Frase vs Semrush
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
The short answer
Editorial assessmentSemrush compared with Frase
These solve different problems. Frase is a content brief and optimization tool starting around $39 per month that grades drafts against the SERP; Semrush is a research and monitoring platform whose content generation is a convenience rather than an editorial gate. Small content teams often run Frase alongside a cheaper SEO suite and spend the difference on writers, which is frequently the better allocation.
Choose Frase if
Small in-house content teams, solo founders, and freelance SEO consultants who want research, briefing, drafting, optimization, publishing, and basic AI-visibility tracking in one subscription under $50 per month, and who would rather have a broad tool that is adequate everywhere than three sharp tools they cannot afford together.
Choose Semrush if
Marketing teams and agencies that run paid and organic together, need competitive intelligence across advertising as well as search, and want AI answer visibility tracking bundled into the same subscription rather than bought separately.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Frase | Semrush |
|---|---|---|
| Category | SEO | SEO |
| Starting price | $39 per month (Starter, billed yearly; $49 monthly) (7 days trial) | $139 per month (SEO plan, monthly billing) or $117.33 per month billed annually (free plan available) |
| Pricing model | Tiered subscription metered on articles per month, audit pages, seats, sites, Content Guard pages, and which AI engines are tracked. Optional pay-as-you-go on higher tiers, off by default. | Self-serve tiered subscription repackaged in 2026 around SEO and AI Search bundles, metered on websites, daily-tracked keywords, and daily AI prompt checks, with per-seat charges for additional users. |
| Free plan | No | One demo project, 10 daily reports across tools, and limited AI Visibility features. Enough to evaluate the interface and run occasional lookups, not enough to work in. |
| Free trial | 7 days, no credit card required | 7 days, no credit card required |
| Best for | Small in-house content teams, solo founders, and freelance SEO consultants who want research, briefing, drafting, optimization, publishing, and basic AI-visibility tracking in one subscription under $50 per month, and who would rather have a broad tool that is adequate everywhere than three sharp tools they cannot afford together. | Marketing teams and agencies that run paid and organic together, need competitive intelligence across advertising as well as search, and want AI answer visibility tracking bundled into the same subscription rather than bought separately. |
| Setup time | Under an hour to run a first research document and draft. Connecting a CMS and configuring Content Guard adds another hour or two. AI Visibility needs someone to write a sensible prompt set, which is the only part requiring real thought. | An hour to set up properly: create your project, verify the domain, connect Google Analytics and Search Console, start the first Site Audit crawl, and load Position Tracking with your target keywords and competitors. AI prompt tracking takes another half hour if you use Prompt Research rather than inventing prompts. |
| Learning curve | Low to moderate. Individual screens are approachable, but the product has grown wide enough that a new user spends the first sessions figuring out which of the many modules they actually need. | Steep, mainly because of breadth. Every individual tool is understandable, but there are dozens of them and the navigation assumes you know which one you want. Expect a week before a new user stops getting lost, and plan to formally ignore several toolkits. |
| Platforms | Web app, WordPress integration, Webflow integration, Sanity integration, Wix integration, FraseCMS hosting | Web application, Chrome extension (SEO toolbar), Looker Studio connector, Mobile apps for reporting, REST API |
| Compliance | Not published in detail on the public site | GDPR, CCPA, SOC 2 (verify current attestation with the vendor) |
| Founded | 2016 | 2008 |
| Headquarters | Remote-first; historically associated with Boston, Massachusetts, and with Birmingham, Alabama through its parent | Boston, Massachusetts, United States |
| Ownership | Acquired by Copysmith in October 2022 and operated within that group | Subsidiary of Adobe Inc. following a $1.9 billion all-cash acquisition completed in April 2026 |
Strengths and limitations
Frase
Strengths
- By far the lowest entry price for a complete workflow: $39 per month covers research, drafting, dual scoring, publishing, and AI visibility on two engines.
- Dual SEO and GEO scores are a more honest model than a single blended number, because the two goals genuinely pull in different directions.
- AI crawler monitoring is a concrete signal that most competitors do not offer, answering whether models are ingesting your pages at all.
- Native publishing to WordPress, Webflow, Sanity, and Wix means Frase owns the last mile rather than handing you a document.
Limitations
- Generalist depth: research, drafting, optimization, and AI tracking are each competent but none is best in class against a focused competitor.
- AI engine coverage is heavily tiered, with Claude and Gemini gated behind the $239 Scale plan, which undercuts the value story for buyers who assumed the entry price covered AI search.
