Frase vs Surfer
By Priyanshi, CMO · Updated 29 Sept 2026
Frase and Surfer are the two best-known content optimisation tools, and both now track AI search. Frase is research-first and runs through to publishing. Surfer is optimisation-first, built around its content score.
The verdict
Frase covers more of the workflow with less commitment: research to publishing, site audits and backlinks, billed monthly with a trial. Surfer has the more developed content score and drafts that link sources as they write, with no trial listed.
Choose Frase if
You want research, drafting, audits and publishing in one tool, at a lower monthly price, with a trial first.
Choose Surfer if
Your writers work to a content score that covers AI search, and you want unlimited documents on the top plan.
How to choose between Frase and Surfer
Both tools help writers produce pages that rank and get cited, but they start from different ends of the job. Frase begins with SERP research and a brief and carries the piece through to publishing. Surfer begins with a draft and a score, and most of its product lives inside the Content Editor. Which end your team struggles with settles most of this decision.
If briefs and publishing are the bottleneck, Frase covers more steps for less. Starter is $49 a month with one seat and ten articles, and the product adds a site audit, backlink gaps with drafted outreach and Content Guard for ranking decay, then publishes to WordPress, Webflow, Sanity, Wix or FraseCMS. The limit is volume: each plan caps articles, at 10, 40 or 100 a month, and extra seats on Professional and Scale cost $29 each.
If your writers already work to a score, Surfer is the stronger editor. Its score reports SEO and AI Search together, Auto-Optimize makes targeted edits, and Surfer AI links to sources, internal and external, while it writes. Documents run from 120 on Discovery to unlimited on Peace of Mind at $359, which suits a team publishing at volume. No trial is listed, and backlink tools and a technical crawl are not described.
Team size changes the arithmetic. Surfer includes seats by plan, five on Pro at $219 and ten on Peace of Mind, while Frase charges $29 for each extra seat on Professional and Scale. Three writers fit on Frase Professional at $129 with no extras; ten writers fit on Surfer’s top plan without paying per head.
Both offer MCP access and monthly billing, so neither forces a yearly commitment. Frase’s trial of 7 days needs no card, which makes it the cheaper experiment. Surfer’s yearly billing brings Discovery down to $49, level with Frase Starter’s monthly price, though that plan does not include AI tracking.
Feature by feature
What each tool does today, on the plans named in each row. Not described means the vendor’s pages do not mention it, which is not the same as the product lacking it.
Surfer tracks more engines on its cheapest tracking plan and links sources as it drafts; Frase adds site audits, backlinks, decay monitoring, a trial and SOC 2 Type II.
| Feature | Frase | Surfer |
|---|---|---|
| Research and writing | ||
| Research that ends in a brief | Briefs and topic clusters | Topical Map |
| Content score | Google and GEO | Unified SEO and AI |
| AI drafts link sources as they write | Not described | Yes |
| Drafts included | 10, 40 or 100 articles | Unlimited on Peace of Mind |
| Tracking | ||
| How often AI answers are re-checked | Daily | Pro up, and $95 plan |
| API or MCP access | MCP and CLI | API and MCP |
| SEO and publishing | ||
| Site audit and backlinks | Yes | Not described |
| Ranking decay monitoring | Content Guard | Not described |
| Buying | ||
| Starting price for AI tracking | $49/mo | $95/mo |
| Free trial | 7 days | None listed |
| Billing | Monthly or yearly | Monthly or yearly |
| Security certification in its own name | SOC 2 Type II | None attributed to Surfer |
What some rows meanThe plan or limit behind a cell, where it needs saying
- Content score. Surfer’s score shows SEO and AI Search side by side, with Auto-Optimize.
- AI drafts link sources as they write. Frase’s agent drafts with your brand in context.
- Drafts included. Surfer’s lower plans include 120 or 360 documents.
- How often AI answers are re-checked. Surfer’s Standard plan refreshes weekly.
- Site audit and backlinks. Surfer’s Content Audit reviews content rather than crawl health.
- Starting price for AI tracking. The cheapest published plan that tracks AI answers: Starter for Frase, AI Search Analytics for Surfer.
- Security certification in its own name. Surfer links a trust centre run by Positive, which lists its ISO 27001 certification against a different Positive product.
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AI answer tracking
Frase puts tracking in every plan, starting at $49 with ChatGPT and Google AI, adding Perplexity on Professional and Claude and Gemini on the $299 Scale plan, all refreshed daily. Surfer’s tracking begins with AI Search Analytics, a tracking-only plan at $95 a month that checks 50 prompts daily across ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews, AI Mode and Perplexity; its $119 Standard plan checks ChatGPT only, weekly.
Frase is cheaper at every team size both can serve, $588 a year for one person and $2,244 for five, and it alone prices the agency of ten across three brands, at $5,328. Surfer comes to $1,140 for one person and $4,308 for five on Peace of Mind, and has no published plan for 300 prompts. The engine grid and cost chart are in the fold below.
