Scalenut vs Surfer SEO vs Frase (2026): Prices, Limits and Who Each Suits
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Picking the best AI content optimization platform of these three comes down to billing and volume. Entry plans cost $24 to $59 a month for 5 to 10 articles, and one tracks no AI answers at all.
Short answer
- One writer paying monthly: Frase Starter, cheapest month to month at $49 for 10 articles and 50 AI prompts checked daily.
- Prepaying a year: Scalenut Starter, $24 a month on promotion, also 10 articles.
- Teams wanting an editor plus daily tracking in five AI engines: Surfer SEO Pro, $182 a month billed yearly; Discovery ($49) tracks nothing.
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Entry plans side by side: nine differences
| Entry plan | Surfer SEO Discovery | Frase Starter | Scalenut Starter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price a month | $59, or $49 yearly | $49, or $39 yearly | $59 list; $24 yearly on promotion |
| Writing allowance | 10 documents a month (120 a year) | 10 articles a month | 5 articles a month (10 on promotion) |
| Seats and sites | 1 seat, 1 brand workspace | 1 seat, 1 site | 1 domain; seats not listed |
| AI answer tracking | None | 50 prompts, daily | 10 prompts, weekly |
| Editor score | Content Score with SEO and AI parts | Separate SEO and GEO scores | Content scoring |
| Research tools | No keyword research or SERP Analyzer | Research that ends in a brief | 5 keyword clusters a month |
| Publishing to a CMS | No integrations on this plan | WordPress, Webflow, Sanity, Wix | Starts on Plus |
| Free trial | 7 days of Pro, card required | 7 days, no card | 7 days, no card |
| Refunds | Prepaid year: only a pro-rata recalculation, on request | None, per the terms | None after the trial |
Discovery is an editor with an AI assistant, a document allowance, 10 tracked pages and no AI tracking. The other two entry plans add research and a small AI tracker. Billed yearly, the promotion puts one of them $15 a month below the other.
Prices, limits and what each plan really costs
Everything below is per month in US dollars. Each vendor discounts a prepaid year differently.
Surfer SEO plans: documents counted per year
| Plan | Monthly | Yearly | Documents | Seats |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Discovery | $59 | $49 | 120 a year | 1 |
| Standard | $119 | $99 | 360 a year | 3 |
| Pro | $219 | $182 | 360 a year | 5 |
| Peace of Mind | $359 | $299 | “Unlimited”, fair use 500 a month | 10 |
| AI Search Analytics | $95 | $82 | None: tracking only | 5 |
Per the pricing page’s own script on 7 October 2026, the document counts are yearly pools: switched to monthly billing, the script divides them by 12, so Discovery means 10 documents a month and Standard or Pro 30. The page’s FAQ adds that on an annual plan “credits reset yearly”. AI-written articles come out of the same pool, because the old AI credits were merged into one Content Editor limit. Unused documents don’t roll over to the next month on monthly billing, or to the next year on an annual plan.
A yearly plan is charged in full upfront, at a discount of “up to 17%”. Visitors from the EU see the same numbers in euros, and VAT is added to EU and UK invoices unless you give a valid VAT ID.
Frase plans: a hard stop on Starter
| Plan | Monthly | Yearly | Articles, audit pages | Seats and sites |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $49 | $39 | 10 and 50 a month | 1 seat, 1 site |
| Professional | $129 | $103 | 40 and 250 | 3 seats, 5 sites |
| Scale | $299 | $239 | 100 and 1,000 | 5 seats, 10 domains |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom | White-label, SSO |
Yearly billing takes 20% off. Starter “holds at the limit until your cycle resets or you upgrade, so a surprise charge never happens”. Professional and Scale offer pay-as-you-go overage, off by default, at $5 or $4 per extra article, and extra seats cost $29 a month.
AI-visibility prompts run to 50, 200 and 500 on the three plans. The API, MCP server and CLI come with all of them, and so does every integration, from Search Console to Google Docs export.
This grid appeared by 3 February 2026. In July 2025 Starter cost $45 a month and counted 15 “Content Projects”. Our plan-by-plan review goes through every tier.
