Surfer SEO vs Frase: Which One is Better For You?

Deciding between Surfer SEO and Frase is not an easy task. Both have great sales pages. and both tout themselves as being the best at creating and optimizing content for better organic traffic.

Whether you're a blogger or a business owner, you know the importance of getting organic traffic from search engine optimization. What is directly in your control is your on-page SEO, which tools like Frase and Surfer really help with.

I am going to make it easy for you to decide which one is best for you in this Surfer SEO vs Frase review.

Why should you listen to me?

It's because I've been a user of both Frase and Surfer SEO for about 2 years now. I use them both for content creation and AI writing.

I know the advantages and disadvantages of both through my experience, so that's what I am going to share with you today.

Let's begin.

The Main Differences Between SurferSEO vs Frase

If I were to point out the main difference between SurferSEO and Frase, it's that Surfer SEO focuses more on optimizing new and existing content. Frase also helps you create new content and edit existing content but is now focused a lot more on AI writing.

Surfer SEO is well suited for bloggers and even large agencies that focus on content creation. It's mainly for those that write their own content or to collaborate with other writers. "Team Members" can collaborate on content strategy with unique logins.

Frase is a great option for those that want both the ability to create new content, optimize existing content and also have content written using AI (artificial intelligence) tools. Frase allows multiple user "seats" based on the plan so ideas and planning can be shared between different users.

Other Key Differences:

Frase is cheaper in terms of how many articles you can write per month. For example, with both basic plans, Surfer's basic plan costs $4.01 more but you get only 10 articles per month. With Frase, you're allowed 30.

SurferSEO has a feature called "Grow Flow" which gives you weekly suggestions on how you can improve your site overall by suggesting content ideas and keyword suggestions. Frase does not have something similar - yet.

When writing a new document, Surfer will have keyword suggestions appear as you are writing, making it easy to add keywords to your article. This makes writing a lot faster while in the editor. Frase does not yet have this option.

SurferSEO has a keyword research tool while Frase focuses more on topics and sub-topics. However, Surfer's keyword research tool is very basic and only provides you with search volume and SERP similarity. It doesn't offer data like keyword difficulty or cost-per-click info.

Surfer allows you to choose organic competitors to compare your article to that are ranking on page one of Google. Frase takes the top 20 results and does not give you an option to pick and choose competitors to compare against.

SurferSEO's online community is more engaged than Frase's. SurferSEO's Facebook community boasts at the time of this writing 4395 followers. Frase has just 764.

Surfer SEO VS Frase Overview

It's important to understand what each of these content optimization tools does, so let's jump into each.

SurferSEO Overview

For content optimization, SurferSEO is one of the best tools a blogger, small business, or even an agency can use to help get ranked on the first page of Google.

SurferSEO compares your content to what the top pages are doing that are ranked on the first page of the search engines. It has 6 tools in total, including:

SurferSEO guides you as you write your content within its own editor. You have an option to integrate SurferSEO with Jasper, which is an AI writing tool that can help you create content.

Content optimization for existing content is easy, just drop the article in the editor, see what keywords SurferSEO suggests to include based on competitor analysis, and add them in.

The SERP analyzer takes a deep dive into data if you really want to geek out with competitor analysis. Finally, the Audit tool gives you data on missing backlinks, internal links, page structure, and site speed.

Frase Overview

Frase has recently stepped up the game with their AI writer.

If you want to learn more about Frase, Check out my Frase review. 

At the time of this writing, there are 41 different AI writing tools in Frase. Some of the tools include:

Frase, like SurferSEO, can also optimize new and existing content. It compares your piece of content to other pages that are ranking on the first page of Google.

You'll be shown what your word count should be, how many headers, links, images to include and more.

You can also connect your site to Google's Search Console and Frase will let you know of opportunities you can take to get an edge over your competitors' content.

SurferSEO VS Frase - Comparing Content Editors

SurferSEO and Frase look completely different. But are their features the same? Let's take a detailed look at how similar functions compare.

Surfer SEO Content Editor

Surfer's content editor is the most content optimization tool that people use. To use it, you just enter a keyword that you want to rank for and Surfer opens up a project where you can start writing and get content ideas based on your competitor's content for the same keyword.

Let's try out the editor and then see how it compares to the Frase content editor.

Here, I want to create an article on "What is Content Marketing?" So, that will be my keyword and I will enter that into the editor.

On the left side is where you will create the article. On the right, you've got all the tools needed to create highly optimized content.

When the meter turns green, your article is well optimized. Understand that, unlike Frase, Surfer will not write your content for you from scratch because they don't have an AI. Sort of. Let me explain.

If you go to Outline / Headings, you will see Headings that you can click on which will get imported into your document.

This section is good for finding content to write about because they include similar content to what your competitors are writing. The content you see above is actually unique content because it was written by Surfer's AI writer. This is the only option you have with AI writing in Surfer.

Also in the Outline section, you can get ideas for Blog post titles, and what questions people are asking which can be used in your article's body or added to the FAQ section.

Deciding on what pages you'd like to compete against is important. SurferSEO shows you all the pages that are ranking for your keyword.

Some may not be relevant, so you have the ability to toggle them off. That way, it won't use data from that page. With Frase, it looks at the top 20 results and gets data from those ranking pages.

While it's much easier with Frase because you don't have an additional step to choose competitors' content, I like the option to choose which Surfer offers.

