Frase Review 2026: Briefs, AI Drafts and GEO Tracking in One Tool
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Frase.io has grown from a brief and optimization tool into an AI SEO agent that researches, drafts, scores, publishes and tracks AI citations. Starter costs $49 a month, or $39 billed yearly.
Verdict: 3.1 out of 5 (output quality not scored). A good fit for solo writers and small SEO teams that want research, briefs, drafts, SEO and GEO scores and daily AI tracking in one tool. Skip it if you need a refund window, more than 10 articles a month on Starter, or Perplexity tracking without an upgrade.
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On this page: What it does, Pricing, Free trial, AI visibility, Refunds and renewals, Reviews, What changed in 2026, Alternatives, Verdict, FAQ, Related.
What Frase does in 2026, module by module
The company now sells “the content operating system for AI search”, one workspace that “researches, writes, optimizes, publishes, and monitors content”. Below is each module as the vendor describes it. We have no account, so we cover features and limits, not draft quality.
- Research and briefs. It reads the ranking pages, pulls questions from People Also Ask and forums and flags gaps, then builds a brief for your chosen language and country. Per the migration guide, briefs get “approximately double” your article credits.
- Writing. The agent drafts in your brand voice from research facts you approve. Per a 21 September 2026 changelog post, it now writes each article in one pass, and the new model beat the old one in the vendor’s own blind test.
- Optimization. The editor shows an SEO score and a separate GEO score for ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, updated as you type, in 70+ languages. Paste a live URL to rescore an older post.
- Publishing. One click sends drafts to WordPress, Webflow, Sanity or Wix; WordPress needs no plugin, and Yoast or Rank Math fields get filled in. FraseCMS hosting is free up to 100,000 page views a month.
- Monitoring. Content Guard reads Search Console, drafts a fix when a page slips on Google and republishes it after you approve. AI Visibility, covered below, alerts you but “does not auto-fix”.
- Integrations. Search Console, Google Docs, Notion, Slack and a REST API that works with Zapier come with every plan, and an MCP server and CLI work from Claude, Cursor or a terminal.
Frase pricing 2026: plans, limits and overage
There are three self-serve plans and a custom Enterprise tier. Yearly billing takes 20% off and is charged upfront: $468 for Starter, $1,236 for Professional and $2,868 for Scale.
| Plan | Price a month | Seats and sites | Articles and audit pages a month | AI prompts tracked daily |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $49, or $39 billed yearly | 1 seat, 1 site | 10 articles, 50 audit pages | 50: ChatGPT, Google AI |
| Professional | $129, or $103 billed yearly | 3 seats, 5 sites; extra seats $29 a month | 40 articles, 250 audit pages | 200: adds Perplexity |
| Scale | $299, or $239 billed yearly | 5 seats, 10 domains; extra seats $29 a month | 100 articles, 1,000 audit pages | 500: adds Claude, Gemini |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom | Custom, all named engines |
Plans also cap AI generations, the agent’s on-demand actions such as images, at 25, 100 and 350 a month, and Content Guard watches 10, 75 or 300 pages. Reporting history is “Current only” on Starter, 3 months on Professional and 12 on Scale. AI Visibility keeps its own 30-day history on Starter.
Starter “holds at the limit until your cycle resets or you upgrade”, so no surprise bill arrives. On Professional and Scale, pay-as-you-go is off by default. Switched on, extras cost $5 or $4 per article, $0.50 or $0.40 per audit page and $0.25 or $0.20 per AI prompt, on Professional and Scale respectively, per the pricing page FAQ.
Professional also adds a content calendar, internal linking suggestions and AI crawler monitoring.
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Starter sits mid-pack: $10 a month below Surfer‘s entry plan on either billing cycle, and about twice the price of NeuronWriter Bronze.
Free trial and free plan: what $0 gets you
There is no free plan. The 7-day trial needs no card and opens Professional’s features, including agent auto-publishing. It caps you at 5 articles, 50 audit pages, 25 AI prompts and 3 seats, with tracking on ChatGPT and Google AI only.
The 7-day limit is new. In January 2026 the pricing FAQ offered a free start with “2 content documents + 1 Rank-Ready document” and “no time limit”; by 3 February it offered the trial instead.
The site also offers free tools, among them GEO Score, AI Visibility and Agent Readiness checkers. Don’t expect rankings within the trial: the vendor won’t “promise you a ranking or a citation inside a 7-day window”.
