Frase alternatives for agencies (2026)
The short answer: Frase is the most complete tool in this category: briefs, drafts, self-serve publishing, AI visibility tracking, decay alerts, its own CMS, and an MCP server on every plan. Most alternatives replace one part of it. For a content score, Surfer or Clearscope. For briefs priced per piece, Content Harmony. For keyword clustering, Keyword Insights. For agencies who want a named person behind every publish and the option to self-host, AltoRank. Eight tools below, each with its price and the job it wins.
By Mike Cecconello · Published September 28, 2026 · Every price below carries the date and source it was read from
| Tool | Best for | Starting price | Free tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| AltoRank | Agencies who want every publish attributed to a person, and the option to self-host | From €0 self-hosted; €69/mo managed | Yes, all of it |
| Frase | The all-rounder: drafts, self-serve publishing, AI visibility, its own CMS | From $39/mo billed yearly | 7-day trial, no card |
| Surfer | Scoring drafts against the SERP, with AI visibility tracking | From €49/mo billed yearly | No |
| Clearscope | Content grading for writer-led teams, unlimited users | From $129/mo | 14-day trial |
| Content Harmony | Briefs and grading priced per piece of content, unlimited users | $99/mo; ~$89 billed yearly | $10 trial, 10 workflows |
| Keyword Insights | Keyword clustering first, briefs and AI drafts on credits | From $58/mo | Unconfirmed |
| MarketMuse | Topic modelling and planning across a large site | Paid tiers by demo only | Free plan, 10 queries/mo |
| Scalenut | High article volume per dollar | From $59/mo billed monthly | Unconfirmed |
| NeuronWriter | The lower-cost editor Reddit recommends for Frase users | Not shown to a plain read | Unconfirmed |
Is there anything better than Frase?
As a single tool that does the whole loop, not clearly. Frase drafts, scores for SEO and GEO, publishes to four CMSs or its own, tracks AI visibility across up to five engines, watches published pages for decay, and runs from Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or a terminal through its MCP server and CLI. At $39/mo to start, that is a lot.
The reasons to look elsewhere are narrower. A specialist beats it at one job: Surfer and Clearscope at the content score, MarketMuse at planning across a big site, Keyword Insights at clustering. Or the question is control: Frase's agent can publish on its own, and Frase itself cannot be self-hosted.
So "better than Frase" is usually "better at one thing Frase also does", or "the same loop, owned differently".
The eight alternatives
1. AltoRank: the same loop, a person behind every publish
Ours, and the closest thing to Frase here, so read the side-by-side below before weighing it. AltoRank builds a business and voice profile from a site's published writing, researches what its buyers search, and drafts with sources attached. Every publish is attributed to a named person: a click on that draft, or a rule that emails each draft and ships it after a 24-hour hold unless they hold it. Publishing setup is currently assisted, which is where Frase is ahead today. Open source under AGPL-3.0, free to self-host, €69/mo managed or €199/mo on Agency for unlimited client workspaces and 400 articles.
2. Surfer: the content score
The reference for scoring a draft against what ranks, with AI visibility tracking added. Discovery €49/mo billed yearly, Standard €99, Pro €182, Peace of Mind €299, Enterprise from €999. Read from surferseo.com/pricing on 20 September 2026. Pick it if your writers draft and want a target. It has its own roundup of alternatives.
3. Clearscope: grading with unlimited seats
Grades content written by people and recommends terms from search intent. Essentials $129/mo for 50 tracked queries, 50 pages and 20 drafts; Business $399/mo for 300 queries and pages. Unlimited users and projects on every plan, query tracking across ChatGPT and Gemini, no contracts, a 14-day trial. Read from clearscope.io/pricing on 25 September 2026. It has its own roundup of alternatives.
4. Content Harmony: priced per piece of content
Each "content workflow" is a keyword report, a brief and a grader for one page, and you pay by how many you use: $99/mo, about $89/mo billed annually, on the entry plan at roughly $8 a workflow. Unlimited users and projects, and credits roll over for 90 days. The trial is $10 for your first 10 workflows, with no time limit and no auto-renewal; Enterprise by inquiry. Read from contentharmony.com/pricing on 28 September 2026. A good fit for an agency whose writers need briefs, not drafts.
5. Keyword Insights: clustering first
Built around clustering keywords by search intent, with briefs, a writing assistant and an AI writing agent on the same credits. Basic $58/mo for 10,000 credits, Professional $99/mo for 20,000, Enterprise custom. Clustering costs 1 credit a keyword, a brief 100, the writing assistant 200 an article and the AI writing agent 1,200 an article. Read from keywordinsights.ai/pricing on 28 September 2026. Strongest when the problem is organising thousands of keywords before anyone writes.
6. MarketMuse: planning across a large site
Models topics across a whole site and shows where coverage is thin. A free plan with one user and 10 queries a month; Optimize, Research and Strategy scale by tracked topics, briefs and users. Paid prices were not published on marketmuse.com/pricing on 25 September 2026; every paid tier routes to a demo. It has its own roundup of alternatives.
7. Scalenut: volume per dollar
Built around producing GEO articles in bulk: $59, $89 and $199 a month on monthly billing, with the page listing 5–10, 30–60 and 75–150 articles a month per tier. The page also showed lower figures of $24, $36 and $80 whose billing terms it did not make clear, so treat those as a promotion to confirm. Read from scalenut.com/pricing on 25 September 2026.
