Wholesale Pricing Explained

Outercite's agency pricing is designed so you pay one wholesale rate for all your clients combined, then charge each client whatever makes sense for your business. The margin is yours to keep. This article explains how the tiers work, how to calculate your total keyword count, and how to think about pricing for your clients.

What you'll learn

• How wholesale pricing is calculated across all your clients
• How the keyword tiers work and when you move between them
• How to work out your own margin with a concrete example

How wholesale pricing works

Instead of paying per client, you pay based on the total number of active keywords (also called prompts, see the glossary) across all your client workspaces combined. One keyword tracked for one client counts the same as one keyword tracked for any other client. Outercite adds them all up at the parent organisation level and applies the relevant tier.

This structure has two advantages. First, it gets cheaper per keyword as you grow. Second, you control what you charge each client. Outercite invoices the agency, not the client. Whatever you bill the client is your business.

The tier structure

Wholesale tiers are based on total active keywords across all workspaces. "Active" means any keyword that has been checked at least once in the current billing period. Paused or archived keywords do not count.

Tiers are based on total active keywords; exact thresholds and tier names are shown in your account under Billing at /agency/billing. As you grow your portfolio, the per-keyword rate falls, and the lower rate applies to your entire keyword count for that month, not just the keywords above the threshold.

Worked example

Here is a concrete scenario to make the maths tangible.

An agency has 12 active clients. Each client has an average of 40 keywords tracked. That gives a total keyword count of:

12 clients x 40 keywords = 480 keywords

At a wholesale rate of $X per keyword per month (see your billing dashboard for the actual rate at this volume):

480 keywords x $X = wholesale cost

The agency charges each client $Y per month for "AI visibility tracking" as part of their SEO retainer:

12 clients x $Y = client revenue

The gross margin is the difference between client revenue and wholesale cost. As the agency grows and the keyword total rises, the per-keyword wholesale cost falls, and the margin improves further.

How to count your keywords

At any time, you can see your total active keyword count from the billing page at /agency/billing. It shows:

• Total active keywords this billing period
• Your current tier
• Keywords by workspace (so you can see which clients are using the most)
• Projected cost based on current usage

If you are approaching a tier boundary, you will see a notification. You can decide whether to pause low-priority keywords to stay in a cheaper tier, or let usage grow naturally into the next tier.

Assigning keywords per client

There is no rule about how many keywords each client must have. You can run one client at 100 keywords and another at 10. The total is what matters for billing.

A practical starting point for most clients is 20-40 keywords. The aggregate citation rate across Outercite is currently around 48%, meaning roughly half of all AI queries result in a citation for the tracked business. More targeted keywords generally produce more actionable data than a large list of generic ones.

For help choosing the right keywords for a new client, see Onboard a New Client.

Billing cycle and mid-month changes

Outercite bills monthly. If you add a new client workspace and seed keywords mid-cycle, you are billed pro-rata for the remaining days in that billing period. Removing or pausing keywords mid-cycle does not generate a credit for the current month, but reduces your count for the next billing period.

The Agency Billing Model article covers edge cases: pausing clients, mid-month onboarding, and how annual plans interact with the tier structure.

Reselling to clients

How you price for clients is entirely up to you. Some approaches agencies use:

• Flat fee per client tier. Small clients pay $X/month, large clients pay $Y/month, based on keyword count and reporting needs.
• Percentage markup on wholesale cost. Calculate the pro-rata wholesale cost for each client and add a fixed margin percentage.
• Bundled into retainer. Include Outercite as a named line item in an existing SEO or digital marketing retainer.

Outercite does not appear on your client's invoices unless you choose to name it. Reports are white-labelled with your agency branding by default. See White-Label Reports for how to configure that.

Try this in Outercite

Check your current keyword count and tier in the billing summary at /agency. If you are setting up for the first time, start with the onboarding flow at /onboarding?example=agency to get your parent organisation and first workspace live.

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