Scalenut plans: list prices and a long-running promotion
| Plan | List price | Yearly, on promotion | GEO articles a month | Team and domains |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $59 | $24 | 5, or 10 on promotion | 1 domain |
| Plus | $89 | $36 | 30, or 60 | 4 members, 2 domains |
| Professional | $199 | $80 | 75, or 150 | Unlimited |
Read the offer carefully: Starter is $24 a month billed yearly under the current promotion ($59 list price); the month-to-month price is not shown with the promotion. The “60% OFF Limited Offer” also doubles article, optimization and audit limits.
It isn’t new. An archived copy from July 2025 shows the same 60% offer, and in February 2026 it was 50%, shown as $354 a year for Starter. Content audit, internal linking and auto-publishing to WordPress or Shopify start on Plus. Our review of the promotion and plans has the detail.
What one writer and an agency would pay
Arithmetic from the tables above: the solo writer has one seat and one site; the agency writes 40 articles a month with five people.
| Need | Surfer SEO | Frase | Scalenut |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 articles a month | Discovery: $49 yearly, $59 monthly | Starter: $39 yearly, $49 monthly | Starter: $24 yearly on promotion; Plus $89 list |
| 15 articles a month | Standard: $99 yearly, $119 monthly | Professional: $103 yearly, $129 monthly | Plus: $36 yearly on promotion, $89 list |
| 40 articles, 5 people | Peace of Mind: $299 yearly, $359 monthly | Professional plus 2 seats: $187 monthly | Professional: $80 yearly on promotion, $199 list |
- Solo, paying monthly: Frase is cheapest at $49. Discovery costs $59, and the third tool’s list-price Starter covers only 5 articles, so 10 a month means Plus at $89.
- Solo, paying yearly: the promotion wins. Over a full year, the $39 Starter comes to $468 and Discovery to $588.
- 15 articles: none of the 10-a-month plans stretches that far. The next tiers cost $89 to $129 a month, or $36 for Plus with the yearly offer.
- Agency: Standard and Pro stop at 30 documents a month, so 40 means Peace of Mind. The cheapest fit overall is the promotional Professional at $80, with unlimited members and domains (Plus lists up to 4 team members and 2 domains, so we count five people as Professional). On monthly billing, the $129 Professional plus two $29 seats ($187) undercuts the $199 list price. With three people, Professional needs no extra seats.
Frase vs Scalenut: briefs, writers and price
Both put a writer, an optimizer and an AI tracker in every plan; they differ in the research before the draft and in what the entry plan includes.
Briefs: a research report or a guided wizard
Frase’s research step “reads the pages already ranking for your topic”, collects questions from People Also Ask and forums, expands related keywords and “flags the gaps competitors leave open”. It then assembles a brief with headings, sections, keywords and sources. Scalenut’s Cruise Mode works as a wizard instead: keyword and location, then article type, references and prompts from a Prompt Library, then title, outline and a draft in the GEO editor.
The same tool’s keyword clusters pull cluster difficulty, keyword difficulty and CPC from a Semrush integration; the rival has a Topic Clusters tool of its own.
Writers and publishing
Frase’s agent drafts, optimizes and, once you switch it on, publishes by itself to WordPress, Webflow, Sanity or Wix on every plan. Since 21 September 2026 it writes an article “in one pass instead of stitching it together section by section”. Cruise Mode promises “1500+ word blogs in <5 minutes”, and its auto-publishing to WordPress or Shopify starts on Plus.
We haven’t generated drafts with either tool, so we don’t rate the writing.
Pick Frase over Scalenut if…
- you pay monthly and want 10 articles on the entry plan rather than 5;
- you want daily rather than weekly AI tracking, plus 50 audit pages, from the cheapest plan;
- you want Google Search Console data inside the tool; the rival’s integrations page doesn’t list it.
Pick Scalenut over Frase if…
- you will prepay a year and want the lowest price for 10 articles a month;
- a growing team needs unlimited members without a per-seat fee (Professional);
- you sell on Shopify: auto-publishing covers it from Plus.
