Three views per system: what it does, the run that proves it, the price bench read on the vendors’ own pages. Each price was decided against one-time comparables on a stated date and becomes final when the payment rail is tested. No subscription anywhere; twelve months of dated updates are the only recurrence.
Standalone systems
Each one entered the bench with dated runs in our own operation; the gate on each card says whether three exist yet.
Ship affiliate links that carry the disclosure pattern we run, redirect from your own domain, receive their rel attributes automatically, and get audited for rot.
OVERVIEW
Is not legal advice and will never promise compliance in your jurisdiction. It shows exactly what we run and cites the rules we followed, with dates.
GATE 0 PROOF ✓: in production on 41 pagesGATE 1 BENCH · READ 2026-09-07, price decided against one-time comparablesG-RAIL PENDING
RUN PROOF
PRODUCTION USE · Disclosure and redirect layer live on 41 content pages of wiserstaff.com (the site's 53 URLs less its 12 structural pages, build of 2026-08-30), rel attributes set engine-side by a build plugin, link registry in the repository, monthly link-health audit.
Instrument: the site's build output and the redirect file, both dated; the linkgraph audit of 2026-09-03 for link health.
Measure, per engine and per campaign, whether an AI answer cites a site, with the cost of every API call written down and the engine always named.
OVERVIEW
Will never promise you will “rank in ChatGPT”. Nobody can. We sell the instrument.
GATE 0 PROOF PARTIAL: protocol ran; zeros on record; fewer than 3 dated executionsGATE 1 BENCH · READ 2026-09-07, price decided against one-time comparablesG-RAIL PENDING
RUN PROOF
PROTOCOL 2026-08 · Copilot: 1,039 citations of wiserstaff.com in five days, 97% on vendor-brand queries, 6 of 35 pages produce all of them. Perplexity and Google: 0 of 12, seventh week running.
Instrument: Bing Webmaster AI Performance and Clarity for the Copilot side (same Microsoft data, counted once); a scripted browser run for Perplexity and Google. “The AIs cite us” is not a sentence we write; the engine is always named.
Profound: $99 Starter, $399 Growth, per month on annual billingPRIMARYsource
AI Citation Meter: $199 once, protocol and the four probes. If you need daily tracking, buy Otterly. Ours is a per-campaign measurement you run on the raw APIs, with every call costed.
$199decided, final at G-Rail · 12 months of dated updates · no subscription
The month the suite renews and you do not, run the same audits we run, from your terminal, on your own accounts, with no dependency to install and a budget gate before any billable call.
OVERVIEW
Will never replace a keyword database. It meters the APIs you point it at; it does not remove their bill.
GATE 0 PROOF ✓: scripts in production since 2026-06, dated runsGATE 1 BENCH · READ 2026-09-07, price decided against one-time comparablesG-RAIL PENDING
RUN PROOF
PRICE OF DOCTRINE · 134 billed API calls ($2.35) on 2026-08-26 established what the docs omit: a Bing endpoint truncating keywords, a cost field dropped in one API version, bulk difficulty left unscored. The link-graph script has run on every publication since 2026-08-17.
Instrument: the DataForSEO account ledger for 2026-08-26, both MCP servers, one session; the dated link-graph outputs.
DataForSEO itself, which the toolkit drives: $0.60 to $2.00 per 1,000 SERP results, $50 minimum deposit, prices raised about 20% on 2026-07-01PRIMARYsource
Semrush: $117.33 to $455.67 / month on annual billing · Ahrefs: $29 (Starter) to $449 (Advanced) / month, Enterprise $1,499 (read 2026-09-07), shown for context; the scripts return raw console and API data, not a keyword databasePRIMARYsource
Script bundles on Gumroad: about $70 one-timeSECONDARY
Zero-Dependency Audit Scripts: $199 once, perpetual licence, plus whatever you spend on the APIs you point it at.
$199decided, final at G-Rail · 12 months of dated updates · no subscription
The month you stop paying for the suite, use DataForSEO's pay-as-you-go APIs instead, with the cost of every call known before it is made and a playbook for each job.
OVERVIEW
Will never quote a price the documentation does not print. The manual reads your account's price grid; it does not carry a tariff.
