Looking at data costs nothing — it's already been collected. Creating new data costs real money. So we charge for the second and not the first. That's why every client login is free, forever, and why a five-person team doesn't pay five practitioner prices.
One flat price for the whole business — not per user, not per keyword. Built for a local service business that wants more calls and a straight answer about whether the money is working.
What this replaces. A local marketing agency retainer typically runs $1,000–$1,500 a month and sends you a spreadsheet. Cortex9 tells you what to do next. If you'd rather compare it to tools, the equivalent stack is roughly $85/month — but the retainer is the honest comparison.
Search data is fetched once per keyword per workspace and stored. So viewing a ranking costs nothing no matter how many people look at it — but running a fresh scan costs real money. The seat ladder follows that line exactly, which means everyone can see the data, and only people who create cost need a seat that pays for it.
Why this is cheaper for you than a flat seat price. A five-person team is usually one principal, two practitioners and two PMs — $595/month, not five practitioner seats at $745. Adding three more PMs costs $147, so delivery stays in one system instead of leaking into a separate project tool. Keyword volume belongs to the workspace, not the seat, so headcount never multiplies your data bill.
Priced per tier, not per head, because throughput is what you're buying. Every client gets a free login — the single thing that most reliably makes them renew.
Extra client beyond your tier $39/mo · extra seat $49/mo ·
extra credits $0.10 each. For unusual shapes we also sell per unit:
$99/seat/mo + $49/client workspace/mo.
What this replaces, for 5 people and 20 clients. Ahrefs with extra users $489 ·
AgencyAnalytics at $20/client $400 · Buffer across 60 channels ~$450 · ChatGPT Business $125 ·
Local Falcon ~$99 · Harvest $45 · Asana $67 — roughly $1,675–1,760/month, and
none of it shares a business brain. Verified against vendor pricing pages on 4 August 2026.
Every plan includes a monthly credit allowance. Credits are spent only when the system goes and fetches something new — a live search, an AI analysis, a fresh audit. Reading anything you already have is always free. Daily spend ceilings and a stop-everything switch mean automation can't produce a surprise bill.
| Operation | Credits | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Viewing anything | 0 | Rankings, history, reports, dashboards — already collected and stored |
| Tracked keyword | 1 /mo | One keyword in one town, re-checked on schedule. Overage $0.12/keyword/mo |
| NAP / citation audit | 5 | Your name, address and phone checked across directories, field by field |
| AI visibility scan | 8 | Whether ChatGPT and Google's AI answers name you, and who they name instead |
| Agent scan | 15 | One specialist agent sweeping one client and reporting what it found |
| Citation discovery | 20 | Up to 12 searches across forums and communities, each classified for fit |
| Prospect audit | 30 | Full competitive teardown of any domain, with a dollar revenue gap |
| AI Strategy deep run | 150 | Fourteen research agents + a verifier produce your twelve-pillar plan — quarterly-grade work |
| Competitor monitoring | 190 /mo | Per rival — a permanent dossier with monthly history, not a snapshot |
| Outreach sending | 290 /mo | Flat per workspace, however many drafts you send |
Credit billing is not switched on yet. The ledger, the rate card and the wallet are built and tested, but nothing is metered or charged on your account today — the prices above are what each operation will cost when billing goes live, published now so there are no surprises later. When it's enabled you'll see your balance in Settings → Billing, with alerts at 50%, 80%, 95% and 100%.
Three ways to buy: flat per business, per seat, or per agency tier. Items marked BETA are built and switched on per account; SOON means in development and not included in any plan yet.
| Capability | Local — $99 flat | Team — per seat | Agency — from $499 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Town-by-town rank tracking | ✓ 5–10 towns | ✓ | ✓ unlimited |
| Mission board, time tracking, comments | ✓ | ✓ PM+ | ✓ |
| Free client / viewer logins | ✓ unlimited | ✓ unlimited | ✓ unlimited |
| Cortex AI chat + morning briefing | ✓ | ✓ Practitioner+ | ✓ |
| Google reviews + drafted replies | ✓ | ✓ Practitioner+ | ✓ |
| Citation & NAP auditing | ✓ | ✓ Practitioner+ | ✓ |
| Social publishing + real engagement | ✓ | ✓ Practitioner+ | ✓ |
| Monthly executive report | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| AI visibility (ChatGPT + Google AI) | — | ✓ Practitioner+ | ✓ |
| 12-pillar strategy engine | — | ✓ Practitioner+ | ✓ |
| Content Hub, Brand Kit, Theme Designer | — | ✓ Practitioner+ | ✓ |
| Red Team adversarial analysis | — | ✓ Practitioner+ | ✓ |
| Competitor dossiers | ✓ 1 rival (Pro) | ✓ Principal | ✓ unlimited |
| Prospect Audit | — | ✓ Principal | ✓ |
| Product Video Studio | ✓ Pro | ✓ Practitioner+ | ✓ unlimited |
| Portfolio view across clients | — | ✓ PM+ | ✓ |
| Team performance + invoice preparation | — | ✓ PM+ | ✓ |
| Autonomous agent fleet BETA | — | ✓ Principal | ✓ |
| Paid advertising SOON | — | — | — |
| Dedicated marketing manager SOON | — | — | Scale |
Neither of these is included in a plan today. We'd rather tell you what's coming than sell you something that isn't there.
Because they cost nothing to serve and they're the reason clients renew. A client who logs in and sees their rankings, their hours and what was delivered doesn't need convincing at renewal time. Charging for that would tax the exact thing that reduces churn. Viewer seats read data that has already been collected, so a hundred of them cost the same as one.
Yes — that's the point of the seat ladder. Delivery and PM seats are $49 because they genuinely cost us nothing: they manage work and view data, they don't trigger paid scans. Only practitioners and principals, who can force re-checks and run agents, sit at $149 and $199. Three extra PMs cost $147, not $597.
It multiplies rows, and we show you that before you commit — the picker tells you "30 keywords × 10 towns = 300 rows" and how long a full check will take. But keyword volume belongs to the workspace, not the seat, so team size never affects it. Each plan carries an allowance, with overage at $0.12 per keyword per month.
It's built and it works — ten specialists scanning server-side every fifteen minutes. It's switched on account by account rather than enabled for everyone at once, so we can watch spend and quality per client. Ask us and we'll turn it on for yours. Everything it finds still arrives as an approval you accept or dismiss.
No. Every paid data source has a daily ceiling, usage is visible, and there's a stop-everything switch plus a per-agent pause and a per-client toggle. Automation ships paused by default — you turn it on deliberately.
Never. No post, email, article, theme change or review reply leaves the system without an explicit click. Every AI proposal arrives as a card you approve or dismiss — and when you reject something, it stops suggesting that pattern.
Cortex9 is invite-only right now. Tell us about your business through the request-access form and we'll come back to you. If you already have an invitation, sign in.
Connect one site and the first strategy run tells you more than a month of dashboards.