I checked the websites of 70 managed IT providers in nine US metros to see how many publish what they charge. Then I asked ChatGPT what co-managed IT costs. The gap between the two is the story.
ChatGPT answered every pricing question I asked with a dollar figure. For co-managed IT it said about $85 per user per month. The providers themselves were far quieter. Of 40 co-managed IT service pages I found, one states its own co-managed price.
So buyers get a number either way. The question is whose number it is.
Data checked October 8, 2026.
Key Findings
- 13 of 70 US managed IT providers (19%) publish their own prices. 32 (46%) say nothing about price anywhere on their site.
- 1 of 40 co-managed IT service pages states the provider’s own co-managed price.
- The two providers that publish per-user co-managed ranges put co-managed IT between $50 and $150 per user per month. One more starts co-managed agreements at $3,500 a month.
- ChatGPT says co-managed IT costs about $85 per user per month, citing a directory survey in four of five answers.
- All five providers that ChatGPT or Google’s AI Overviews cited on pricing publish specific price figures.
- All eight managed IT research and pricing searches I tracked fell in US Google volume over the past year, by 13% to 68%.
The Setup
On October 8, 2026, I looked at 70 US managed IT providers across Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia and Tampa. Most of them sell co-managed IT, where the provider works alongside a company’s in-house IT team instead of replacing it.
For each provider I read the homepage, the XML sitemaps, and every page with pricing, cost, plans or calculator in its address. A few pricing pages only show prices after JavaScript runs, so I re-read those in a browser. Then I sorted each provider into one of four groups:
- Publishes its own prices: tiers, starting prices, or a calculator that shows real numbers or a minimum.
- Publishes market ranges only: a cost guide that quotes what “most businesses pay,” with nothing on what this provider charges.
- Has pricing content with no numbers: a pricing page, calculator or guide that ends in “contact us.”
- Has no pricing content at all.
I also asked ChatGPT (with web search on) five pricing questions and checked Google for the same five.
Three honest notes before the numbers. This is not a random sample: I picked these providers while researching the co-managed IT market, so they skew toward established shops with real websites, which should push transparency up if anything. Two more providers blocked automated access and are left out, which is why the count is 70 and not 72. And AI answers change between runs, so everything below is what ChatGPT said on October 8.
How Many MSPs Publish Their Prices?
Fewer than one in five. Of 70 US managed IT providers, 13 (19%) publish their own prices and 32 (46%) say nothing about price anywhere on their site.
| What the provider publishes | Providers | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Its own prices | 13 | 19% |
| Market ranges only, not its own price | 20 | 29% |
| A pricing page or guide with no numbers | 5 | 7% |
| No pricing content at all | 32 | 46% |
The middle group is the interesting one. Twenty providers wrote a cost guide that answers the question in general terms, then stopped one step short of saying what they charge.
How Many Co-Managed IT Pages Show a Price?
One in 40. KPInterface in Philadelphia is the only provider in the sample whose co-managed IT page states its own co-managed price, starting at $3,500 a month.
Co-managed IT is the model where pricing is hardest to guess. The provider takes some of the work and the internal team keeps the rest, so every deal is scoped differently. That is exactly why buyers want a reference point.
Forty providers have a co-managed IT service page. Besides KPInterface’s, 39 pages don’t state a price. Of those 39, nineteen send the reader to “get a quote” or “book a consultation” instead, and twenty show neither a price nor a quote prompt.
Across all 70 websites, only four providers give any co-managed price figure anywhere. Besides KPInterface, Sagiss in Dallas quotes $50 to $100 per user, Sequentur in Tampa quotes $60 to $150 per user, and Be Structured in Los Angeles explains co-managed as a scoped-down version of its $125 to $300 fully managed rate.
How Much Do Managed IT Services Cost in 2026?
Published entry prices run from $45 to $120 per user per month, with a median of $99.50 across six per-user price lists. Top tiers reach $235 to $250 per user.
The 13 providers that publish prices give a decent read on the market. Entry prices on per-user plans run from $45 to $120 per user per month, and the median across the six per-user publishers is $99.50. Top tiers reach $235 to $250. Flat-fee plans start between $750 and $3,500 a month, and the per-device pricing I found sits around $50 per PC and $199 per server.
The market ranges cluster hard. Eight different providers quote the same “$100 to $250 per user per month,” almost word for word. That helps buyers. It also means none of those eight stands out when an AI engine goes looking for a source.
What Does ChatGPT Say Co-Managed IT Costs?
ChatGPT says co-managed IT costs about $85 per user per month on average, with a typical range of $55 to $120. It cited a directory survey of 412 MSPs and buyers for that figure.
I asked ChatGPT five questions: how much co-managed IT costs, co-managed IT pricing, co-managed IT cost per user, managed IT pricing per user, and how much managed IT services cost.
It gave dollar figures in all five answers. It put Dallas-Fort Worth at $50 to $100 per user, citing Sagiss, and called $60 to $130 per user a fair Texas benchmark, citing Uprite.
Google showed an AI Overview on all five queries too. For the managed IT cost questions, DataforSEO’s AI Overview archive has the full answers, last captured in September 2026. “How much do managed IT services cost,” “managed IT services cost” and “managed IT services costs” all open with the same line: $100 to $250 per user per month. Three providers from my sample are among the cited sources: AllSafe IT, Velo IT Group and ITAdOn. All three publish pricing guides with real ranges.