Veritas is not part of this comparison, but its prices are published if you want to weigh it too.Start a 7-day trialSee pricing
Engine by engine, and what tracking costs a yearWhich engines each tool covers on its tracking plan, and the yearly cost for four team sizes
Which engines each tool covers
On the cheapest plan that tracks AI answers. Most vendors list more engines than that plan includes, so this is what you get at the price shown, not the brochure maximum.
| Tool and plan | ChatGPT | Claude | Gemini | Perplexity | AI Overviews | AI Mode | Copilot |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Frase Starter | Included | Not on this plan | Not on this plan | Not on this plan | unclear | unclear | Not on this plan |
Surfer AI Search Analytics | Included | Not on this plan | Included | Included | Included | Included | Not on this plan |
A tick is included. Add-on means an extra monthly fee. You choose means the plan lets you pick a limited number of platforms from this list. Unclear means the vendor’s wording does not say.
The plan behind each row, and what changes on higher plans, are on each tool’s review: Frase, Surfer.
What a year costs
The cheapest published plan that fits each team, over twelve months, with seat fees and required add-ons. Where no published plan fits, the note says why instead of guessing.
| Tool | Getting started1 seat, 10 tracked prompts, 1 brand | One marketer, one brand1 seat, 50 tracked prompts, 1 brand | Team of five, one brand5 seats, 100 tracked prompts, 1 brand | Agency, three brands10 seats, 300 tracked prompts, 3 brands |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frase | $588lowest | $588lowest | $2,244lowest | $5,328lowest |
| Surfer | $1,140 | $1,140 | $4,308 | No published fit1 |
- 1No published plan tracks the prompts this setup needs; larger volumes are arranged with the vendor.
Bars share one scale across the whole table, so cost growth shows as well as rank. A figure far above the rest is marked off scale.
The plan, seats and add-ons behind every figure are worked through on each tool’s review: Frase, Surfer.
What would change our verdict
- Surfer publishing a trust centre and a security certification in its own name, rather than one listed against another Positive product.
- Surfer offering a free trial, which would remove the main remaining commercial reason to start with Frase instead.
- Either product adding per-claim citation back to documents you supply, which neither describes today.
Questions people ask
Is Frase or Surfer better?
Frase for speed from research to published page, and for breadth, including site audits, backlinks and CMS publishing. Surfer for the depth of its content score and daily AI tracking. Writers who already know the Surfer score rarely want to give it up.
Which is cheaper?
Frase starts at $49 a month billed monthly, Surfer at $59 monthly or $49 billed yearly, on prices read in September 2026. At the top self-serve tier Frase is $299 and Surfer $359, or $299 billed yearly, with Frase capped at 100 articles and Surfer offering unlimited documents.
Which has better AI visibility tracking?
Both refresh daily: Frase on every plan, Surfer on AI Search Analytics, Pro and above. Surfer covers Google AI Mode; Frase covers up to five engines, with Claude and Gemini on its Scale plan.
Do they connect to AI tools?
Both offer MCP. Frase also has a CLI for Claude and Cursor; Surfer has an API with full Content Editor control.
Each tool’s full review
Every feature, price, pro and con for each tool, each fact linked to the vendor page it came from, is on that tool’s own review page.
- Frase reviewContent optimization and AI visibility
- Surfer reviewContent optimization and AI visibility
How the scores are calculatedThe arithmetic behind each score
| Tool | Weighted score | Criteria scored | Strongest criterion |
|---|---|---|---|
| Frase | 76 | 7 of 8 | Refresh frequency |
| Surfer | 63 | 8 of 8 | Refresh frequency |
Eight rules, each applied to the published facts in the reviews and weighted to a total out of 100. The rules and weights are set out in our methodology.
How we researched this pageMethod and the update log
How we researched this page
Every fact about another tool comes from that vendor’s own pages, or from a press report where we say so, listed under Sources with the date we read them. Where a vendor does not describe something, we say so rather than guess.
The scores and cost figures on this page are calculated, not assigned. Our full methodology sets out every rule, what each criterion is worth, and where our evidence runs out.
Disclosure. Veritas is our product. It appears on this page because it competes in this category, and we have tried to state its limits as plainly as anyone else’s. If anything here is wrong or out of date, write to support@getveritas.io and we will correct it and note the change in the log.
Update log
- 29 September 2026Updated the Surfer figures on this page after re-reading Surfer’s own pages.
- 29 September 2026Corrected: Surfer lists monthly prices beside yearly ones, from $59 a month or $49 billed yearly. Earlier versions said it billed yearly only.
- 25 September 2026Veritas pricing updated: Starter added at the entry, and the plans above it renamed Growth and Business and repriced. Marketing Suite was retired on 25 September 2026; its LinkedIn and scheduled publishing moved into Business, and its Local SEO into Growth and Business. Competitor figures were not re-checked.
- 15 September 2026Updated the Surfer figures on this page after re-reading Surfer’s own pages.
- 15 September 2026Updated the Frase figures on this page after re-reading Frase’s own pages.
- 15 September 2026Corrected: this page said Surfer refreshes AI tracking more often. Frase refreshes daily on every plan, so both refresh daily on their tracking plans.
- 15 September 2026Rebuilt verdict first: a short verdict with calculated figures, an engine-by-engine coverage grid and yearly cost charts, with full reviews, specs and method folded below. The intro was shortened; no facts were removed.
- 12 September 2026Published.
Sources
The pages behind this comparison, most recently read 29 September 2026. Each tool’s review dates its own sources.
- Frase: Homepage · Pricing · Security
- Surfer: AI Instructions · Homepage · Pricing · Release Notes · Trust Center · Whats new at surfer june 2026…
How this page was made. Veritas is our product. Every fact about another tool is checked against that vendor’s own pages, and scores and costs are calculated by our published rules.
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