8. NeuronWriter: the lower-cost editor
The top answer when Frase users ask Reddit for something similar and cheaper: a content editor scoring against the SERP, with AI monitoring across Google, AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT and Perplexity as an add-on from $9/mo. Its plan prices did not render to a plain read of neuronwriter.com/pricing on 25 September 2026, so check the page before budgeting.
Not listed: AirOps, Botify and seoClarity, which appear in some Frase roundups but are enterprise content-ops or technical-SEO platforms rather than like-for-like replacements.
What Frase actually costs
Read from frase.io/pricing on 28 September 2026, in USD:
- Starter, $39/mo billed yearly ($49 monthly). 1 seat, 1 site, 10 articles and 50 audit pages a month; AI visibility on ChatGPT and Google AI; Content Guard on 10 pages. Holds at its limits rather than billing overage.
- Professional, $103/mo yearly ($129 monthly). 3 seats, 5 sites, 40 articles and 250 audit pages; content calendar, internal linking suggestions, Perplexity added; optional pay-as-you-go, off by default.
- Scale, $239/mo yearly ($299 monthly). 5 seats, up to 10 domains, 100 articles and 1,000 audit pages; Claude and Gemini added; exportable client reports.
- Enterprise, custom. White-label reports and a branded client portal, SSO and SAML, an SLA.
Extra seats are $29/mo. FraseCMS hosting is free on every plan, with a small badge, and $19/mo or $99/mo for more traffic and no badge. The MCP server and CLI are on every plan.
AltoRank and Frase side by side
The closest pair on this site. Frase is ahead on several rows below, and saying so is more useful than pretending otherwise.
When Frase is the better choice
If you want to connect a CMS yourself today and have the agent publish, keep Frase. Its publishing to WordPress, Webflow, Sanity and Wix is self-serve, and it has its own CMS if you have none. AltoRank's publishing setup is currently assisted.
The same if AI visibility tracking or content decay alerts are what you are buying. Frase tracks up to five AI engines on Scale and watches up to 300 pages for decay. AltoRank's AI-mention tracker is built but not yet switched on, and it has no decay alerts.
Common questions
What is the best Frase alternative?
It depends which part of Frase you are replacing. For a content score to write against, Surfer or Clearscope. For briefs and grading priced per piece, Content Harmony. For keyword clustering first, Keyword Insights. For planning across a large site, MarketMuse. For drafting and publishing with a named person deciding every publish, and the option to self-host, AltoRank. Frase itself is the most complete all-rounder in this set, which is worth saying plainly.
Is there a cheaper alternative to Frase?
Not by much at the entry level. Frase Starter is $39/mo billed yearly, read from frase.io/pricing on 28 September 2026. Keyword Insights starts at $58/mo and Content Harmony at $99/mo, read the same day. AltoRank is free to self-host, or €69/mo managed with model and search-data costs included; for agencies, its €199/mo Agency plan covers unlimited client workspaces against Frase Scale's $239/mo yearly for up to 10 domains.
How much does Frase cost?
Read from frase.io/pricing on 28 September 2026: Starter $39/mo billed yearly ($49 monthly) for 1 seat, 1 site and 10 articles a month; Professional $103/mo yearly ($129 monthly) for 3 seats, 5 sites and 40 articles; Scale $239/mo yearly ($299 monthly) for 5 seats, up to 10 domains and 100 articles; Enterprise custom. Extra seats are $29/mo. A 7-day trial with no card. FraseCMS hosting is free on every plan, with larger tiers at $19/mo and $99/mo.
How is AltoRank different from Frase?
They are the closest pair on this site. Both draft, both publish, both ship an MCP server and a CLI. Frase is ahead on self-serve publishing, AI visibility tracking, content decay alerts and its own CMS. AltoRank differs on control and ownership: every publish is attributed to a named person, either a click or a rule that emails each draft and holds it 24 hours, and the whole product is open source and self-hostable. On agency pricing, AltoRank covers unlimited client workspaces and 400 articles for €199/mo.
Can Frase publish without a human reviewing the article?
Yes, by your choice. Its pricing page says "The agent publishes on its own when you let it, on any content type", and on Scale you can "turn the agent loose across every site you run". Whether that is a feature or a risk depends on whose name is on the site.
Is AltoRank really open source?
Yes, AGPL-3.0, covering the whole product. There is no ee/ directory and no tier held back from the source. The repository is public at github.com/AltoRank/altorank and the MCP server is in the official registry as co.altorank/altorank.
See your site the way an assistant does
A draft only matters once a page can be read. The free check reads your homepage, robots.txt, sitemap.xml and llms.txt and tells you, line by line, what is missing.
Nine checks on the homepage, robots.txt, sitemap.xml and llms.txt. No account, no email gate, and a link you can share. The scoring is in the open-source code, so it can be read rather than trusted.
Other tools people compare this one against
Same format, same tests, a different tool under the microscope.
- Clearscope alternatives
Grading the draft your writers bring vs researching and drafting it for you.
- Ubersuggest alternatives
A keyword list vs the content that comes after it.
- MarketMuse alternatives
A plan and a brief vs the drafts that come after them.
All 23 comparisons, listed by what each tool is actually for.
Be the site the assistant names.
Add a domain and the first draft is written while you watch. Every publish is your decision, a click on the draft or a rule you set and can hold, and you can read the source or self-host it free.
Set up your site and read your first drafts before you enter a card.