Directive vs DerivateX: B2B SaaS AI Search Agency (2026)

Directive and DerivateX both tie search to pipeline. One is a 150+ person multi-channel agency, the other a SaaS-only SEO and GEO team. Here is how to tell which one fits.

Written byShivanshi BhatiaCo-founder, DerivateX

Reviewed byAyush SharmaHead of SEO & Content, DerivateX

Published Nov 1, 2026Updated Nov 3, 2026

13 min read

Last updated: November 1, 2026. Directive facts checked on directiveconsulting.com and Clutch. DerivateX facts from derivatex.agency/pricing.

Directive and DerivateX both tie search work to pipeline, but they are built for different buyers. Directive is a 150+ person B2B performance agency that runs content, SEO, GEO, paid media and RevOps for mid-market and enterprise brands. DerivateX is a full-service SEO and GEO agency for B2B SaaS at $5M to $50M ARR, from $5,000 a month with a 90-day pilot. If you need paid and organic run by one large team, start with Directive. If organic and AI search are the channels you want to win, start with DerivateX.

Disclosure: DerivateX publishes this comparison. Every Directive fact below comes from directiveconsulting.com or its Clutch profile, and where Directive does not publish something, this page says “not published” rather than guessing.

Key takeaways

Directive was founded in 2013 and lists 130+ marketing strategists, 700+ brands served and offices from Orange County to London. SEO and GEO sit inside a wider system that also covers paid media, creative, RevOps, PR and commerce.
DerivateX was founded in January 2024 in Bengaluru and sells only SEO, AEO and GEO to B2B SaaS, across Google, AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude. It does not run paid search or paid social.
Directive does not publish a rate card. On Clutch, its most common project size is $10,000 to $49,999 and 90% of reviewed clients are mid-market or enterprise.
DerivateX publishes three tiers: $5,000, $8,000 and $12,000 a month plus an off-site placement budget, so about $6,000 to $15,000 all in. The first two tiers start with a 90-day pilot and no lock-in after it.
Both publish AI search proof: Directive with Case Status and AxisCare, DerivateX with Gumlet, Verito and Truein.

Side-by-side table comparing Directive and DerivateX on focus, founding, size, channels, client mix, pricing and contract — Image: DerivateX. Directive data from directiveconsulting.com and Clutch, checked November 1, 2026.

Directive vs DerivateX: how do they compare at a glance?

The short version: Directive is broad and big, DerivateX is narrow and senior. The table puts the facts each agency publishes side by side, so you can see where the fit splits before you read the detail.

	Directive	DerivateX
What it is	B2B performance marketing agency built around “Customer Generation”	Full-service SEO and GEO agency for B2B SaaS
Founded	2013, by Garrett Mehrguth and Tanner Shaffer	January 2024, Bengaluru, India
Team	130+ marketing strategists (homepage), “150+ person agency” (Our Story)	Four people own each account, with a founder as account lead
Offices	Orange County, Austin, New York City, Mexico City, London, Toronto	Bengaluru. North America is the primary market
Who it serves	Technology, Industrial and Services verticals. Clutch: 55% mid-market, 35% enterprise, 10% small business	B2B SaaS only, $5M to $50M ARR, Series A to C
Channels	Content, SEO, GEO, paid media, performance creative, programmatic, RevOps, PR, influencer, social, marketplace ads	Google SEO, AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude. No paid search or paid social
Method	DiscoverabilityOS: Model, Define, Captivate, Convert, Scale	SEO, AEO and GEO in one engagement, reported against pipeline
Own platform	Stratos, an AI intelligence platform that unifies CRM, paid media, SEO and ops data	Looker Studio dashboards, custom at the top tier
Pricing	No public rate card. Clutch: most common project size $10,000 to $49,999	$5,000, $8,000 or $12,000 a month plus $1,000 to $3,000 off-site budget
Contract	Not published for managed services	90-day pilot, no lock-in after on the first two tiers; 6-month minimum on the top tier
Reviews	4.8 from 56 Clutch reviews	Clutch reviews from Verito’s co-founder, rated 5.0

Sources: Directive homepage, Our Story, Clutch, DerivateX pricing. Checked November 1, 2026.

