extra search sessions you expect, as a percentage of today. Enter zero to count AI visits only.

  • Revenue and gross profit

    Visits run through your conversion rate, close rate, deal value and margin, so the result is profit, not traffic.

  • Year one net and payback

    Your monthly budget and setup cost set against the gain, which grows over the ramp months you pick.

  • Hire, agency or specialist

    Year one cost of each from your salary, overhead, hiring cost, tools, retainers and the hours you spend managing it.

  • No hidden constants

    Every number in a result comes from a field you filled in. The formulas sit under the calculator.

Method

How it works

  1. 1

    Enter today

    Organic sessions, AI referred sessions and your funnel: conversion rate, close rate, deal value and margin.

  2. 2

    Enter your cost

    The monthly AEO budget, any setup fee, and how many months you expect the gain to take to arrive in full.

  3. 3

    Enter three cases

    A low, mid and high target share (or extra AI visits) and organic lift. Be as cautious as your data says.

  4. 4

    Read the range, then compare

    Check the payback in each case, then switch modes to see what a hire, an agency or a specialist would cost.

Questions

Frequently asked questions

Why do the lift fields start empty?

Because any default would be a number I made up about your business. I do not know how far your share of AI answers will move, and neither does a benchmark from someone else. The range appears only once you enter your own low, mid and high cases.

What does share of AI answers mean here?

The share of a fixed set of buyer prompts in which an AI assistant names or cites you. If you track twenty prompts and appear in four answers, your share is twenty percent. The calculator scales your current AI referred visits by the change from your current share to your target.

My current share is zero. Can I still use it?

Yes. Switch to entering the extra AI visits directly. Scaling from zero has nothing to multiply, so the share basis asks for a current share above zero.

Where do I find my AI referred sessions?

In GA4, open traffic acquisition, show sessions by source and add up the AI assistants, for example chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai and copilot.microsoft.com. Some assistant traffic arrives with no referrer and counts as direct, so treat the figure as a floor.

How is the payback month worked out?

It is the first month in which the gross profit gained so far covers the setup cost plus every monthly budget paid so far, with the gain growing over the ramp months you choose. If gross profit per month never rises above the budget, payback is never.

Does the hire comparison include the time a new hire takes to get going?

No. Every option assumes the work starts in month one. If a hire would take months to recruit and ramp, add that to the hiring cost or keep it in mind when you read the result.

Is anything I enter stored or sent anywhere?

Nothing you type is sent to me. The calculator runs in your browser, with no account and no form submission. This site does run Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity, which record the address of each page, so the share link keeps your numbers after the # sign: browsers never send that part to a server, Google Analytics leaves it out, and the page clears it from the address bar as soon as it has read it. Anyone you send the link to can read the numbers in it.

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Rather hand it over?

I can find the fixes and ship them for you

I run SEO and answer engine optimization as one managed program: the pages, the technical fixes, the markup and the mentions that AI assistants read. You get a plain monthly report on what changed.

See how I run AEO