Plans & Pricing

Overview

AEO Optima offers seven plan tiers designed to match the shape of your team:

Only Free is self-serve. Every other tier is sales-led — pricing is offered through a conversation, not a marketing page. Reach out at hi@techshu.ai to discuss tier fit.

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The snapshot budget — three numbers, not one

Capture volume is described as a triple, not a single "snapshots/month" number:

• Scheduled runs/month — predictable, recurring captures triggered by your cadence (weekly, daily, etc.)
• Ad-hoc snapshots/month — manual one-off captures triggered by an operator
• Total snapshot cap — the monthly ceiling of the plan design. It is not enforced as a separate cap today; the answers a day below are.

This breakdown matters because the two volumes serve different needs: scheduled runs underwrite the regular monitoring story; ad-hoc covers spikes for investigation, launches, competitor reactions.

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What fits on a plan today

Each plan allows a number of answers a day, shared by every project in the organisation: Free 4, Starter 67, Pro-Individual 433, Pro-SME 3,667, Enterprise-Brand 33,333, Enterprise-Agency 66,667, Custom unlimited.

One answer is one question asked of one engine, and a capture that needs more answers than the plan allows in a day does not run at all. On Free, 4 engines track 1 question a day, 2 engines track 2 questions a day, and 1 engine tracks 4 questions a day, from answers shared by every project in the organisation.

On Pro-Individual, Pro-SME, Enterprise-Brand, Enterprise-Agency and Custom, each search surface turned on for a project (Google AI Overview, AI Mode, Bing Copilot) also asks every active question once, in the project's main market rather than once per location, so a capture needs up to that many more answers: with 2 engines and one search surface, one question is up to 3 answers. Up to, because a search surface no provider serves in that market is not asked, and the capture check counts only the surfaces it will ask.

A scheduled capture asks every active question of every active engine, and of each search surface it will ask, so a project whose active questions × engines, plus those search answers, need more answers than that is refused on every run, not just on busy days. The onboarding wizard keeps the first capture inside it (questions beyond what fits are saved switched off, and named), and the Query list & types, Engines & surfaces and Answer engines pages warn when switching a question, an engine or a search surface on takes a project past it.

The Runs/month, Ad-hoc snapshots/month and Total snapshot cap rows above, and the Models/run row below, describe the plan design; none of them is enforced as a separate limit today.

Every plan also includes a pooled allowance of answers a month, shared by every project in the organisation: Free 150, Starter 800, Pro-Individual 1,500, Pro-SME 4,700, Enterprise-Brand 9,700, Enterprise-Agency 14,000, Custom unlimited. On Free it holds more than the answers a day can use; on every other plan with a number, captures past it run only with pay-as-you-go. See Pay-per-use overage below.

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Capability + Quota matrix

The standard questions about your brand (three identity checks and ten questions buyers ask about a brand, offered on every plan but Free) are not counted in Questions/project. Their answers count toward the plan's daily answer limit like any question's, so one that would take a project past it is added switched off.

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V/E/X/A capabilities (Pro-SME and above)

Pro-SME, both Enterprise tiers, and Custom support project-level roles that scope what a user can do inside a project:

• V (View) — read snapshots, runs, prompts, prompt groups, reports, alerts
• E (Edit) — add/edit prompts, define prompt groups, edit alerts, edit project settings (non-budget, non-member)
• X (Execute) — trigger ad-hoc runs, ad-hoc captures, ad-hoc AI analysis, ad-hoc GEO audit (each one a discrete cost event)
• A (Admin) — change run cadence (recurring spend commitment), set budget cap, set overage opt-in, manage project members

Lower tiers (Free, Starter, Pro-Individual) keep the simpler org-level role model only.

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Shape drift — what it is, what to do about it

Runs of the same project remain "apples-to-apples comparable" only while they share the same full shape: the same set of prompts, models, locations, and languages. When you add/remove/edit any of those mid-period, runs after the change have a different full_shape_hash and are not strictly comparable to earlier ones.

The platform handles this honestly:

• Period reports flag shape-drift periods explicitly: "Shape changed on May 14 — comparison from May 1–14 used Shape A; May 14–30 used Shape B."
• Run-vs-run diff computes the intersection: "Run #18 vs #17 — comparable on 58 of 60 prompts; 2 prompts added on May 14 are excluded from this comparison."
• Paused prompts appear as explicit gaps in the comparison view, not silent zeros.

The recommended workflow when you must reshape: capture one final run on the old shape, mark the change with a project annotation, then start the new shape. The annotation surfaces in every downstream report.

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Pay-per-use overage

When a customer uses up what their plan includes, they can keep going on a pay-per-use overage at fully-loaded cost-plus margin — if they have opted in. Overage is opt-in: an owner or admin turns on pay-as-you-go in Settings → Billing → Credits (an organization setting). A project's budget is separate: it caps how much of that overage one project can add to the bill. Default off. When off, hitting cap blocks further usage with a friendly upgrade tooltip.

Overage applies to: snapshots beyond cap, proxy bandwidth beyond cap, AI analysis beyond cap, GEO audit beyond cap, report generation beyond cap.

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Quota Behavior

When you reach a usage limit, the platform prevents additional usage of that resource until the quota resets or you upgrade your plan (or opt in to overage where supported).

What happens when you hit a limit

• API requests return HTTP 429 Too Many Requests with a QuotaError that includes the resource name, current count, and limit.
• UI actions display an inline error explaining the limit and suggesting an upgrade.
• Feature-gated actions return HTTP 403 Forbidden with a FeatureDisabledError if the feature is not available on your plan.

Reset periods

Unlimited resources

Resources marked unlimited internally use the sentinel -1 and have no enforced cap.

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Override Layers

Limits and features can be customized at two levels beyond the plan defaults:

1. Organization overrides — Platform administrators can adjust any limit or feature for a specific org without changing its plan tier. The full PlanLimits and FeatureFlags shapes are overrideable.

2. Project overrides — Within an org, individual projects can have their own limit and feature overrides. Useful when one project needs higher capacity than others. Only project-scoped resources support this (questions/project, snapshots/day, alerts, AI analyses/day, GEO audits/month, building blocks, schedules/project).

The effective limit is resolved in order: plan defaults → organization overrides → project overrides. Most specific override wins.

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How to Upgrade

1. Navigate to Settings → Plan & Billing from the sidebar.
2. Review the available tiers; their limits are in the tables above.
3. Free is self-serve. For every other tier, click Talk to us — the platform team will configure your tier directly.

Downgrades are also routed through the team to ensure stored data, integrations, and webhooks are handled gracefully (some data may exit retention sooner under a lower tier's window — see the data-retention column above).

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Legacy tier values

The two legacy enum values professional and enterprise still exist in the database for backwards-compatibility and map to the new tiers:

• professional → Pro-SME (same limits + features)
• enterprise → Enterprise-Brand (same limits + features)

Existing customers on those legacy values continue working unchanged until they're manually re-tiered to the new name by the platform team. New customers always provision into the new 7-tier names directly.

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Related Docs

• Roles & Permissions — V/E/X/A capability model details
• Cost Tracking — Monitor API usage costs across your organization
• Reports — Generate and share AI Brand Intelligence reports
• Webhooks — Deliver events to external systems
• Connectors — Third-party integrations