What is Directive, and who is it built for?

Directive is a B2B performance marketing agency, founded in 2013, that sells a full-funnel system it calls Customer Generation. Its Our Story page describes “a $25M agency” and “a 150+ person agency operating across North America, LATAM, and Europe,” and its homepage lists 130+ marketing strategists, 700+ brands served, $1B+ revenue generated and $2.2M a year spent on marketing R&D. It also calls itself “proudly independent.”

The work is organized into three divisions. Performance covers content, paid media, performance creative, programmatic, RevOps and startups. Commerce covers marketplace ads, product feeds and shopping. Communications covers PR, influencer, paid social and organic social. Delivery runs through DiscoverabilityOS, a five-stage model (Model, Define, Captivate, Convert, Scale), and reporting runs through Stratos, which Directive describes as an AI-powered platform that unifies CRM, paid media, SEO and ops data.

On Clutch, Directive holds a 4.8 rating from 56 reviews, lists 50 to 249 employees and a client mix of 55% mid-market, 35% enterprise and 10% small business. Reviewers praise strategy and results, and a few mention account team changes or wanting more detailed reporting, which is normal for an agency of that size and worth asking about on a call.

How does Directive approach GEO and AI search?

Directive runs GEO inside its content marketing service. The page describes content built to surface in “Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Gemini,” brand signals for LLM citations “across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini,” and Stratos dashboards that track AI visibility. It also says “every content brief now includes an AI Overview analysis that highlights who is getting cited.” In practice, AI search at Directive is one capability inside a multi-channel program, which suits teams that want search, paid and RevOps under one roof.

What is DerivateX, and who is it built for?

DerivateX is a full-service SEO and GEO agency for B2B SaaS. It was founded in January 2024 in Bengaluru, serves software companies at $5M to $50M ARR from Series A to Series C, and works across six surfaces: Google, Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude. Execution is in house: DerivateX writes, builds, fixes and places content rather than handing over a strategy deck.

The scope covers prompt and query mapping, technical SEO (schema, site architecture, crawlability and llms.txt), commercial pages, comparison and alternatives pages, third-party placements and digital PR, entity consistency work, citation tracking on all six surfaces and pipeline attribution. DerivateX does not run paid search, paid social or custom development, and it does not take retainers under $5,000. Its measurement rule is one line: “We measure prompts, not just keywords, and pipeline, not just traffic.”

Four people own every account: a founder as account lead (Apoorv or Shivanshi), a senior strategist, a content lead and a B2B SaaS writer whose name stays on the briefs. How an engagement runs covers the first 90 days week by week.

How do Directive and DerivateX differ on AI search work?

Both agencies sell GEO, so the real difference is where AI search sits in the engagement. At Directive it is part of a content service inside a broader performance system. At DerivateX, Google and AI search are the whole engagement, so every hour of the retainer goes to organic and AI visibility.

AI search question	Directive	DerivateX
Engines named on the site	Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity	Google, AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude
Where GEO sits	Inside the content marketing service	The core of every tier
How AI visibility is tracked	Stratos dashboards	Citation tracking on all six surfaces; competitor displacement tracking from the $8,000 tier
Off-site work	Digital PR and link building in the content service	2 to 8 off-site placements a month, funded by a separate placement budget
Technical implementation	Not published	Client implements at $5,000; DerivateX implements in the CMS from $8,000
Attribution	Stratos unifies CRM, paid, SEO and ops data	Sessions at $5,000, session to demo at $8,000, demo to closed revenue at $12,000

Sources: Directive content marketing and Stratos; DerivateX pricing. Checked November 1, 2026.

How much do Directive and DerivateX cost?