AI visibility (GEO) tracking in Frase
AI Visibility checks your prompts daily and alerts you when visibility changes. It logs mentions, name variants and sentiment, and shows which of your URLs an answer cites and in what position. Each prompt can target one of 40+ countries and is tagged as awareness, consideration or decision.
Coverage grows with the plan, as the pricing table shows: Perplexity starts on Professional, Claude and Gemini on Scale. A weekly benchmark compares your citation rate with your industry’s median.
Since an update announced in September 2026, a brand named without a link counts toward your Appearance Rate; before, it scored as no mention at all. With Google Analytics connected, an AI Referrals tab shows visits from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and other assistants.
Tracking comes with every plan, not as an add-on. Surfer‘s entry plan tracks no prompts, and Scalenut’s Starter refreshes its 10 prompts weekly rather than daily. For more engines on a small budget, see our guide to AI visibility tools.
Refunds, renewals and the fine print
Section 3 of the Terms of Service, last updated 26 April 2026, is blunt: “All fees paid are final, and we do not provide any refunds”. The edition dated 22 July 2021 said the same.
Yet in January 2026 the pricing page promised a “7-day Money Back Guarantee”. The promise disappeared from the page between 3 and 16 February 2026, so for a while the page and the Terms contradicted each other. Now neither offers a refund, and the free trial is your only test drive.
Other terms worth knowing (Terms of Service, 26 April 2026)
- Renewal: the agreement renews for the same term unless notice of non-renewal comes “at least thirty (30) days before the end of the relevant term”. On a yearly plan, cancel a month ahead and keep proof.
- Prices: the company “reserves the right to change pricing at any time”.
- Billing: monthly plans are billed in advance, and an unpaid account can be suspended 30 days after notice.
- Data: customer data is not used to train “generalized” AI models, but anonymized aggregates feed industry benchmarks. You can opt out of benchmarks by emailing support.
Frase reviews: Trustpilot, G2 and Capterra
On 7 October 2026 Trustpilot showed 3.8 from 64 reviews, with 53% five-star and 36% one-star. G2 showed 4.8 from 311 reviews and Capterra 4.8 from 335, though the newest Capterra review on display dated from 29 July 2025.
Three one-star Trustpilot reviews from 2026 deal with support and lifetime accounts:
- 30 January 2026: “Worst ever – combined with no support.”
- 3 April 2026: a buyer of 10 lifetime (LTD) accounts from AppSumo says all of them are invalid.
- 30 June 2026: the reviewer is “extremely disappointed” with how lifetime customers were treated.
Five-star reviews praise the newer product. On 4 September 2026 one reviewer called it “superior to competitors” in breadth of features, and an October 2026 review praised its AEO visibility data and customer support.
The migration guide doesn’t name AppSumo, but says users on “an older, deprecated plan that is ineligible for migration” get an invitation to a 7-day trial. Others may stay on the old app, as moving is “completely optional”.
Frase, Inc. calls itself remote-first; its Terms fall under Massachusetts law. In October 2022 Copysmith announced it had bought the company and Rytr, launching Copyrytr, so the two became sister products (see our Rytr review).
What changed in 2026
Older reviews, this page’s previous version included, quote a different price list:
| Before | 7 October 2026 | |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | $45 monthly, $459 a year (July 2025) | $49 monthly, $468 a year |
| Professional | $115 monthly, $1,173 a year (July 2025) | $129 monthly, $1,236 a year |
| Starter allowance | 15 Content Projects a month (July 2025) | 10 articles, 50 audit pages |
| Free option | Free start, no time limit (January 2026) | 7-day trial, no card |
| Refund promise | 7-day money-back guarantee (January 2026) | None |
The units changed too. The migration guide says the old Content Projects became research docs, which “are NOT the same as” article credits, so 15 projects and 10 articles don’t compare one to one.
Releases in the 2026 changelog:
- 30 April: a rebuilt research flow with AI visibility data inside each session.
- 14 May: Content Guard starts watching published pages for ranking decay.
- 21 May: Wix publishing joins WordPress, Webflow and Sanity.
- 24 June: Frase Answers, a site widget that answers visitors from your own pages and logs their questions.
- 21 September: a round-up of changes since July, including the one-pass writer, a hosted MCP server and Backlinks, limited to one scan per billing period.
- 23 September: research exports to PDF, HTML, Markdown, Google Docs and Notion.
