Frase vs. SurferSEO: Features, Reviews, Pricing, and Best Practices

Frase vs. SurferSEO: Features, Reviews, Pricing, and Best Practices

2 Jun 2025 in Digital Marketing

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Ranking higher on the search engines has never been easier.

Hear me out: yes, you need to make an effort to create and optimize SEO-friendly content. However, AI tools remove the guesswork from creating authoritative content and provide the SERP spots you’re craving.

And speaking of AI tools, in this article, I’ll look at two of the best: Frase and Surfer SEO (plus, an end-to-end SEO alternative). I’ll also tell you how these tools can take your SEO content creation to the next level and how to choose between them!

What do Frase and SurferSEO Help With?

Both Frase and Surfer SEO were built to help you research, write, and optimize content that ranks well on search engines like Google. They do this by providing you with most of the tools and tips you need to craft content based on what’s already ranking out there.

These tools are also meant to elevate your team’s workflow, making sure human intervention is more on the low-touch side – although still absolutely necessary.

That means tools like Frase and Surfer SEO can streamline processes such as:

By streamlining, I mean slashing hours (or even days) of work down to minutes.

Frase vs. Surfer SEO

Here are some use cases, pricing, and a little sneak peek at each solution.

Frase

Frase.io is an AI Writer and an SEO content generation tool.

Content creators have fallen head over heels for it – 200,000 of them, to be exact. SEO and marketing teams have also joined the bandwagon for a reason: this tool helps you breeze through Google-approved content.

Here’s how it helps you achieve that: Frase analyzes the first 20 SERP results for your focus keyword. It follows by providing the following for these results:

Frase essentially dives into every step of the content creation process – research, outlining, writing, and optimizing – so you don’t have to go it alone. Even if you’re a newbie who dreads steep learning curves, you can relax: Frase boasts an above-average 9.5 ease-of-setup rating on G2.

Frase’s many exciting features include:

Pricing

They also have an enterprise-level plan with custom pricing for larger customers.

Summary

Frase stands at the top with 4.8 out of 5 stars on G2. It’s ideal for SERP-driven topic research and content creation.

SurferSEO

Surfer SEO is an on-page SEO optimization tool that allows you to see how your pages stack up against content that currently thrives on the SERPs.

If you’re looking to reach topical authority much faster, Surfer can turn your target keyword into dozens of topic clusters that are relevant to your audience. That way, establishing your expertise won’t require poring over hundreds to thousands of dismissable keywords.

Need some AI writing help? Use the Surfer AI add-on to research, create, and optimize SERP-ready content in 20 minutes.

Surfer tells you all of that (and more), so your team can scale their efforts with content that’s done faster yet boasts a much higher E-E-A-T score.

On a heavier note, some reviewers who are new to SEO have found that the learning curve can be steep. But as one user put it, “ They do a fantastic job taking something as confusing as SEO and making it digestible and actionable.”

Some of Surfer SEO’s cool features include…

Pricing

Like Frase, Surfer also offers an Enterprise plan for larger customers.

Summary

Surfer SEO has collected 4.8 stars on G2. Most of the bad reviews were centered around the price being a bit too salty for the benefits given, especially for smaller businesses and solopreneurs.

How to Choose Between Frase and Surfer SEO

While Surfer SEO and Frase are both content-focused tools, they’re by far not the same thing. Let’s start with Surfer. With Surfer SEO, you can get real-time assistance with outlining and writing content that ranks higher in the SERPs.

However, unless you include the Surfer AI add-on to your workflow, you’ll still be doing a lot of the writing yourself – while it’ll still be much faster than writing without any helpful stats. If you’d like speedy, done-for-you AI writing, Surfer AI is a must.

Frase, on the other hand, is an AI content generation tool with optimization capabilities. It’s packed with features that simplify the drafting and writing process aimed towards high-ranking pieces. SEO optimization is the cherry on top.

Both tools may sound similar and have plenty of overlap. But there are the key differences between them.

Surfer is better for:

Frase is better for:

Again, if you’re counting stars, Frase has 4.9 stars and 293 reviews, while Surfer SEO has 4.8 stars and 468 reviews.

How Do These Tools Work?

Both tools use NLP (Natural Language Processing).

NLP is what allows search engines to understand, interpret, and generate human-like text. As you’ve probably seen by trying different AI tools, it can do pretty amazing things.

If you’re using Surfer AI for your content writing needs, your writing will be powered by the GPT-4 32K model. Frase, however, uses GPT-J, AKA the open-source alternative to OpenAI’s GPT-3.

Frase & Surfer SEO Best Alternative: SEOptimer

Neither of the above options are up your alley? Let’s try SEOptimer.

SEOptimer can help you research and write both long and short-form SEO-optimized content in minutes.

SEOptimer Features

Who is SEOptimer Best for?

SEOptimer is an excellent fit for marketers, bloggers, and agencies.

SEOptimer Pricing

Conclusion

Your decision will mainly depend on a couple of factors:

The best tools are the ones you test yourself.