Frase

Frase launched in 2018 with a clear thesis: AI-assisted content should start with what's already ranking, not with a blank page. The platform analyzes the top-ranking pages for any target keyword, extracts the topics, questions, and structural patterns they share, and builds a content brief that reflects what the SERP actually rewards. Writers use that brief inside Frase's integrated document editor, where the research stays visible as they write. Frase's AI writing tools generate and expand content within the same environment. The result is a tighter loop between SEO research and content production than tools that treat those two activities as separate workflows. Solo plan starts at $15 per month for one user and four documents per month. Basic is $45 per month for one user with 30 documents. Team is $115 per month for three users with unlimited documents. The platform's core audience is SEO professionals, content strategists, and agencies where content brief quality directly affects organic traffic outcomes.

Frase launched in 2018 with an idea that was straightforward but had significant implications for how content marketers approached SEO: if you want to rank for a keyword, start by understanding what's already ranking, then build your content around that analysis. The brief should come from the SERP, not from intuition. The topics you cover should reflect what the top-ranking pages actually share, not what you assume readers want. This was a departure from the AI writing tools of the time, which generated content from prompts without any connection to search competitive data. Frase's bet was that the brief is where SEO-driven content wins or loses, and most tools were ignoring it.

Quick verdict

Frase is the most focused SERP-analysis-to-brief tool available. Its content brief workflow is genuinely among the best in the SEO content category. The AI writing features are functional but secondary to the research capabilities. Teams that need depth in content research and brief quality will find Frase's approach more useful than tools that jump straight to article generation.

What Frase actually does

Frase was founded in Boston in 2018, earlier than most AI writing platforms, and its maturity shows in the depth of its SERP analysis features. While the AI writing category was still forming around GPT-3 in 2021, Frase had already built a research-first workflow that treated content creation as a two-phase process: understand the competitive landscape, then write to beat it.

The core workflow is simple in concept: you enter a target keyword, Frase pulls the top-ranking pages for that keyword, and it analyzes what those pages have in common. What topics do they cover? What questions do they answer? What heading structures do they use? How long are they? What related terms appear frequently? Frase organizes this analysis into a content brief that gives a writer a clear picture of what the article needs to do to compete.

That brief isn't just a list of suggestions. It's a structured document that becomes the working environment for the article itself. The Frase editor keeps the research visible as you write, so you're not switching between tabs or copying information from a separate brief document into your writing environment. The content score updates as you draft, showing you in real time how well your article covers the topics that top-ranking competitors cover.

This workflow is the reason Frase has found a particularly strong audience among SEO professionals and content agencies rather than general-purpose content marketers. The people who get the most value from Frase are people who care deeply about organic search performance and treat content brief quality as a fundamental part of the editorial process, not a nice-to-have that gets skipped when deadlines tighten.

The research workflow in detail

SERP analysis and brief generation

When you enter a keyword into Frase and trigger a brief, the platform fetches the top-ranking pages and processes their content. The analysis covers the topics those pages address, the questions they answer, the heading structures they use, and the statistical patterns across the set. You can configure how many results Frase analyzes and which competitor pages to include or exclude.

The output is a structured brief that shows you the topics that appear most frequently across top-ranking content, questions from People Also Ask and related searches that your article should address, the most common heading patterns, and a list of frequently used terms and phrases. This isn't keyword stuffing guidance. It's a map of what the SERP is rewarding for that query, which is different from what you might guess based on intuition about your audience.

For content strategists, the brief provides decision-making structure that would otherwise require manual SERP analysis. Instead of opening the top ten results, reading through them, and manually synthesizing what they cover, Frase does that work programmatically and presents the results in a form you can act on directly. The time savings are significant for teams that produce briefs regularly.

For writers, the brief changes the starting point from a blank page with a keyword to a structured research document that tells you what you're writing, why specific topics matter, and how to structure the argument. That starting point produces better first drafts in less time than starting from scratch.

Outline builder

Frase includes an outline builder that lets you construct your article structure from the SERP-derived topic data. You can drag recommended topics into your outline, reorder sections, add your own original headings, and build the structure of the article before writing any body content.

The outline builder connects the research phase to the writing phase in a concrete way. The brief doesn't just tell you what topics exist in the SERP; it lets you arrange those topics into the structure of your article before you start drafting. For content agencies where multiple writers work from the same brief, a shared outline in Frase ensures consistency in how the article is approached before any individual writer starts adding their own structure.

Content scoring

As you write inside the Frase editor, the content score updates to show how well your draft covers the topics from the top-ranking pages. The score isn't a single number; it breaks down by topic cluster, showing you which areas you've covered adequately and which still have gaps relative to the SERP competition.

This real-time scoring is useful for writers who want to check their coverage before submitting a draft for review, and for editors who want to see at a glance where a draft needs expansion before sending it back for revisions. The scoring doesn't tell you that more words or more keyword density will improve your ranking. It tells you that certain topics the SERP rewards are absent or underrepresented in your current draft.