Frase alternatives: Surfer, Scalenut, NeuronWriter, Clearscope
These four cover briefs, drafts and on-page scoring, and most add AI tracking. Prices are for entry plans, checked on each vendor’s pricing page on 7 October 2026. Surfer shows the same figures in euros to EU visitors and adds VAT there.
| Tool and plan | Price a month | Writing allowance | AI tracking on this plan | Trial |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frase Starter | $49 ($39 yearly) | 10 articles | 50 prompts, daily | 7 days, no card |
| Surfer Discovery | $59 ($49 yearly) | 10 documents (120 upfront on yearly billing) | None | 7 days, card required |
| Scalenut Starter | $59 list ($24 yearly on promotion) | 5 GEO articles (10 on promotion) | 10 prompts, weekly | 7 days, no card |
| NeuronWriter Bronze | $23 ($19 yearly) | 25 content analyses | 5 AI questions | 7 days, no card |
| Clearscope Essentials | $129 | 20 drafts | 50 queries: ChatGPT, Gemini | 14 days |
Frase vs Surfer SEO
Surfer Discovery covers 10 documents a month for $59, or 120 for the year upfront at $49 a month billed yearly, but tracks no AI prompts. Standard ($119, or $99 yearly) raises that to 30 documents a month (360 a year) and adds 25 ChatGPT prompts refreshed weekly. Daily tracking of 50 prompts across five AI engines is a separate $95 plan ($82 yearly), AI Search Analytics.
Surfer AI writes in 18 languages, Frase in 70+. Surfer’s 7-day trial takes a card and converts to paid automatically. On 7 October 2026 Surfer had 4.2 on Trustpilot (221 reviews), and both had 4.8 on G2 (Surfer’s as archived on 2 October). At 10 pieces a month each, Starter is $10 cheaper than Discovery and tracks 50 daily prompts. More in our Frase vs Surfer SEO comparison, which adds Scalenut.
Frase vs Scalenut
Scalenut lists Starter at $59 a month. Under a promotion that has run in some form since at least July 2025, it costs $24 a month billed yearly; the page shows no promotional month-to-month price. Starter includes 5 GEO articles (10 while the promotion doubles limits), 10 prompts refreshed weekly on ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews, and one domain.
The trial is also 7 days without a card. After it, refunds are off the table unless you haven’t used the platform, and even then the company may refuse. On 7 October 2026 Trustpilot showed 3.2 from 159 reviews, none in the previous 12 months. More in our Scalenut review.
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NeuronWriter: the cheapest entry plan
Bronze costs $23 a month, or $19 billed yearly, for 2 projects, 25 content analyses, 5 AI-monitored questions and 15,000 AI credits. Search Console, WordPress, API and MCP access start on Gold, at $69 ($57 yearly).
The 7-day trial runs on Gold terms, needs no card and isn’t charged at the end; a first plan can be refunded within 30 days. The AI module covers AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT and Perplexity, but the pricing page doesn’t say which engines Bronze’s standard tier includes. The site’s footer claims 4.8 on Trustpilot; on 7 October 2026 the profile showed 4.5 from 68 reviews.
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Clearscope: unlimited users at $129
Essentials costs $129 a month, down from $189 in July 2025, for 50 tracked queries, 50 pages, 20 topic explorations and 20 drafts, with unlimited users. Query tracking covers ChatGPT and Gemini, and the trial lasts 14 days. Its terms renew a subscription automatically unless you cancel at least 30 days before the term ends.
Verdict and score: 3.1 out of 5
We score every tool on six weighted criteria, explained on our how we test page. Without an account we leave output quality unscored, and the total is the weighted average of the other five.
| Criterion | Weight | Score | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price for real work | 25% | 3 / 5 | $49 buys 10 articles, 50 audit pages and 50 prompts on two engines |
| Output quality | 25% | Not scored | No account, no drafts generated |
| Limits and fine print | 15% | 3 / 5 | Published caps, no overage on Starter; no refunds; 30-day renewal notice |
| Billing and reputation | 15% | 3 / 5 | Public prices; refund promise dropped in 2026; Trustpilot 3.8, G2 4.8 |
| Support and learning | 10% | 3 / 5 | Help center, in-app and email support; SLA and account manager on Enterprise only |
| Maturity of AI features | 10% | 4 / 5 | Agent, AI tracking, MCP and API live on every plan |
| Total | 3.1 / 5 | Weighted average of the five scored criteria |
Who should buy it
- Solo writers and freelancers with one site who want briefs, drafts and both scores in one place, with no overage bills.
