How much does a CRO audit cost? What freelancers, agencies and tools charge, and what each includes

CRO audit cost depends less on the store than on who does the work and how deep they go. Published ranges run from nothing for an automated scan, through roughly $1,000 to $1,800 for a freelancer's manual review, to $2,500 and well past $10,000 for a full agency audit. The price is a poor guide on its own: the scope behind it is what you are really buying.

An audit matters to the extent that it shows where you lose to the stores shoppers compare you with. The video above does that comparison for one store: a real shop with weak ad returns next to a leader in its niche. Keep that in mind while you read the price list, because the cheapest audit that makes this gap visible beats an expensive one that doesn't. Want a first read before you spend anything? Run the audit on your store →

How much does a CRO audit cost?

There is no standard price list, and every published figure comes from a company with something to sell. Treat the numbers below as indicative. They are quoted as the publishers state them, with the date where the page gives one.

The spread is the first lesson. Anlyto, which sells measurement audits, puts agency work at $2,500 to $10,000 or more. Clyro, which sells an AI store builder, gives $500 to $3,000 for a consultant's one-off audit. Convert.com, which sells testing software, lists an average of $3,500. Different publishers, different incentives and, above all, different definitions of the word "audit".

Hourly and monthly rates sit behind these totals. Clyro's rate table lists $75 to $200 per hour for a freelance CRO expert and $2,000 to $10,000 or more per month for an agency retainer, and Convert.com's freelancer figures cite $80 to $200 per hour for experienced freelancers. An audit is the cheap part of a CRO engagement; the work that follows it is not.

What does each price level actually include?

The same label covers very different work. Anlyto describes the tiers this way:

• Automated scan. Software runs a fixed checklist against your page. No human reviews it and it arrives instantly. It finds the obvious and can't tell which finding matters for your niche.
• Freelance or independent review. A person looks manually at one funnel step, often within a week, and returns a short list of fixes. It is focused and cheap relative to an agency, and it is only as good as the person's experience.
• Agency audit. Stakeholder interviews, session recording review, an analytics deep-dive and a prioritized test roadmap, typically over two to four weeks. This is the only tier that studies what real visitors did.

The practical reading: a cheap audit looks at the page, a mid-priced audit looks at the page with a trained eye, and an expensive one looks at your data and your customers as well. If your problem is a page that doesn't make the offer clear, the first two are enough. If your problem is that nobody can tell why a decent page converts badly, you need the data.

What should a good audit deliver, whatever it costs?

Three things, in any tier: a diagnosis of how far you are from a good page, evidence you can see (annotated screenshots or recordings rather than opinions), and a list of fixes ranked by impact. If a quote doesn't say how the fixes will be prioritized, you are paying for a list, not a plan. We cover the page-by-page checklist in our Shopify CRO audit guide and won't repeat it here, but you can use it to judge a provider's output.

Before you pay, ask each provider five questions:

1. Which pages and steps are covered? One landing page and a whole funnel are not the same price for a reason.
2. What data do they need? If a provider never asks for analytics access, it is judging the page, not the traffic.
3. What is the deliverable? A report, a recorded walkthrough and a ranked backlog are three different things.
4. Is implementation included? Most audits end at the recommendation, and building the changes is a separate bill.
5. What happens after? A re-audit after your changes is how you find out whether they worked.

What do implementation and retainers add on top?

An audit ends with a list; changing the store is another bill. Clyro puts a CRO agency retainer at $2,000 to $10,000 or more per month, and its range for a full program with research, testing and development at larger agencies is $5,000 to $25,000 or more per month. Those figures cover ongoing work, so, for illustration, an audit that leads to a $5,000-a-month engagement is a different decision from a standalone report. Decide up front whether you want the diagnosis alone, the diagnosis plus someone to build the changes, or a longer testing program, and compare quotes on that basis.

Which red flags should you watch for in a quote?

• A score with no ranking. A grade out of 100 is not a plan. You need to know which finding to act on first.
• No questions about your traffic or goals. A provider who quotes without asking how many visitors you get or what you sell is selling a template.
• Guaranteed uplift. No one can promise a conversion increase before seeing the results of changes on your store.
• A very low hourly rate for "CRO". Convert.com's pricing roundup notes that people asking as little as $20 an hour are often managing ads rather than doing conversion optimization.
• Unclear ownership of the work. Ask whether you keep the annotated screenshots, the recordings and the backlog if you stop working together.

When is each option worth paying for?

This is our judgment, not a measured rule. With a young store and little traffic, an automated scan or your own checklist is usually enough, because data-heavy audits have nothing to analyze. If you suspect one funnel step (say the product page or the checkout), a freelancer's focused review fits the question. If you have meaningful traffic, an ad budget and a team to act on the findings, an agency audit starts to make sense because the research and roadmap can be tested.

Whatever you choose, remember what an audit cannot do. It doesn't change your store, it doesn't prove a fix works until you measure it, and on low traffic it can't be validated by testing. The money is in the changes, which is why we'd rather you spend on fixing than on a longer report. If you reach the point of hiring, here is what an ecommerce CRO specialist does and how to judge their work.

How do you compare two quotes fairly?

Put them side by side on the same five lines: pages covered, data used, deliverable, implementation and follow-up. For illustration, a quote that covers one landing page and a quote four times higher that covers the whole funnel with analytics may cost the same per page. Divide the price by what you actually get and by how likely you are to act on it. A report you never implement costs more than one you do, whatever it cost.

Where does an automated audit fit?

As the first pass. An automated audit is cheap and fast enough to run again after every change, which a quarterly human audit can't match. Its limit is what it sees. The one we make (ours — full disclosure) reads a screenshot of your live storefront, so it judges what a shopper sees: offer, layout, trust cues and imagery. It does not see your analytics, your recordings or your checkout flow, and it is not a replacement for a consultant who can interview customers or implement changes. The Free plan includes one full audit, with your score, an annotated screenshot and one set of fixes unlocked. Our Shopify store audit is the entry point.

If you are comparing options, our guide to free website audit tools explains what each type of tool checks and where it stops, and new free Shopify tools covers what Shopify itself added.

Spend where the gap is

An audit is a means. The goal is a store that beats the one next to it in the shopper's other tab, and the best use of any budget is on the gap that comparison reveals. Start cheap, find the biggest difference, fix it and measure. If the findings call for deeper research, you will know what to ask for and what it is worth. Run the audit on your store →