Pricing
One offer opens every conversation: ten finished, human-edited articles for $2,500 in 30 days. Everything else on this page is what that pilot turns into, and the rules that stop you discounting it away.
- Pilot: $2,500. 10 briefs you approve, 10 finished articles, every one human-edited, delivered in 30 days. One payment. Nothing to cancel.S3
- Starter: $99/month. 15 articles, 2 seats, 2 projects. Annual $990, which is 12 months for the price of 10.S1
- Pro: $299/month. 50 articles, 5 seats, 5 projects. Annual $2,990.S1
- Done-for-you retainer: $2,000 to $2,500/month. 8 finished, human-edited articles a month. Austen Pro and the editing are bundled and hidden inside it.
- Enterprise: contact us. 150+ articles a month, unlimited seats and projects. SSO is listed on the plan but not built yet, so do not promise it. No self-serve price, deliberately.S1
- Add-ons: human editing at $55 per 1,000 words with a $15 minimum;S2 10 extra articles for $75.S4
- Free: 5 articles lifetime, 1 seat, 1 project, no card. Every feature is switched on.S1
The pilot is the front door, and nothing else is
The single most useful sentence in the research behind this guide is that the gap was never the technology. Austen could already research, write, score, human-edit and publish an article. What it could not do was be bought. Every conversation ended in a bespoke quote, which means every conversation ended.S3
Why one price, not a quote
A fixed price removes the two slowest steps in a small deal: working out what to charge, and getting a number approved that nobody has seen before. $2,500 sits inside most marketing managers' discretionary spend, which is the whole point of choosing it.
Why paid, not free
A free trial of a service is not a trial, it is unpaid delivery. The pilot costs you about $533 in direct cost to fulfil (Chapter 4), so a free one is a real loss, and a buyer who will not pay $2,500 will not pay $2,000 a month either.
Why 30 days
Long enough to approve ten briefs and edit ten articles properly. Short enough that the renewal conversation happens inside the same budget quarter as the purchase.
| What the buyer gets in the $2,500 | Detail |
|---|---|
| 10 briefs to approve | Angle, audience, search intent, structure and word budget, written by you. They approve, change or reject each one. Nothing is written until they have said yes. |
| 10 finished articles | Researched against live sources, in their brand voice, held to the brief's word budget, through the quality gate, the length gate and the tell gate. |
| A human edit on every article | A Proofed editor proofreads each one (Austen orders Proofed's Proofreading service by default) and returns tracked changes and comments on the original. Accept or decline change by change. |
| SEO and GEO scores on every article | Austen's own grades, shown with the article. Every draft is revised against both before anyone sees it, but 90 is a target, not a promise: most articles finish below it, especially on GEO.S6 |
| A kickoff call and a live status page | 30 minutes within one working day of payment, then a permanent link showing all ten slots and their state: brief pending, brief approved, article drafted, edited, delivered. The status page ships with the pilot branch, so until it is merged, send a weekly status email instead.S3 |
| Publishing, if they want it | Straight to WordPress through the Austen Connect plugin, or to anything else through a signed webhook. Or they take the files. |
What is not in the $2,500. Design, images beyond the article's own hero and inline images, link building, ongoing strategy, more than ten articles, and rewrites of articles they approved and then changed their mind about. Say all of that at the kickoff call, not at day 28.
What the pilot converts into
| If the buyer says | Offer | Price | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| "We want to keep doing this, but we will run it" | Austen Pro, plus editing as an add-on | $299/mo, editing at $55 per 1,000 words | They take the work. Your margin is high and your time cost is near zero. |
| "We want to keep doing this, but you run it" | Done-for-you retainer, 8 finished articles a month | $2,000/mo, or $2,500 where the voice is technical or regulated | The offer they actually wanted. It is 62% to 78% of the average agency retainer for a defined output.S26 |
| "It is more than we need" | Austen Starter | $99/mo | 15 articles a month is more than most one-person marketing functions publish. Do not talk them out of it. |
| "We want it for four client accounts" | Austen Pro on the agency's account, one project per client (Pro has five) | $299/mo plus editing per client | The agency resells at its own rate. This is the highest-leverage outcome on the page. |
| "We need 200 articles a month across 12 brands" | Enterprise, quoted | Contact us | Never quote this on a first call. Get the volume, the number of brand voices and the review chain first. |
| "Not now" | Free plan, 5 articles lifetime | $0 | Costs you about $4 of model spend and keeps the account alive.S9 |
The retainer, defined precisely enough to invoice
The retainer is the only offer here that is not already enforced by code, so it needs its own definition or it will drift into "as much as they ask for".