- Small content teams: Professional gives 3 seats, 5 sites, 40 articles, a content calendar and Perplexity tracking.
- Teams that publish to WordPress, Webflow, Sanity or Wix, or that work from Claude and Cursor through MCP.
- Writers who publish beyond English: the vendor lists 70+ languages.
Who should look elsewhere
- Buyers who want a refund window: NeuronWriter refunds a first plan within 30 days.
- High-volume writers on a budget: Starter stops at 10 articles a month, and 40 cost $129 on Professional.
- Brands that need Perplexity, Claude or Gemini tracked on a small budget.
- Agencies that need white-label reports or a client portal, which are Enterprise-only.
If you fit the first list, run one real topic through the trial before choosing a billing cycle.
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How we checked
We checked the pricing pages on 7 October 2026 for Frase and the four alternatives. We also read the Terms, changelog, migration guide and feature pages, and compared Wayback Machine copies of the pricing page from July 2025 to May 2026. We have no account, so there are no screenshots from inside the app. Our editorial policy covers affiliate links.
Sources: pricing, Terms (2021 edition). Archived pricing: July 2025, January, 3 February, 16 February 2026. Documents and ratings: changelog and the legacy migration guide in the same help center, Trustpilot, G2, Capterra, Copyrytr. Rival pricing: Surfer, Scalenut, NeuronWriter, Clearscope.
FAQ
For a small content team, yes. Professional costs $129 a month, or $103 billed yearly, for 3 seats, 5 sites, 40 articles, 250 audit pages and 200 prompts tracked daily, Perplexity included. Each extra seat is $29 a month. Scale ($299, or $239 yearly) covers 5 seats, 10 domains and 100 articles. It is a weaker buy if you need refunds (the terms allow none) or white-label client reports (Enterprise only). Prices checked on 7 October 2026; we score it 3.1 out of 5.
Starter costs $49 a month, Professional $129 and Scale $299. Billed yearly and upfront, they cost $39, $103 and $239 a month. Enterprise is quoted on request. Extra seats on Professional and Scale are $29 a month each, and FraseCMS beyond 100,000 free page views costs $19 or $99 a month, per the pricing page. Prices as of 7 October 2026.
A 7-day free trial, yes; a free plan, no. The trial needs no credit card and opens Professional’s features, capped at 5 articles, 50 audit pages, 25 AI prompts and 3 seats, with tracking on two engines only. The free start without a time limit, offered in January 2026, is gone.
No. The Terms say all fees are final and no refunds are given, as they have since the July 2021 edition. The pricing page advertised a 7-day money-back guarantee until February 2026 but no longer does. Decide during the free trial, and on a yearly plan cancel at least 30 days before renewal.
Not from the vendor, which sells monthly and yearly plans only. AppSumo sold a lifetime deal in August 2020 for $69, and it is sold out. Two one-star Trustpilot reviews from 2026 come from lifetime-deal owners, who say their accounts stopped working or that lifetime customers were treated badly.
For AI tracking on a small budget, yes: Starter checks 50 prompts daily, and Surfer Discovery none. Volume is level on entry plans: Discovery allows 10 documents a month (120 a year on yearly billing), Starter 10 articles. Surfer’s trial needs a card and converts to a paid plan after 7 days, and Surfer leads on Trustpilot, 4.2 to 3.8.
Scalenut Starter lists at $59 a month, but a long-running promotion brings it to $24 a month billed yearly. At $24 that means 10 GEO articles while the promotion doubles limits (5 at list price), plus 10 prompts refreshed weekly, against 10 articles and 50 daily prompts on Frase Starter. Both trials last 7 days without a card; neither promises a refund afterwards.
Yes, and it comes with every plan rather than as an add-on. Starter ($49 a month, or $39 billed yearly) tracks 50 prompts in ChatGPT and Google AI. Professional ($129, or $103) tracks 200 and adds Perplexity, and Scale ($299, or $239) tracks 500 plus Claude and Gemini. Prompts are checked daily, each for one of 40+ countries. With pay-as-you-go switched on, extra prompts cost $0.25 on Professional and $0.20 on Scale. Prices checked on 7 October 2026.
Related reviews
- Scalenut review: GEO articles and weekly AI tracking.
- Scalenut vs Surfer SEO vs Frase, side by side.
- Best AI SEO tools for Google and AI search.
- Best AI visibility tools: dedicated trackers for AI answers.
- Writesonic review: AI search tracking with a writer inside.
- All SEO and GEO reviews