The short answer: Frase is the best budget AI SEO tool we’ve tested — a 4.1/5 that earns its $45/mo. We used it for four weeks of real briefs and optimisation work. It won’t beat Surfer on polish, but at half the price it doesn’t need to.
How we tested Frase
We paid for the Team plan with our own money and used Frase to brief and optimise fifteen real articles over four weeks, side by side with the same workflow in Surfer, so we could feel exactly where the $54/mo difference goes.
What is Frase best at?
Briefs. Frase turns a keyword into a usable content brief faster than anything else we tested. It pulls the ranking pages, extracts their headings and questions, and assembles an outline you can hand to a writer in minutes. For agencies and solo bloggers who brief more than they write, this alone justifies the price.
How does the optimisation compare to Surfer?
It covers the essentials, but the experience is a step behind. Frase scores your draft against the SERP like Surfer does, and the recommendations are sound. The editor itself is where you feel the price gap — clunkier term handling, occasional lag on long documents, and less precise structure guidance. You get where you’re going; it’s just a less pleasant drive.
Should you use Frase’s AI writer?
For outlines and answer paragraphs, yes; for full drafts, not really. Short generations — intros, FAQ answers, section expansions — were solid in our tests. Full-article generation lagged well behind Surfer AI and needed enough rework that we stopped using it by week two.
Verdict: who should buy Frase?
Frase is our budget recommendation in AI SEO. If you’re a solo blogger or a small team publishing a few pieces a month, it does 80% of what Surfer does at 50% of the price. If you ship content weekly and live in your optimisation tool, spend the extra — our Surfer vs Frase comparison shows exactly where the trade-offs sit.