This is the question I hear the most from business owners I talk to. They know Google matters. They know their competitor shows up and they don’t. They just don’t know what it costs to fix it.

The short answer is: a Google Business Profile is free. Google doesn’t charge you to create one, claim it, or keep it updated. Zero dollars.

But that answer is incomplete, and if I stopped there I’d be doing you a disservice.

Free to set up, but it takes real time to maintain

Creating the profile takes about 20 minutes. You plug in your business name, address, phone number, hours, and a description. Google verifies you own the business, and you’re live.

That’s the easy part. The part most people don’t realize is what happens next.

Google rewards profiles that stay active. That means posting updates, responding to reviews, adding photos, answering questions. Think of it like a garden. Planting it is free. Keeping it alive takes weekly attention.

Here’s the part most business owners miss: according to Whitespark’s 2026 study of 47 local SEO experts, your Google Business Profile accounts for about 32% of what determines whether you show up in the Map Pack. It’s the single biggest factor you can control. And most businesses set it up once and forget it.

I audited a roofer’s profile recently and his last photo was from 2023. His hours were wrong. His business description was one sentence. He had a perfect 5.0 rating, which is genuinely impressive, but Google was burying him behind competitors with worse ratings who simply kept their profiles updated. That’s the real cost of ignoring it.

For most solo operators I work with, maintaining a profile properly is 2-3 hours per week they don’t have. They got into roofing to fix roofs, not to manage a Google profile. And that’s a completely reasonable position.

What does it cost to have someone else manage it?

This is where pricing gets real. Here’s what I’ve seen across the local SEO market:

DIY tools like BrightLocal or Moz Local run $30-60/month. They help you track rankings and manage listings across directories, but they don’t do the work for you. You still need to post, respond to reviews, and optimize your profile.

A freelancer or small agency typically charges $300-800/month for full Google Business Profile management. That includes posting, review responses, photo uploads, and monthly reporting. Quality varies wildly though. Some are great. Some are the reason you’re reading this post.

Larger agencies start at $1,000-2,000/month but usually bundle GBP management with broader SEO, website work, and paid ads. If all you need is GBP help, you’re overpaying.

What I’d actually recommend

If you’re a solo operator doing under $500K in revenue, start with the basics yourself. Claim your profile. Add 10 good photos. Write a real description. Set your hours accurately. Ask your last 5 happy customers for a review.

That alone puts you ahead of roughly 70% of local businesses I’ve audited. Most profiles aren’t bad because the owner did something wrong. They’re bad because nobody touched them after day one. And I get why. You set it up, it doesn’t immediately bring in calls, and now you’re back to running your business. Managing a Google profile feels like busywork until you see the results, and the results take months. It’s a hard thing to justify when you’ve got actual roofs to fix.

If you’re not sure whether your profile is actually working, I wrote a guide on how to check if your Google Business Profile is helping you. And if reviews are the gap, here’s how many reviews you actually need.

If you want to see where your profile stands right now, I built a free audit tool that checks the eight things Google actually cares about. Takes 30 seconds. No email required to see your score.