DerivateX publishes its prices and Directive does not, so the honest comparison is a published rate card against public signals. DerivateX costs about $6,000 to $15,000 a month all in, depending on tier. Directive scopes each engagement, and its Clutch profile shows a most common project size of $10,000 to $49,999 across 41 reviews.

DerivateX tier	Retainer	Off-site budget	Effective monthly	Commitment
Rank & Get Found	$5,000	$1,000 to $1,200	$6,000 to $6,200	90-day pilot, no lock-in after
Own Your Category	$8,000	$1,500 to $2,000	$9,500 to $10,000	90-day pilot, no lock-in after
Market Leader	$12,000	$2,000 to $3,000	$14,000 to $15,000	6-month minimum
Enterprise	Scoped	Scoped	Scoped	Custom

Source: DerivateX pricing. A two-week $3,500 Diagnostic is also available and is credited if you sign within 30 days.

For Directive, three public signals help you budget. Its startup package page asks startups to “see if they qualify” and does not show a price in the page body, though the page’s meta description quotes $6,500 a month. Its pricing page sells a $399 self-serve Customer Generation course, not agency services. And Directive’s own guide to enterprise SEO cost describes market tiers of $7,000 to $15,000, $15,000 to $30,000 and $30,000 to $60,000+ a month with 6 to 12 month minimums for retainers. That guide describes the market, not Directive’s own rate card, so ask for a written quote.

Which one is cheaper for a $5M to $50M ARR SaaS company?

On published numbers, DerivateX has the lower and clearer entry point: $5,000 a month plus a placement budget, with a 90-day pilot. Directive’s typical Clutch project size starts at $10,000, and its value grows as you add channels. If you plan to buy paid media and SEO from one vendor anyway, compare Directive’s total quote against DerivateX plus a separate paid media agency.

What proof does each agency publish?

Both agencies publish AI search results with named clients, which is rarer than it sounds. The table lists the headline numbers each one shows on its own site.

Agency	Client	Published result
Directive	Case Status	20% lift in bookings and a 135% quarter-over-quarter increase in “book a demo” conversions, with LLM referrals named as a new channel
Directive	AxisCare	70% traffic growth, 200% demo growth and net-new SQLs from AI-driven search
Directive	Unnamed client	Page 1 rankings up 190%, a 56% lift in AI search visibility and $2.87M in non-branded revenue
DerivateX	Gumlet	Close to 20% of inbound revenue traced to AI discovery; first ChatGPT-referred demo about 12 weeks after kickoff
DerivateX	Verito	Average Google position 47.4 to 9.9 and tracked #1 keywords from 5 to 24 in a 10-month SEO and GEO engagement
DerivateX	Truein	Google AI Overview answers naming Truein in the GCC rose from about 17% to about 32% in one month; AI-referred visitors booked demos at 3.0x to 7.2x the organic rate

Sources: Directive success stories and DerivateX case studies, checked November 1, 2026.

Directive’s Success Stories page also says more than 250 B2B companies have used Customer Generation. DerivateX’s proof is smaller in count and concentrated in B2B SaaS, which is the point: every case study matches the buyer this page is written for.

Directive vs DerivateX: pros and cons

Directive

Pros

One team for SEO, GEO, paid media, creative, RevOps and PR, so channel trade-offs happen inside one plan.
Scale: 130+ strategists, six offices and 700+ brands served.
Stratos ties CRM, paid and SEO data together for attribution across channels.
Published AI search case studies with named clients.

Cons

No public rate card for managed services, so budgeting starts with a sales call.
Clutch client mix leans mid-market and enterprise, so smaller SaaS teams compete for attention with larger accounts.
GEO is one part of a content service rather than the whole engagement.

DerivateX

Pros

B2B SaaS only, so writers and strategists already know the buyer.
Published pricing, including the off-site budget, and a 90-day pilot with no lock-in after on the first two tiers.
A founder leads every account, and four named people own it from kickoff.
Covers six surfaces, including Claude, with attribution through to closed revenue at the top tier.