The scoring mechanism is similar to what Surfer SEO provides in its Content Editor, though Surfer's implementation includes more granular term-frequency guidance. Frase's scoring is slightly higher-level, focused on topical coverage rather than specific term counts. Both approaches serve the same underlying goal: ensuring that your article doesn't miss the topics that top-ranking competitors address.

AI writing tools

Frase's AI writing features allow you to generate content from the brief, expand on outline items, write introductions, rewrite sections, and produce body paragraphs from short descriptions. These tools are integrated into the document editor, so you can invoke them while keeping the research visible.

The writing quality is functional. Frase's AI writer produces coherent paragraphs on common topics and follows brief structures reasonably well. But compared to dedicated AI writing platforms like Writesonic or Jasper, the generation quality is less refined. Frase's AI writing is best used as a way to get past blank-page friction when drafting within the brief, not as a replacement for a capable writing tool.

Teams that use Frase primarily for its research and brief workflow and then write in a separate tool, or use a more capable AI writer to generate the draft, are using Frase in its strongest mode. Teams that expect Frase's AI writing to produce publication-ready copy without a dedicated writing tool will find the output requires more editing than comparable platforms.

Content optimization for existing pages

Frase can analyze existing published content against the current SERP competition for its target keyword. This is the optimization workflow for pages that are already live but underperforming. You provide the URL, Frase fetches the page, and it runs the same SERP analysis against the page's current content, showing you where it lags behind top-ranking competitors.

For content teams managing large archives of published pages, this capability makes Frase useful for content audits, not just new article creation. Identifying which existing pages have the most topical coverage gaps relative to current competitors is a more data-informed way to prioritize content updates than relying on rankings data alone. SEO tools like Clearscope and Surfer SEO offer similar optimization workflows, but Frase's integration of optimization with brief generation means you can update an existing page using the same research environment where you'd build a new brief.

Pricing

Solo costs $15 per month, or $144 per year ($12 per month billed annually). It supports one user and allows four document queries per month. The four-document limit is the primary constraint at this tier, and it's restrictive for any active content program. Solo is suitable for individual SEO professionals who need a brief tool for occasional use or who are evaluating the platform before committing to a higher tier.

Basic costs $45 per month, or $432 per year ($36 per month billed annually). It supports one user with 30 document queries per month, team sharing features, and unlimited AI writing within those documents. For solo content marketers or freelancers with active content programs, Basic is the practical working tier.

Team costs $115 per month, or $1,044 per year ($87 per month billed annually). It supports three users, unlimited document queries, team workspace features, and shared briefs and documents. For small SEO teams and content agencies, Team is the tier where the platform's collaborative value becomes available. At $115 per month for three users, the per-user cost is competitive for a tool that serves as the primary research environment for the team.

Enterprise is custom pricing and includes additional users, dedicated support, and API access for custom integrations. The Enterprise tier is aimed at large agencies and in-house SEO teams with substantial content operation scale.

There is no free tier. Frase's closest equivalent is a five-day trial available at signup. For teams evaluating between Frase and Clearscope, both lack free tiers and both target a professional SEO audience, so budget for a trial month on the tier that matches your actual usage.

Where Frase wins and where it doesn't

Frase wins for SEO professionals and content strategists whose primary workflow is SERP research, brief creation, and content scoring. The brief quality is among the best in the category, the research-to-writing environment is more integrated than most competitors, and the Team plan pricing is reasonable for small SEO teams.

It wins for content agencies that need to produce structured briefs at volume for multiple clients or keyword targets. The shared workspace and brief templates reduce the per-brief setup time for teams doing this repeatedly.

It wins for teams that have published content archives and want a systematic way to identify and prioritize optimization opportunities using current SERP data.

It doesn't win for teams whose primary need is the most capable AI article generation. Writesonic, Jasper, and Claude all produce better AI-written drafts. Frase's AI writing is adequate for getting started, not for producing polished output.

It doesn't win for teams that want real-time term-frequency scoring while they write. Surfer SEO provides more granular guidance on specific term usage and paragraph-level optimization. Frase's content scoring is higher-level, focused on topical coverage rather than specific term frequencies.

It doesn't win for general marketing content that isn't SEO-driven. Ads, social posts, email sequences, and brand content don't benefit from SERP analysis. For those content types, the brief-building workflow that makes Frase valuable in SEO doesn't apply.

Who Frase is built for

The clearest fit is SEO managers and content strategists at companies or agencies where content brief quality is treated as a strategic function, not a formality. If your team produces content briefs that writers follow closely, and if those briefs are currently built from manual SERP research, Frase makes that process faster, more consistent, and more data-informed.

Content agencies that produce SEO content for multiple clients are a strong secondary fit. The Team plan workspace lets multiple strategists build and share briefs, and the SERP analysis scales across clients without each brief requiring individual manual research.

Individual SEO professionals who produce briefs for their own content or for clients will find the Basic plan at $45 per month competitive for the research depth it provides. For a professional whose content brief quality directly affects client outcomes and traffic performance, $45 per month is a justifiable operational cost.