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| An article | One finished piece up to 1,500 words, from one approved brief, human-edited once. Longer pieces count pro rata against the eight: a 3,000-word pillar is two. |
| Eight a month | Eight delivered in the calendar month. Unused articles do not roll over more than one month, and never accumulate past two months' worth. |
| One edit | One professional edit returned as tracked changes. A second full edit after the client rewrites the piece themselves is billed at the add-on rate. |
| $2,000 or $2,500 | $2,000 is the standard. Charge $2,500 where the subject needs a specialist editor, where a compliance or medical reviewer is in the loop, or where there is more than one brand voice. |
| Term | Three months minimum, then monthly. Bill monthly in advance. |
| What is included | The Austen workspace, the briefs, the articles, the edit, hero and inline images, and publishing. The client keeps the workspace if they leave. |
| What is extra | Translations at volume, article counts above eight, a second brand voice mid-term, rush turnaround under five working days. |
The capacity rule. Eight articles a month per retainer is a delivery commitment on Proofed's editors and on your own brief-writing time. Read the capacity note in Chapter 5 before you sign the fifth one.
Quoting rules
Never quote per word to a marketing buyer
Per word is how they buy freelancers, and it invites a comparison you lose: $250 for 1,500 words is 16.7 cents a word, which sounds expensive next to a $0.10 freelancer and is actually inside the EFA's own ghostwriting band.S23 Quote per finished article, or per month.
Lead with $2,500, never with $99
Opening with the subscription price anchors the whole relationship at $99 and makes the retainer a 20-fold increase later. Opening with the pilot makes $2,000 a month feel like a discount.
Give a reason for every discount, or give none
The only discounts on this page: annual billing, which is already 12 months for 10 and needs no negotiation;S1 a named public reference or case study, worth up to 15% off a retainer for the first three months; and a multi-client agency commitment. Nothing else. A discount without a reason teaches the buyer the price was invented.
Never discount the pilot below $2,000
Direct cost is about $533. Below $2,000 you are working for a margin that does not pay for the brief writing, and you have set a floor for every conversation that follows. If they cannot afford $2,500, sell five articles for $1,500, not ten for $1,500.
Quote in USD, and say so
Austen's prices are set in USD in config/billing.php and charged in USD by Stripe.S1 A UK buyer paying a USD invoice on a UK card is fine; do not improvise a GBP price on a call, because the plan matrix will not agree with you.
Put the check date on every competitor price you quote
Every number in Chapter 2 is dated. Quote it with the date or not at all: "as of 4 September 2026, Verblio publishes $0.06 a word". Being wrong about a rival's price in front of a buyer who uses them is expensive.
Invoicing rules
| Situation | How to bill | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Pilot, self-serve | Guest Stripe Checkout from /pilot, once gtm/pilot-offer is merged: on 30 September 2026 the page returns 404, so invoice every pilot until then. Payment first, provisioning on the checkout.session.completed webhook | Nothing exists until Stripe says the money moved. Provisioning is idempotent, so a Stripe redelivery cannot create a second set of ten slots.S3 |
| Pilot, buyer needs an invoice and a PO | Stripe Invoicing, net 14, work starts on payment | Universities, law firms and publishers often cannot use a card. Stripe Invoicing costs 0.4% of the transaction total, capped at $2.00 per invoice.S37 |
| Subscription | Cashier and Stripe, card on file, monthly or annual | Already built. Annual is 12 months for the price of 10, which is the cleanest cash improvement available to you.S1 |
| Retainer | Stripe subscription at the retainer price, monthly in advance, three-month minimum term | In advance, always. A done-for-you month costs you real editor money before the invoice date. |
| Agency reselling to its own clients | One invoice to the agency, never to their client | You are their supplier, not their client's. Going around them once ends the relationship. |
| Anything above $5,000 | 50% on signature, 50% on delivery, by invoice | Protects you on a large first engagement with a stranger. |
Definitions, so an invoice cannot be argued with
| Word | Means |
|---|---|
| Article | One finished piece, up to 1,500 words, from one approved brief. Above 1,500 words it counts pro rata, rounded up to the nearest half. |
| Finished | Through the quality gate, with both scores shown as they stand, including any below the 90 target; through the length gate and the tell gate; and human-edited with tracked changes returned. |
| Approved brief | A brief the client has said yes to in writing, in the app or by email. The approved brief is the specification. An article that matches its approved brief is delivered, even if the client has since changed their mind. |
| Delivered | The edited article is available to the client, and the slot is marked delivered on the status page. Publishing to their CMS is optional and does not change the delivery date. |
| Month | Calendar month for a retainer. 30 days from the kickoff call for a pilot. |
| Seat | A person in the workspace. Starter 2, Pro 5, Enterprise unlimited.S1 An agency's people working inside a client's own workspace do not take one of the client's seats, and their work counts against the client's plan. |
| Word count | Words in the delivered article body, excluding metadata, image captions and the title. It is what the editing add-on is priced on. |
What is not decided yet
- Whether the retainer is $2,000 or $2,500 by default. Sell three at $2,000 and three at $2,500 and let the win rate decide. Do not agonise about it before you have six data points.
- Whether editing should be bundled into Pro. Today it is a per-word add-on on every plan.S2 Bundling a fixed editing allowance into Pro would make Pro a genuinely different product from Byword, at a real cost. Revisit it once you know the average article length people actually generate.
- Whether a five-article pilot at $1,500 should exist as a published SKU. Keep it as a concession you can grant, not a price on a page, until you have lost three deals on it.
- What Enterprise costs. There is no self-serve price by design, and no anchor in this guide, because there is no evidenced deal to anchor to.