CALIBRATION 2026-08-26 · 134 billed calls, $2.35, one evening, both MCP servers: a Bing organic endpoint truncating keywords server-side, the `cost` field dropped in API v2, bulk keyword difficulty left unscored, AI-mode fields empty in v3. Blog plan of 2026-09-06: 54 topics benched for $0.41 with a written cap of $1.00.
Instrument: the DataForSEO account ledger (`id_list`) for 2026-08-26 and 2026-09-05, kept in dated audit folders.
DataForSEO: $0.60 to $2.00 per 1,000 SERP results, $50 minimum deposit, about +20% on 2026-07-01PRIMARYsource
Third-party DataForSEO guides: free blog articles; a paid manual equivalent: none found on 2026-09-03PRIMARY
Semrush $117.33 to $455.67 / month on annual billing and Ahrefs $29 (Starter) to $449 (Advanced) / month, Enterprise at $1,499 (read 2026-09-07): the subscriptions the manual is written to leave, shown for contextPRIMARYsource
By-the-Call SEO Manual: $149 once.
$149decided, final at G-Rail · 12 months of dated updates · no subscription
Triage the free journalist-request feeds in a daily routine (about ten minutes, our estimate, not yet timed), with decision rules and scripts that stay inside every platform's terms of service.
OVERVIEW
Will never write pitches for you and never sends an email. That is doctrine, not a missing feature.
GATE 0 PROOF ✓: runs 2026-08-21 to 28GATE 1 BENCH · READ 2026-09-07, price decided against one-time comparablesG-RAIL PENDING
RUN PROOF
RUN 2026-08-21 · 49 cards → 6 worth reading → 0 usable leads in the default feeds. 512 opportunities on one filtered search, no pitch credit spent. 5 pitches written by hand and sent by 2026-08-28 from 3 live accounts; one marked “selected” by an outlet on 2026-09-03, nothing published yet.
Instrument: manual triage of the free request feeds, logged 2026-08-21 to 24; pitch registry 2026-08-28; press platform screens re-read 2026-09-03.
JustReachOut Starter: $147 / month, 100 emails a monthPRIMARYsource
Featured.com Pro: about $50 / month plus credits, from a third-party comparison, not confirmed on the vendor pageSECONDARY
Press Radar: $149 once, scripts included. It triages free request feeds; it does not send your emails or hold a journalist database. Read the prices as context, not as a swap.
$149decided, final at G-Rail · 12 months of dated updates · no subscription
Audit and clean the text, documents and images you publish of invisible characters, metadata and provenance manifests, in the formats listed below, and know exactly which layer you cannot verify.
OVERVIEW
Will never claim to defeat an AI detector. Detector evasion is not a feature and not a promise; the statistical layer is declared unverifiable.
GATE 0 PROOF ✓: in production on every publication since 2026-08-18GATE 1 BENCH · READ 2026-09-07, price decided against one-time comparablesG-RAIL PENDING
RUN PROOF
PRODUCTION USE · Runs on every wiserstaff.com publication since 2026-08-18 and on every press pitch: 0 zero-width characters, 0 byte-order marks, metadata purged, as logged per page. Absence of a mark is not proof of absence of a watermark; the register says so.
Instrument: the engine's own audit log per publication, kept with each article's production record; PDF metadata purge script in the toolkit.
Proof files: AUDIT/linkgraph-2026-09-03/
PRICE BENCH · READ 2026-09-03
UnC2PA, Documami, RemoveAILabel, Scanly: free browser tools for metadata and C2PA removal, one file at a timePRIMARYsource
Neighbouring category, not a substitute. Undetectable AI: $9.99 to $42.50 / month by word volumePRIMARYsource
Text-Hygiene Engine: $99 once. The free tools do one file in a browser; the kit does a whole publication pipeline from the terminal, logs it, and tells you which layer it cannot see.
$99decided, final at G-Rail · 12 months of dated updates · no subscription
The path after the switch to a static stack. The steps we ran, the official free-tier limits with the date they were read, the traps we paid for with their dates, and the real bills (domain at registry cost, an AI subscription if you use one, hosting at $0/month on the free tier).