So where did the $85 come from? Mostly from one page. ChatGPT cited a 2026 “MSP Pricing Benchmark” from bestitmsps.com, a directory site, in four of the five answers. The report says it surveyed 412 MSPs and buyers in May 2026. It is short and publishes little methodology beyond the sample size.
The $85 itself looks reasonable. It sits inside the ranges the providers publish. What struck me is how little it took: one short report on a directory site became ChatGPT’s default answer to the first question a co-managed IT buyer asks.
That fits what I found in where AI gets its recommendations: most of what AI cites is third-party, not brand-owned. When providers stay silent, a directory speaks for them.
Which MSPs Do AI Engines Cite on Pricing?
Five of the 70. ChatGPT cited Uprite Services and Sagiss, and Google’s AI Overviews cited AllSafe IT, Velo IT Group and ITAdOn. All five publish specific price figures.
- Uprite Services (Houston) was cited three times in one answer. It publishes a Texas MSP pricing index, a co-managed cost page, and its own plan prices, and ChatGPT quoted Uprite’s co-managed rate as an example.
- Sagiss (Dallas) was cited for its 2026 DFW pricing post, which gives separate fully managed and co-managed ranges.
- AllSafe IT (Los Angeles), Velo IT Group (Dallas) and ITAdOn (Philadelphia) were cited in Google’s AI Overviews on managed IT cost. Each has a 2026 pricing guide with dollar ranges.
All five publish specific price figures, and the two ChatGPT picked publish co-managed figures. Five providers is a small number, so I wouldn’t call it proof. It is the pattern I’d expect, though: AI engines quote pages that contain the number the user asked for.
Are Buyers Still Searching Google for Managed IT Pricing?
Less than they were. All eight managed IT research and pricing searches I tracked fell over the past year, by 13% to 68% in US Google search volume.
“Co-managed IT” gets about 1,900 Google searches a month in the US, and Google estimates a top-of-page ad costs $15 to $52 a click. That is a lot to pay for one visit, and it hints at what a co-managed client is worth. “Co-managed IT pricing” and “co-managed IT cost,” meanwhile, get too few searches for Google to report.
The research searches around managed IT are shrinking. I compared US Google search volume for the last 12 months (September 2025 to August 2026) with the 12 months before, using DataforSEO’s historical Google Ads data:
| Search | Change, last 12 months vs prior 12 |
|---|---|
| managed services vs break fix | -68% |
| help desk outsourcing | -51% |
| what is an msp | -46% |
| it outsourcing | -41% |
| what is managed it services | -40% |
| managed it services pricing | -36% |
| what is a managed service provider | -18% |
| how much do managed it services cost | -13% |
“Co-managed IT” itself held roughly flat once you remove a one-month spike in January 2026. Google Ads volumes are rounded into buckets, so treat the exact percentages as directional. The direction is clear, though: eight of eight research and pricing searches went down. My read is that a growing share of buyers now put these questions to an AI assistant, and the assistant answers with whatever it can find.
What I Would Do as a Co-Managed IT Provider
Skip the rate card if you want. Give the AI engines, and the buyer, a real number with scope.
- Publish a co-managed price range with scope. Something like: “Co-managed IT starts at $X per user per month and covers monitoring, patching, security and Tier 2 and 3 escalation. Your internal team keeps day-to-day support.” A range with clear inclusions is citable. “Contact us” is not.
- Put it on the co-managed page itself. Thirty-nine of the 40 co-managed pages I checked don’t state the provider’s own price, so this alone sets you apart.
- Say what moves the price: user count, compliance needs, after-hours coverage and onsite work.
- Make your own data the source. Uprite and Sagiss get cited because they published local pricing content with real figures. Anonymized, dated client data beats a generic range that eight competitors already use.
- Date it and refresh it yearly. “2026 pricing” in the title and a visible update date tell both buyers and AI engines the number is current.
Method and Limits
The sample is 72 managed IT providers in nine US metros, most of them selling co-managed IT. Two blocked automated access, leaving 70.
I crawled on October 8, 2026: homepages, XML sitemaps and linked pages. Every page with pricing, cost, plans or calculator in the URL was read for dollar figures, and JavaScript pricing pages were re-read in a browser. A second pass read every pricing or cost page in each sitemap for providers that first showed no prices; it moved nine providers into the market-ranges group.
The AI answers come from ChatGPT with web search and Google live results for five pricing questions on October 8, collected through DataforSEO. Google loads AI Overview text separately on these queries, so the live check only confirms an Overview appeared; the answer text and sources come from DataforSEO’s AI Overview archive (captures from September 2026). The archive has no Overviews for the co-managed pricing questions, which get too few searches to track. Search volumes are Google Ads US monthly averages for the past 12 months.
Limits: this is not a random sample. Prices behind forms, or ones that only appear after a quote request, are not counted. Every price is what the provider published on the day I checked.
FAQ
How much does co-managed IT cost in 2026? Among the providers I checked that publish co-managed figures, ranges run from about $50 to $150 per user per month, and one Philadelphia provider starts co-managed agreements at $3,500 a month. ChatGPT’s default answer is about $85 per user per month, based on a directory survey.
Why don’t most MSPs publish their prices? Every co-managed deal is scoped differently, and many providers prefer to price after a discovery call. The trade-off is that AI engines then quote someone else’s numbers when buyers ask.
Does publishing pricing help AI visibility? In this check, all five providers that ChatGPT or Google’s AI Overviews cited on pricing questions publish specific price figures. That is a small sample, but it fits the broader pattern of AI engines citing pages that contain the exact answer.