- Per-seat pricing at $29 each makes larger teams expensive relative to seat-unlimited alternatives.
- The 7 day trial is short for a tool with this much surface area; evaluating research, drafting, publishing, and tracking properly takes longer than a week.
Semrush
Strengths
- By far the broadest coverage of any self-serve SEO tool: organic, paid, local, social, PR, content, and market research in a single subscription.
- AI search visibility is bundled into paid plans across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and Google AI Overviews, rather than sold as a four-figure add-on.
- Advertising Research is genuinely unmatched among SEO suites and is the clearest reason to choose Semrush over Ahrefs.
- Database scale and refresh cadence are published openly, including the honest admission that keyword updates range from daily to monthly by term popularity.
Limitations
- Additional users from $45 per month each on every tier make Semrush expensive for teams and cheap only for lone operators.
- Backlink data is large but is not the reference index; when Ahrefs and Semrush disagree, most practitioners believe Ahrefs.
- The breadth is genuinely overwhelming, and small teams routinely pay for toolkits they open once during onboarding and never return to.
- The 2026 repackaging is recent enough that plan-to-feature mapping is still confusing, particularly for customers migrating off legacy Pro, Guru, and Business plans.
Pricing compared
Frase
Tiered subscription metered on articles per month, audit pages, seats, sites, Content Guard pages, and which AI engines are tracked. Optional pay-as-you-go on higher tiers, off by default.
- Starter$39
- Professional$103
- Scale$239
- EnterpriseCustom
Frase is the best dollar-for-surface-area buy in this category and it is not particularly close. Nothing else under $50 per month gives a solo operator research, briefs, AI drafting, dual SEO and GEO scoring, native publishing, decay monitoring, and two-engine AI visibility tracking in one subscription. The honest counterweight is that every one of those modules is thinner than the specialist equivalent, and two pricing decisions push the effective cost up quietly: $29 per extra seat, and the fact that half the AI engines live behind the $239 tier. Price it for the team you have in six months, not the one seat you are starting with.
Semrush
Self-serve tiered subscription repackaged in 2026 around SEO and AI Search bundles, metered on websites, daily-tracked keywords, and daily AI prompt checks, with per-seat charges for additional users.
- Free$0
- SEO$139
- Starter$199
- Pro+$299
- Advanced$549
- EnterpriseCustom quote
Semrush is the best value in this category for a team that will actually use three or more toolkits, and mediocre value for anyone who will not. At $199 the Starter plan includes AI visibility tracking across five engines, which at Ahrefs costs $129 plus $199 to $699 on top; that comparison alone justifies the plan for anyone whose board is asking about AI answers. The counterweight is seats. Every extra login is $45 per month, and the pricing is designed around a single power user with reports flowing outward rather than a team working inside the tool. If your use case is keyword research and rank tracking for one small site, this is roughly three times more platform than you need and you should look at SE Ranking, Mangools, or Ubersuggest instead.
Editorial verdict on each
Frase
Frase is the value pick and the honest one, provided you go in knowing what you are buying: breadth, not depth. For $39 per month a founder gets research, briefs, AI drafting, dual SEO and GEO scoring, native publishing, decay monitoring, and AI visibility on two engines, which is a complete workflow that no competitor comes close to matching at that price. Where the story frays is at the tier boundaries. Claude and Gemini tracking sit behind a $239 plan, extra seats cost $29 each, and the company discloses almost nothing about itself since the 2022 Copysmith acquisition. Buy it as a startup's first and only content tool, and expect to graduate to a specialist for whichever job turns out to matter most.
Read the full Frase profileSemrush
Category LeaderSemrush is the most complete self-serve marketing visibility platform available, and the 2026 repackaging made it the sensible default for anyone whose leadership is asking about AI answers: prompt tracking across five engines starts at $199 per month, where the equivalent at Ahrefs is a separately billed add-on running to $699. The dataset is large, the refresh cadence is documented honestly, and the free plan plus seven-day no-card trial means you can check the claims yourself. Two caveats matter. Seats at $45 each make this a tool for one power user with reports flowing outward, not a team workspace. And Adobe's $1.9 billion acquisition, completed in April 2026, means the vendor you are signing a three-year deal with is now a division of a company with very different pricing instincts. Buy it if you will use the breadth. Buy something cheaper if you will not.
Read the full Semrush profileFrase profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Semrush last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.