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Surfer SEO vs Frase: editor, scoring and languages
Both score a draft against the pages that already rank, and both now add an AI-answer score to the SEO one.
How each editor scores a draft
Since May 2026 the Content Score has been “one split bar”. One part rates the chance of ranking in Google, from SEO entities; the other rates the chance of an AI citation, from the intro and facts. Auto-Optimize edits for both in one click, from Standard up.
Frase shows two numbers instead, an SEO score and a separate GEO score. It updates them “in real time as you write”, by how well the draft covers the topics and questions of the ranking pages.
Languages and AI drafts
Surfer AI writes full articles in 18 languages and needs “approximately 20 minutes” for one, although the pricing FAQ says the tool “works with all languages”. Its rival lists “more than 70 languages and locale variants”. On Discovery, AI drafts and hand-written documents draw on one document allowance.
Entry-plan gaps
Discovery costs $10 a month more than its rival’s Starter on either billing. It also lacks three things Starter has: AI answer tracking, CMS integrations and a research step that ends in a brief. Starter has limits of its own. Reporting history is “Current only”, audits stop at 50 pages a month, and Perplexity tracking needs Professional.
Pick Surfer SEO over Frase if…
- you want Gemini tracked daily without the rival’s $239 Scale plan (Pro costs $182, billed yearly);
- you publish through Contentful, which the integrations cover from Standard; the rival publishes to WordPress, Webflow, Sanity and Wix;
- you want 10 seats included in the price (Peace of Mind); the rival charges $29 a month per seat beyond 5.
Pick Frase over Surfer SEO if…
- you write alone and want AI tracking on the entry plan;
- you want AI drafts in languages outside those 18;
- you want to start a trial without a card.
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Surfer SEO vs Scalenut: limits, tracking and extras
Both entry plans allow about 10 pieces a month on yearly billing, but the money buys different things.
AI tracking, plan by plan
- Entry: Discovery tracks nothing, while Starter tracks 10 prompts weekly in ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews.
- Middle: Standard checks 25 prompts weekly, in ChatGPT only; Plus checks 25 weekly in the same two engines as Starter.
- Upper tiers: Pro checks 50 prompts daily across five engines and Peace of Mind 100; Professional checks 100 weekly and adds Perplexity.
- Refresh: Starter, Plus and Professional all update weekly; daily data is a paid upgrade.
Writing limits and extras
Discovery’s 120 documents a year cover writing and optimizing alike. Starter splits its allowance into three counters of 5 a month each, or 10 on the promotion: new GEO articles, optimizations of existing ones, and keyword clusters. Higher up, Pro adds internal linking, a topical map and a cannibalization report. Plus adds internal linking, a content audit, Social Upreach and a Backlinks Marketplace.
Pick Surfer SEO over Scalenut if…
- you want daily AI tracking without a paid upgrade (Pro and above);
- you need an API (Peace of Mind) or an MCP server for AI agents (Pro); the rival’s pricing and integrations pages list neither;
- you write in Google Docs or publish through Contentful or Zapier, which the integrations cover from Standard; the rival’s list stops at WordPress, Shopify, Semrush and Copyscape.
Pick Scalenut over Surfer SEO if…
- price comes first: on yearly billing, the promotional Starter is the cheapest entry plan of the three;
- you want AI tracking on the cheapest plan;
- you need unlimited members and domains: Professional includes both, while even Peace of Mind ($299) stops at 10 seats.
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Surfer SEO in 2026: plans and what changed
We have no separate review of this tool, so this section covers its old and new plans, the 2026 changes and the trial.
| Item | January 2026 | October 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Cheapest plan | Essential: $99, or $79 yearly | Discovery: $59, or $49 yearly |
| Writing allowance | 30 articles a month plus 5 AI articles | 10 documents a month, AI and manual combined |
| AI tracking | Add-on from $95 a month; included in Scale | From Standard; on its own $95 a month, or $82 billed yearly |
| API | Enterprise only (a paid add-on on legacy plans) | Peace of Mind and Enterprise only |
The new plans were live by 4 February 2026. Legacy subscribers were moved onto them on 18 May 2026, when “existing discounts, coupons, and promotional pricing will no longer apply”.
