When you're trying to grow traffic with SEO content, two names tend to pop up: Surfer and Frase.
Both tools promise faster workflows, better rankings, and data-backed content. They both analyze top-performing pages, suggest keywords, and assign optimization scores.
And both aim to serve writers, SEOs, and marketing teams.
But if you're a CMO looking to scale content without scaling headaches, the details matter.
Because while Frase and Surfer might look similar, they take you to very different places.
It's a hands-on breakdown of where each tool wins, where they fall short, and how to pick what actually moves the needle.
What You’ll Find in This Article:
- Where Frase shines
- Where Surfer outperforms on content that ranks
- How both tools compare in AI, workflows, and internal linking
- Which platform fits better into a scaling content operation
Surfer vs Frase: TL;DR
Frase helps you get content out the door quickly. It’s built for solo writers or lean teams that need speed and simplicity.
But while it moves fast, it stops short of delivering the kind of depth and structure that high-performing content requires.
Surfer, on the other hand, is built for results. It combines AI writing, optimization, and automation into one system that helps teams scale content that actually ranks—not just produce more of it.
With features like internal linking, LLM optimization, and topical authority maps, Surfer gives you the infrastructure to grow consistently and predictably.
If you care about visibility, rankings, and ROI–Surfer is the tool you grow into, not out of.
Content Score Accuracy: Does It Actually Work?
Frase gives you a numeric content score. It updates as you write and shows how your content compares to top-ranking pages. It looks helpful on the surface.
Surfer gives you a similar score–but here's the difference: it's backed by real-world results. Three separate studies show:
- Surfer's Content Score has a 26% correlation with Google rankings (Originality.ai)
- Surfer’s own May 2025 study (based on 1M SERPs) shows an even higher 28% correlation
- Ahrefs found Frase’s score has just a 0.1 correlation with rankings
Frase hasn't shared any benchmarks, which raises questions. If your team is using that score to judge content readiness, you'd want to know it's pointing them in the right direction.
Why does it matter?
If your optimization score doesn’t reflect what’s actually ranking in Google, it creates a false sense of progress. Your team could be spending hours revising content that still won’t rank.
Surfer’s data-backed score ensures your team’s effort translates into measurable SEO performance.
Optimization Workflow: Speed vs Precision
Frase takes search results and turns them into a writing-friendly space. You get helpful insights, suggested headings, and AI assistance to produce a draft quickly. It’s fast, it’s clean–but it doesn’t guide you past the first draft.
Surfer turns the same SERP data into an optimization system that supports your content from draft to published asset. Features include:
- Content gap analysis: shows what competitors include that you don’t
- NLP-driven suggestions to cover relevant topics and entities
- Auto Optimize and Surfy: make real-time, data-backed improvements
- Coverage Booster: ensure depth and completeness, especially for long-form or YMYL content
- LLM optimization: Surfer helps ensure your content meets the structure, relevance, and topical depth required by AI-generated answer engines like Google’s AI Overviews, Perplexity, and ChatGPT. It emphasizes entity coverage, context layering, and structured formatting—all of which increase your chances of inclusion in AI answers.
Surfer continuously monitors how AI systems surface content and adapts recommendations to align with what LLMs actually “understand” and prioritize. It’s forward-compatible SEO for a changing search landscape.
Why does it matter?
Because producing content is just the start. Without deep optimization, your content may miss key ranking signals. Surfer ensures your team isn’t just writing quickly–they’re writing content that earns visibility in search engines and AI-driven platforms.
Internal Linking: Frase Skips It. Surfer Automates It.
Frase doesn’t offer anything for internal linking. You’d need to search your site manually for related content, then copy, paste, and format links one by one. It’s tedious–and easy to ignore.
Surfer automates the entire process:
- It connects to your Google Search Console
- Analyzes your existing content and URL structure
- Suggests contextually relevant internal links
- Lets you add them with one click inside the Content Editor
Why does it matter?
Internal linking improves crawlability, distributes link equity, and builds topical authority–all major SEO factors. But it’s often skipped because it’s boring and repetitive.
Surfer turns it into a simple, automated task. That means better rankings, stronger content hubs, and less time spent hunting through spreadsheets.
AI Writing: Who Does It Better?
Frase gives you full AI writing functionality, including outlines, intros, paragraphs, and even entire articles. It’s a helpful tool for jumping past writer’s block or speeding up early drafts.
The trade-off? Quality. Most users still need to heavily edit the outputs to align with their brand voice, structure, or SEO goals.
Surfer takes a different approach to AI–it doesn’t just help you write; it helps you win.
- Surfy, the in-editor AI assistant, learns your preferred tone, vocabulary, and structure. You can give it guidance—or let it learn from previous edits—to ensure outputs match your brand voice.
- Auto Optimize goes beyond scoring: it rewrites underperforming sections, strengthens keyword placement, adds missing headers, and can even suggest meta descriptions or alt text.