The platform is a harder sell for content generalists who want an all-in-one AI writing tool. The research depth that makes Frase excellent for SEO professionals is unnecessary overhead for content that isn't trying to rank in search. For those use cases, Writesonic or HyperWrite are better matches.

Frase vs the competition

vs Surfer SEO: Surfer SEO and Frase address different moments in the SEO content workflow. Frase is stronger before writing begins: the SERP analysis, brief generation, and outline building are more developed. Surfer is stronger while writing: the real-time Content Editor with specific NLP term targets gives writers more immediate feedback on optimization during drafting. Many serious SEO teams use Frase to build the brief and Surfer to score the draft. If you're choosing one, choose based on which phase of the workflow matters more for your team. Frase for research and strategy. Surfer for real-time optimization.

vs Writesonic: Writesonic combines AI article generation with basic keyword research in a single workflow. Frase combines SERP-based brief generation with functional AI writing in a single environment. Writesonic's article generation is more capable; Frase's research depth is greater. For content teams whose primary bottleneck is brief quality and competitive research, Frase. For teams whose primary bottleneck is article generation speed with basic SEO guidance, Writesonic.

vs Clearscope: Clearscope is a competing SEO content optimization tool that focuses on NLP-based term frequency optimization within its editor. It's generally considered stronger than Frase on the optimization side and weaker on the brief-generation side. Clearscope pricing is higher, starting at $170 per month versus Frase's $45 for Basic. For teams where budget is a constraint, Frase's depth at its price point is difficult to beat. For teams with budget flexibility that prioritize optimization precision over brief depth, Clearscope is worth comparing.

vs Perplexity: Perplexity is an AI research tool, not an SEO content tool. For teams that want to research a topic before writing, Perplexity provides web-sourced answers and citations. Frase provides SERP-competitor analysis and brief generation. These are different research approaches serving different goals. Frase tells you what's ranking and what those pages share. Perplexity tells you what sources say about a topic. Some content teams use both: Perplexity for topic research and understanding, Frase for competitive brief generation.

Getting started

The fastest path to value in Frase is running a brief on a keyword you're actively trying to rank for, not a test keyword. Real keywords produce real competitive data that tells you something useful. Test keywords produce briefs you'll ignore.

After the brief generates, spend time in the topic analysis before touching the outline builder. Understanding which topics appear across the top ten results, and which appear only in the top three, shapes the article structure more than any keyword density guideline will. The topics that appear in the top three but not in positions four through ten are where your article can gain competitive advantage by covering ground that most competitors skip.

Use the content score as a diagnostic after you have a draft, not as a target to game during writing. Write first. Score the draft. Then use the topic gaps the score identifies to decide what to expand. Optimizing to the score while writing tends to produce forced, checklist-driven content rather than well-structured articles that happen to cover the necessary topics naturally.

For teams moving from manual SERP research to Frase, run a parallel test for the first month: build one brief the old way and one brief in Frase for comparable topics, then compare the quality of the resulting articles. The comparison will tell you more concretely how much the research depth affects your output.

The bottom line

Frase is the most mature SERP-to-brief tool in the SEO content category. Its research workflow, brief generation, and content scoring are well-built for the audience they're designed for: SEO professionals and content strategists who treat brief quality as a fundamental part of content production, not an optional step.

The AI writing features are functional but not exceptional. The lack of a free tier limits evaluation to trial periods. The Solo plan's four-document limit makes it impractical as a working tier for active content programs, which means most working users need the Basic plan at $45 per month or higher.

For SEO teams that need better briefs, Frase is one of the clearest upgrades available in the category. For teams that primarily need AI writing with basic SEO guidance, Writesonic covers more of that workflow at a lower Individual price. For teams that want real-time content scoring alongside AI writing, Surfer SEO's Content Editor is the more immediate tool. Many serious content operations use Frase and Surfer together, treating them as complementary tools for different phases of the same workflow.

Key features

• SERP-based content briefs that analyze top-ranking pages for any keyword
• AI document editor for writing and editing within the research environment
• Topic research that surfaces the questions, headers, and subtopics from top-ranking content
• Content score for measuring how well your draft covers the topics in competing pages
• Outline builder for structuring articles from SERP-derived topic clusters
• AI writing tools for generating sections, expanding paragraphs, and rewriting content
• Content optimization for improving existing published pages against current SERP competition
• Team workspace for sharing briefs and documents across SEO and content teams

Pros and cons

Who is Frase for?

• SEO teams that need structured content briefs built from SERP data before writing begins
• Content strategists who want to understand what topics, questions, and subtopics top-ranking pages cover
• Content agencies managing multiple client briefs and needing a shared research environment
• SEO managers who want to audit and improve existing pages against current competitor content

Alternatives to Frase

If Frase isn't quite the right fit, the closest alternatives are surfer-ai , writesonic , and jasper-ai . See our full Frase alternatives page for side-by-side comparisons.