Gemini joined the AI tracker in January–February, together with Mention Gap and sentiment analysis. In May the Content Score was split into its SEO and AI parts, and on 11 August an MCP server entered beta, so agents such as Claude and ChatGPT can call the tool directly.
Ownership changed too. The French group Positive bought the company, Search Engine Journal reported on 21 October 2025, and the pricing page title now reads “Positive Surfer”. The site footer still lists a Polish company in Wrocław, and the tool dates from 2017.
The free trial, in the vendor’s words
New accounts get 7 days of Pro. The catch is billing, as the trial help article puts it: “After 7 days, your subscription automatically converts to the plan you selected at checkout, and your card is charged for the first billing period”. The trial is for new accounts only, and a card already registered on an account isn’t eligible. There is no pause button either: “The only way to stop a renewal is to cancel it entirely”.
Who it suits and who it doesn’t
It suits teams of 3 to 10 that live in a content editor, write in Google Docs or publish through WordPress or Contentful, and want daily tracking across five AI engines. On a solo budget, Discovery fits only if 10 documents a month and no AI tracking are enough. A Trustpilot reviewer summed up the trade-off in November 2025: the cost “is high for one user”.
Trials, refunds, ratings and owners
Ratings below were read on 7 October 2026 unless another date is given.
Surfer SEO: card-first trial, no full refund on a prepaid year
Prepaid annual fees are “not refundable”, but the regulations let you ask support to recalculate the fee pro rata, by months started or limits used, whichever is higher; if the request is accepted, the difference is refunded. EU consumers keep a 14-day right of withdrawal under Polish law, but the regulations say it lapses once the service has started with their consent.
Trustpilot gives 4.2 from 221 reviews, 8% of them one-star, while the badge on the vendor’s own site says 4.6. G2 shows 4.8 from 546 reviews (archived copy, 2 October 2026) and Capterra 4.9 from 422.
Frase: a no-refund clause since 2021, a money-back promise removed in 2026
The terms say: “All fees paid are final, and we do not provide any refunds”. That clause has stood since the version of 22 July 2021, even while the pricing page promised a “7-day money-back guarantee”. The promise disappeared from the page between 3 and 16 February 2026. The contract also renews automatically unless you give notice 30 days before the term ends.
Trustpilot gives 3.8 from 64 reviews, and 36% are one-star, among them complaints from owners of lifetime deals. AppSumo sold lifetime codes for $69 in August 2020; in June 2026 one reviewer was “extremely disappointed with how this company treated its lifetime customers”. G2 shows 4.8 from 311 reviews and Capterra 4.8 from 335. In 2022 Copysmith bought this tool and Rytr and formed the Copyrytr group.
Scalenut: no refund after the trial, no new reviews in a year
The terms allow no refund “post the trial period”. If you haven’t used the platform after buying, you can still ask support, but the company “reserves the right to decline your refund request”. It is run by an Indian company based in Gurugram.
Trustpilot gives 3.2 from 159 reviews, 87% of them five-star, with none in the past 12 months. The newest, dated 25 August 2025, warns: “Do not purchase any plan until you fully use the trial period”. A one-star review from February 2024 reads: “Got billed for a full year without as much as a days notification”. G2 shows 4.7 from 315 reviews and Capterra 4.8 from 397.
If none of the three fits
Look elsewhere if you need the lowest price with AI tracking, a refund window, or unlimited users with a longer trial.
NeuronWriter: the cheapest entry and a 30-day refund
Bronze costs $23 a month, or $19 billed yearly, for 2 projects, 25 content-editor analyses, 5 monitored AI questions and 15,000 AI credits. The AI module lists Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT and Perplexity and typically re-checks every 24–48 hours; Bronze’s questions run on “Standard” monitoring, and an add-on offers to “add more LLM models”. Search Console, WordPress and the MCP server start on Gold ($69, or $57 yearly).
The 7-day trial runs on Gold terms without a card, and nothing is charged when it ends. You can ask for a refund of your first plan within 30 days, a promise none of the three above makes. Trustpilot gives 4.5 from 68 reviews, though the vendor’s footer claims 4.8.