OVERVIEW
Will never claim a universal audience or a route without code. The kit needs a text editor, a browser, and for path B a Git client. It sells no authentication and no billing system.
GATE 0 PROOF ✓: the sold path ran on 4 sites; three runs dated, one (riin-art.com) with its migration date still to be readGATE 1 BENCH · READ 2026-09-07, price decided against one-time comparablesG-RAIL PENDING
RUN PROOF
PRODUCTION PROOF · The domain is the whole recurring bill: $10.46 a year, read on three Cloudflare Registrar invoices (2026-06-02, 2026-06-26, 2026-09-06); hosting has cost $0/month on the Cloudflare free tier since June 2026. wiserstaff.com: 53 URLs live on 2026-08-30, sitemap and structured data. PageSpeed Insights 2026-08-31, 13 URLs on mobile: 8 scored 100, the other 5 between 90 and 99.
Instrument: the monthly hosting invoice ($0) and PageSpeed Insights runs, both kept in dated audit folders. The readings come from wiserstaff.com, which has run on this stack since 2026-06-27; its sitemap and PageSpeed scores can be re-read by anyone on the live site. ranthrice.com itself has run on this path since 2026-09-07; riin-art.com is served by Cloudflare (response header read 2026-09-05).
ShipFast: $199 once (list price $299) · Makerkit Pro: $349 lifetime, Next.js boilerplates with auth and billing; hosting is a separate billPRIMARYsource
Astro theme packs, all-access: $119 to $137; single Astro themes $29 to $97SECONDARYsource
The Domain-Only Website Kit: $129 once. The Rig, with the audit scripts and the corridor: $249. Sits below the boilerplates (a different object: they ship auth and billing) and inside the range of the theme packs as read indirectly. Beside it, for context only: a $9 to $29 per month host costs $108 to $348 in the first year.
$129decided, final at G-Rail · 12 months of dated updates · no subscription
Everything in the Kit, plus the scripts and methods we use to audit, write for and measure our own sites, delivered with the runs that produced our numbers.
OVERVIEW
Will never include human time. Updates are files. If you need hours, that is the studio, and the studio is parked.
GATE 0 PROOF PARTIAL: blocks ran; two prerequisites open (purge, clean-room rewrite)GATE 1 BENCH · READ 2026-09-07, price decided against one-time comparablesG-RAIL PENDING
RUN PROOF
BLOCKS IN PRODUCTION · Audit scripts on every publication since 2026-06; the article corridor produced 24 published slots on wiserstaff.com by 2026-08-30; the funnel content method ran its third time on 2026-09-06 (54 topics, $0.41 of API); the persona method ran twice (80 and 78 traced verbatims).
Instrument: the publication log of wiserstaff.com, the DataForSEO ledger of 2026-09-05, the persona evidence logs.
Every system on the bench, with every dated run, in one archive with one changelog.
OVERVIEW
Will never sell a partial component as passed. Nothing enters the bench without dated runs; a component whose gate is partial ships marked partial, its zeros visible, and the bench's own gate stays partial until every component passes.
GATE 0 PROOF PARTIAL: components at passed or partial; bundle assembled after The RigGATE 1 BENCH · READ 2026-09-07, price decided against one-time comparablesG-RAIL PENDING
RUN PROOF
COMPONENT GATES · Press Radar passed (runs 2026-08-21 to 28) · By-the-Call SEO Manual passed (calibration 2026-08-26) · Zero-Dependency Audit Scripts passed · AI Citation Meter partial (two dated runs, zeros on record) · fact-check protocol: challenges dated 2026-09-03 to 06, plants verified.
Instrument: each component's own ledger rows; see the component pages.
Tailwind Plus $299 one-time · ShipFast bundle $299 · Makerkit Pro $349 lifetimePRIMARYsource
Team editions in the market: ×1.86 to ×4.4 the solo price, median ×3.3, a ratio we derived from four vendor pages read on 2026-09-03, not a figure any vendor printsSECONDARYsource
The Whole Bench: $499 once. A team edition is not offered yet.
$499decided, final at G-Rail · 12 months of dated updates · no subscription