Comparison
Clarvia vs hiring an SEO agency
Both are serious options. Here is how they differ.
An agency sells judgement and capacity. Clarvia sells a scan, a rewrite you can see on the page, and the change itself. Most of the time the real question is which one you are short of.
Side by side
| Capability | Clarvia | An SEO or AI search agency |
|---|---|---|
| Typical monthly cost | $99 to $499 a month (990 to 4 990 kr), per company, with unlimited users | Agencies typically charge $3,000 to $15,000 a month for this work (30 000 to 150 000 kr in the Norwegian market) |
| What you are buying | Software that does the mechanical work, for the whole company | People, judgement and their time |
| Human strategy | Not included. Clarvia scores and rewrites; it does not sit in your board meeting | Yes, and it is the main thing you are paying for |
| Time from finding to changed page | Minutes. Scan, read the suggestion in context, accept it, push it to the CMS | Days to weeks, depending on the retainer and the queue |
| Sites covered | One website on Starter, up to three on Pro. Each client is their own account | Whatever the contract scopes, with more sites usually meaning a bigger retainer |
| Who writes | AI drafts within a strict length rule; you approve every change | Their writers and strategists |
| Reporting | In product, re-scored on demand after a change | Usually a monthly report or deck |
| Accountability when results stall | Yours. The tool shows the score; acting on it is your call | Theirs, contractually. That is worth real money to some teams |
Agency figures describe what agencies charge clients for this work. They are never Clarvia pricing.
What an agency does well
An agency brings judgement software cannot
Which markets to enter, which pages deserve investment, how a rewrite fits the brand, what to do when the numbers move the wrong way. That is strategy, and it comes from people who have watched it play out across other clients. Clarvia does not do this and does not claim to.
They do the work, not just point at it
A retainer buys execution capacity. If nobody on your team has the hours to act on a report, a tool that produces better reports does not help you. An agency absorbs that work, and for many teams that is the entire reason to hire one.
Context accumulates
A good agency learns your business over months: the seasonality, the products that actually margin, the claims legal will not approve. That context makes their recommendations sharper in a way a scan of your HTML cannot replicate.
How Clarvia differs
Clarvia is the tool, not the strategist
The honest framing is that these are not substitutes. Clarvia scores a page across nine dimensions, shows the suggested rewrite positioned on a render of the page, applies what you accept, and re-scores after the change. An agency decides what should be true about your business in the first place.
Plenty of agencies run Clarvia on their own clients
There is no agency tier any more, because agencies are a channel rather than a customer segment: partners join free, place clients on their own per-company accounts, and earn 30% of what those accounts pay for as long as they stay. Plenty of agencies also run Clarvia on retainers they already sold, to deliver the mechanical work faster. If you are an agency reading this page, you are not the competition.
Where the cost comparison is fair, and where it is not
Comparing $99 of software (990 kr) to a retainer is only meaningful for the part of the retainer that is mechanical: auditing pages, drafting rewrites, checking whether AI answer engines can read the site. Norwegian SEO retainers start around 10 400 kr a month, so Clarvia Solo is under a tenth of a cheap retainer, or about forty minutes of agency time. That is a difference of kind rather than degree, and it is precisely why it is not a replacement for strategy, creative or account management.
The numbers, honestly
Both sides of the cost picture as of August 2026, with the source of each figure stated.
The retainer range, as of August 2026
Agencies typically charge $3,000 to $15,000 a month for AI search and SEO work, or roughly 30 000 to 150 000 kr a month in the Norwegian market. That range comes from our own intake conversations with prospective customers, not from a published survey, so read it as a working figure rather than an industry statistic.
Clarvia pricing, as of August 2026
Free covers one complete check of one site, with every fix shown but locked. Solo is $99 a month (990 kr) for one website, up to 50 pages, checked weekly, with 25 AI questions tracked monthly. Team is $249 (2 490 kr) for three websites and 100 questions tracked weekly, plus a multi-client console. Agency is $499 (4 990 kr) for as many websites as your capacity covers, 300 questions weekly and white-label reports. Enterprise starts at $1 500 and is quoted. Every paid tier has unlimited users and nothing a smaller customer could use is withheld from it. Extra credits are $39 for 200, bought when you want them, and nothing is ever charged automatically. Prices are ex. VAT and annual billing is two months free.
See your own page first
If you already have an agency, bring them a scan. If you do not, run one yourself and see how much of the list you can close in an afternoon.
Run a free scanOne complete check, free. No credit card needed to start.
Other comparisons
Competitor details retrieved August 2026 from public pages; tell us if something is outdated: [email protected]