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Clearscope: unlimited users and a 14-day trial
Essentials costs $129 a month, down from $189 in July 2025, for 50 tracked queries, 50 pages, 20 topic explorations and 20 drafts a month. Every plan includes unlimited users and tracks queries in ChatGPT and Gemini, and the trial lasts 14 days. We found no public affiliate program, and the Trustpilot profile has no reviews yet.
Writesonic: AI search tracking first
Starter costs $99 a month, or $79 billed yearly, tracks 50 prompts a day in ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, and includes 15 articles a month. Our Writesonic review covers the rest.
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If you only need drafts and no optimizer, a general assistant may do the job: see our Gemini vs Claude comparison. For more tools built for both Google and AI answers, browse our AI SEO tools list.
How we compared them
On 7 October 2026 we read each vendor’s pricing page, help docs, terms and changelog, plus archived copies of the pricing pages going back to July 2025. Every figure is logged with a quote, a link and the date. One pricing page showed euros for our location; its dollar prices match an archived US copy from 1 October 2026 and the vendor’s help docs. The same page’s code shows that its document allowance is a yearly figure.
We have no accounts with these tools. We did not generate drafts, compare scores on our own pages or measure tracking accuracy, so nothing here rates output quality. We may earn a commission through the buttons for four vendors on this page; links to Surfer SEO are not affiliate links, and Clearscope isn’t linked. More in how we test and our editorial transparency policy.
FAQ
On monthly billing, Frase Starter: $49 for 10 articles, while Discovery costs $59 and Scalenut’s $59 list-price Starter covers only 5. Paying a year upfront flips the order. The promotion brings that Starter to $24 a month for 10 articles, against $39 and $49 for the other two entry plans. NeuronWriter Bronze costs less again, at $19 to $23.
Yes: 7 days of the Pro plan, for new accounts only. You enter a card at signup, and after 7 days your subscription “automatically converts” to the plan you picked and the card is charged for the first billing period. A card already registered on an account isn’t eligible. A prepaid year is “not refundable” beyond a pro-rata recalculation support may grant on request, so decide before day 7.
All three, at different levels. Frase tracks daily from its Starter plan: 50 prompts in ChatGPT and Google AI. Scalenut refreshes weekly on every plan, from 10 prompts on Starter. Discovery tracks nothing; Standard checks 25 prompts weekly in ChatGPT, and Pro checks 50 daily across five engines for $182 billed yearly.
Frase, if the brief itself is what you need. Its research step reads the ranking pages, pulls People Also Ask and forum questions, flags gaps and assembles headings, sections and sources for a writer. Cruise Mode goes from keyword to outline to draft in one wizard, and its clusters add Semrush difficulty and CPC data. We compared documented workflows, not briefs we produced.
Both score a draft against the ranking pages. The Content Score combines SEO and AI-citation chances in one split bar, and Auto-Optimize starts on Standard ($99 a month billed yearly). The other tool shows separate SEO and GEO scores from its Starter ($39 billed yearly), and it lists 70+ languages against 18 for Surfer AI drafts. We didn’t measure either score on our own pages.
None of the three promises one. One vendor’s terms say “All fees paid are final”; another refuses refunds “post the trial period”; the third calls a prepaid year “not refundable” but may recalculate it pro rata on request, and EU consumers’ 14-day withdrawal right lapses once the service starts. NeuronWriter refunds a first plan within 30 days. Two of the three trials need no card.
Yes. Frase Starter costs $49 monthly or $39 billed yearly and includes the AI tracking that Discovery lacks. Scalenut’s promotional Starter is $24 a month with yearly billing. NeuronWriter Bronze costs $23 monthly or $19 yearly and refunds a first plan within 30 days. Discovery itself is $49 only when billed yearly; month to month it costs $59.
Two of them list such features. On 7 October 2026, Surfer’s plan table showed an “AI Detector & Humanizer” on every plan, and Scalenut listed one among its add-ons; the third lists neither. We report these as listed features only: we didn’t test them, and we don’t recommend any tool for passing off AI text as human.