Cons

No paid search, paid social or custom development, so paid needs a second vendor.
Younger agency (founded January 2024) with a smaller client list.
At the $5,000 tier your team implements technical fixes; DerivateX implements in the CMS from $8,000.

Which should you choose, Directive or DerivateX?

Choose on channel mix first, then stage, then budget. If paid media is your main growth lever, Directive is the better buy. If organic and AI search are the lever and you are a $5M to $50M ARR SaaS company, DerivateX is the better fit.

Fit check chart showing when to start with Directive and when to start with DerivateX — Image: DerivateX. Directive data from directiveconsulting.com and Clutch, checked November 1, 2026.

Choose Directive if

You want paid search, paid social, creative and SEO run by one team under one plan.
You are a mid-market or enterprise company with a multi-channel budget.
You need PR, influencer or marketplace and shopping ads in the same contract.
You want a large bench and offices across North America, LATAM and Europe.

Choose DerivateX if

You are a B2B SaaS company between $5M and $50M ARR, Series A to C.
Google and AI search are the channels you want to win, and you already handle paid elsewhere.
You want to see the price before the call and test the work with a 90-day pilot.
You want a founder on every call and attribution from AI-sourced sessions to demos and revenue.

What should you ask either agency before you sign?

Which AI engines do you track for us, and how often?
Who implements technical fixes in our CMS, and is that in the quoted price?
What is the all-in monthly cost, including placements or media?
What are the minimum term and exit terms, in writing?
Who leads the account day to day, and will that person change?

If neither agency fits the part of Directive you want to replace, see the 7 best Directive Consulting alternatives for B2B SaaS, which covers multi-channel, paid-only and SEO-focused options with their published prices.

Directive vs DerivateX FAQs

Is Directive or DerivateX better for B2B SaaS?

It depends on the channel mix. Directive suits mid-market and enterprise teams that want paid media, content, SEO and GEO run by one 150+ person agency. DerivateX suits B2B SaaS at $5M to $50M ARR that want Google and AI search run as one program from $5,000 a month, with a 90-day pilot.

How much does Directive Consulting cost?

Directive does not publish a rate card for managed services. Its Clutch profile shows a most common project size of $10,000 to $49,999, and its startup package page quotes $6,500 a month in its meta description. Directive sells a $399 self-serve course separately. Ask for a written quote that includes media and minimum terms.

Does Directive do GEO?

Yes. Directive runs GEO inside its content marketing service, with content built for Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, and Stratos dashboards that track AI visibility. It publishes AI search case studies with Case Status and AxisCare, including a 135% quarter-over-quarter increase in book-a-demo conversions for Case Status.

Does DerivateX run paid ads like Directive?

No. DerivateX does not run paid search, paid social or custom development. It sells SEO, AEO and GEO for B2B SaaS across Google, AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude, so teams that also need paid media usually pair DerivateX with a separate paid agency or an in-house paid team.

Is this comparison biased, since DerivateX wrote it?

DerivateX publishes this page, so read it with that in mind. Every Directive fact comes from directiveconsulting.com or Clutch, checked on November 1, 2026, and the page recommends Directive for paid-led, multi-channel and enterprise buyers. Where Directive does not publish something, the page says so rather than estimating it.

The bottom line

Directive and DerivateX are not really rivals for the same buyer. Directive is a large, multi-channel performance agency with GEO inside a wider system, and it is the right first call for mid-market and enterprise teams that want paid and organic in one contract. DerivateX is the right first call for $5M to $50M ARR B2B SaaS teams that want Google and AI search run by a senior, SaaS-only team with published pricing.

Want to see whether DerivateX fits? Book a discovery call with a founder, or start with a free AI visibility audit to see which buyer prompts name your competitors instead of you.

Directive vs DerivateX: Which AI Search Agency Fits B2B SaaS in 2026?