SurferSEO & Jasper AI Joined Forces to Create Content

As I mentioned before, SurferSEO has very limited AI writing capability. That's why they have teamed up with Jasper AI. If you subscribe to both Jasper and Surfer, you can connect your Surfer account within the Jasper interface. This way as your AI is writing content, you can see what keywords you should be including with Surfer.

By the way, I'm also a Jasper user. You can see my review here.

With Frase, you don't need to pay for additional AI writing, because it's included.

Want to learn more about SurferSEO? Click here for my SurferSEO review.

Frase Content Editor

Let's use the same search query in Frase. Here is what it looks like:

As you can see, it's similar to SurferSEO. In the above image, the "research" tab is clicked which will give you the top 20 ranking websites. Frase uses these to help you optimize your article. As I mentioned before, with Surfer, you can choose which ones to compare yours to.

Just like Surfer, it shows you word count, headers, and images. It does not show paragraph count, as this has been swapped with links. Links are the total amount of links including internal and external that you should use on your page content based on competitors' usage.

When we click on "optimize". you will see all the keywords you should include in your article based on your competition.

Frase also allows you to filter the keywords by longtail, top topics, clusters, and more. Surfer just provides the NLP keywords and Headings. NLP stands for natural language processing which Google sees as being the most relevant keywords, to explain it simply.

So as far as keywords go, Surfer is simpler, Frase gives you a few options of different keywords to show.

As far as scoring, Frase is a little different than Surfer. Instead of showing you your article is optimized when you're in the "green", it will show you where you are relative to your competition. You should be equal or better. Once you are there, you are in line with your competitor's articles or more optimized than them.

Frase is a Complete Content Editor That Includes AI

Unlike SurferSEO, with Frase, you do not need to subscribe to an AI writing tool like Jasper if you want AI-written content. AI is built right in Frase.

In other words, it's an all-in-one solution.

This makes Frase the more cost-effective solution if you need an AI writer because you don't need to pay extra for one.

Comparing SEO Tools - Frase VS SurferSEO

The SEO tools for both Frase and Surfer are quite different. These tools are used once you have completed your article and published it, and it's ranking on Google.

SurferSEO SEO Tools

With Surfer, the tools you would use to better your SEO with existing articles are the Audit tool, the SERP Analyzer, and the Keyword Research tool.

The Audit tool looks at things like content score (based on your work in the Content Editor), missing common backlinks, word count. exact keywords, partial keywords, title and meta description length, load time, etc.

The Serp Analyzer tool compares your page to others in the SERPS. You can use this to get data on popular words and phrases, common words and phrases, common backlinks, keyword density, missing common words and phrases, and more.

The Keyword Research tool shows you all the similar keywords, having same terms and questions based on your query. Currently, it only displays search volume and SERP similarity for both.

Frase Search Engine Optimization Tools

Frase has 4 SEO tools - GSC Content Analytics, Outline Builder, Wikipedia Concept Map and Topic Planner.

GSC Content Analytics - Connect your site to Frase with Google Search Console to identify content weaknesses and find new opportunities.

Outline Builder - Get a content outline sourced from questions that are asked on Google's "People Also Ask" and Quora.

Wikipedia Concept Map - Generate a list of semantically related keywords through this Wikipedia tool

Topic Planner - This tool allows you to find a list of long-tail keywords through SERP analysis.

As you can see, both Frase and Surfer SEO have different tools available. However, both are going to be able to help you rank better in the search engines.

Frase VS SurferSeo Pricing

Let's start with the cheapest plans for both.

SurferSEO's basic plan starts at $49 a month. With this plan, you can optimize up to 10 articles per month.

Frase's basic plan starts at $44.99 a month but you can optimize up to 30 articles a month. That's 20 more articles per month you can optimize compared to Surfer.

Not only that, but Frase is slightly cheaper.

Surfer's Pro plan is $119 per month and allows you to optimize 30 articles.

Frase's next plan is the "Team" plan which costs $114.99 a month. This plan allows unlimited articles optimized.

If you're writing more than 1 article a day, Frase is the better option here. And it's about 4 bucks cheaper.

Frase Gets More Expensive with the SEO Add-on

I mentioned before that Frase includes an AI writer. This is included with every package. However, you are limited to 10,000 words per month written with AI.

To be honest, if you're going to write more than 5 articles a month, you can easily burn through those 10,000 words. This means you are going to need the addon which will cost you an additional $35 a month.

This makes it a bit more expensive than Surfer SEO per month. However, if you want to get a Jasper AI subscription with Surfer SEO, then it's going to be a lot more expensive compared to Frase.

If AI writing is important to you, I am leaning more towards Frase as the better value option.

Alternatives to Frase and SurferSEO

If Frase or SurferSEO don't meet your expectations or just want to have more choices then you're in luck. Here are some other options that you can choose:

• Outranking
• MarketMuse
• WriterZen
• Semrush Writing Assistant
• Clearscope

Conclusion - So what's Better, SurferSEO or Frase?

So which one is better? Well, this all depends on what you want. If you don't care about AI writing, meaning you want to write the content yourself or have a writer do it, I would go with SurferSEO.

I say this because I just find it easier to use, and I like the fact that you can choose which ranking articles to compare yours to. Frase doesn't have that option and they just rank the first 20. So, if there's something weird in the SERPS (and we've seen weirdness!) then it's going to count that.

If you're just terrible at writing and need your handheld with an AI writing assistant then go with Frase. Frase is an all-in-one solution with writing powered by AI and a great editor.

I can say that after using both of these tools, both have been instrumental in helping me rank better on Google. You can't go wrong with either one.

Just choose the one that makes sense to you.