- Coverage Booster audits your content against real-time SERPs to ensure you’ve covered every critical angle—especially useful for long-form or YMYL content.
You also get prompt templates for intros, outlines, CTAs, and more—plus seamless collaboration. Comments, edit history, and shared drafts make it easy for teams to refine content together.
Rather than just generating a wall of text, Surfer’s AI helps teams create polished, high-performing content ready for publishing.
Why does it matter?
Because generating content is easy now. But generating content that performs is hard. Surfer puts AI to work where it matters–refining what your team creates to make sure it has a shot at ranking. That’s how you scale quality with consistency.
Content Monitoring: Frase Tells. Surfer Solves.
Frase gives you visibility into how content performs post-publication. You can track traffic or engagement–but it doesn’t go further.
Surfer acts more like an SEO assistant. With its Audit and Sites tools, it:
- Tracks keyword rankings and page performance
- Alerts you to content decay or traffic drops
- Sends weekly optimization suggestions
- Offers one-click updates to refresh outdated content
Why does it matter?
Because publishing content isn’t enough–it needs to be maintained. Surfer helps your team identify weak spots and fix them fast. That means you’re not just growing, you’re protecting what you’ve already built.
UI & Team Collaboration: Lightweight vs Purpose-Built
Frase is built for simplicity. The interface is clean and easy to navigate. For solo users or very small teams, it’s a fast way to get started. But when collaboration becomes important, Frase starts to fall short.
Surfer was designed with scale in mind:
- Real-time collaboration inside the Content Editor
- Comments, notifications, and edit history
- Shareable links and role-based access control
Why does it matter?
Because SEO content isn’t created in a vacuum. It’s a team sport. Surfer gives marketing leaders the tools to manage, delegate, and review without needing to bolt on external systems. It fits into your team’s actual workflow, not just the writer’s.
Topical Maps: Frase Doesn’t Go There
Frase helps you write articles. But it doesn’t help you think strategically about the topics you should own.
Topical authority is Google’s way of determining whether your website is a credible source on a given subject. The more you cover a topic in depth–across multiple angles, related questions, and supporting subtopics–the more likely Google is to trust and rank your content.
Surfer’s Topical Map helps you do exactly that. It takes your main niche (for example, “email marketing” or “nutrition for athletes”) and builds a complete content blueprint around it:
- Clusters related topics to ensure your site is comprehensive
- Maps out what to publish and when for maximum coverage
- Highlights gaps your competitors are already ranking for, but you’re missing
Why does it matter?
Because if you only target individual keywords, you’re competing on a narrow playing field–and missing out on authority signals that Google looks for.
But if you show Google you’re the source on a subject, you can rank more content, faster, with fewer backlinks–and your entire site becomes more visible.
And here’s the bonus: LLMs like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews are also trained on topical relevance. If your site demonstrates breadth and depth on a subject, you’re more likely to be included in AI-generated answers.
So in short: Topical authority helps you rank better, faster, and stay more visible–even as search evolves.
Surfer gives you the tools to do this at scale.
Surfer: More Than a Content Tool
While this comparison focuses on content workflows, it’s worth highlighting that Surfer is a full-stack SEO platform—built not just for writers, but for entire content teams and marketing operations.
Beyond the Content Editor, Surfer includes:
- Site Audit: Track decaying pages and refresh outdated content.
- Keyword Research: Discover gaps and opportunities for traffic growth.
- SERP Analyzer: Understand what makes top pages rank in any niche.
- Integrations: With WordPress, Google Docs, Jasper, and Zapier.
- Topical Maps & Strategy Tools: Build long-term authority across themes—not just keywords.
Whether you’re a solo SEO or a team of 20, Surfer gives you everything needed to plan, produce, and optimize content that performs.
Surfer Drives Results at Scale
Results speak louder than features.
Here’s what teams are achieving with Surfer:
- 1300% traffic growth in 6 months for a SaaS brand (with fewer articles)
- +44 daily clicks on a single updated post using Auto Optimize
- 40% increase in content output efficiency for in-house SEO teams
- 28% correlation between Content Score and Google rankings (vs Frase’s 0.1%)
Whether you're growing a blog, building topical authority, or scaling an SEO agency, Surfer delivers measurable performance.
Frase vs. Surfer Comparison Table
Final Thoughts: Which One Is Better?
Frase is cheap, fast, and great for publishing more content. It works well for lean teams and solo operators who want to move quickly.
But if your goals go beyond content velocity–if you’re aiming for traffic growth, authority, and predictable SEO performance–Surfer is the better fit.
It helps your team:
- Write content that actually ranks
- Build authority across entire topics
- Automate the repetitive parts of SEO
- Scale collaboration and strategy
Content is an investment. You’re not just trying to fill a blog–you’re building a growth engine.
Surfer doesn’t just help you publish–it helps you win. For CMOs and marketing leaders, it’s the strategic choice when performance matters most.
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