Content optimization / head-to-head
Frase vs Surfer SEO
Neither content score predicted where a page ranked: Frase at ρ -0.115, Surfer SEO at ρ -0.102. Surfer SEO gives you a term list, Frase does not.
Every number here comes from our own runs, not from either vendor, and is read straight out of the test report it came from. How each one is measured is set out in our methodology.
Side by side
| Measurement | Frase | Surfer SEO |
|---|---|---|
| Score ↔ rank (ρ)Mean Spearman between the tool's content score and real Google position | -0.11538 pages · 2026-08-18 | -0.10296 pages · 2026-08-24 |
| Term precision@30Of the top 30 terms it suggests, how many the ranking pages actually share | 0.1220 keywords · 2026-08-18 | 0.1620 keywords · 2026-08-24 |
| SERP overlapDomains its own top 10 shares with the real Google (us) top 10 | 61%20 keywords · 2026-08-18 | 85%20 keywords · 2026-08-24 |
| Cheapest paid planCheapest paid tier, US dollars per month | $39/mo2026-08-18 | —not tested |
| Claims that held upShare of claims in its generated drafts we could source | 75%2026-08-18 | —not tested |
← swipe the table sideways for the rest of the columns
Frase publishes no term list, so that precision@30 figure is a substitute measure: its keyword research output scored against the same term ground truth. A low figure there means the tool does not do that job, not that it does it badly.
Both runs covered all 20 keywords in keywords-v1, scored against the same ground truth, so the term and SERP rows rest on the same keywords. The score-to-rank row does not: Frase correlated 38 pages across 5 keywords, Surfer SEO 96 across 18. Read that row by the page counts under each cell.
Who each one suits
Frase is the only one of the two whose generated drafts we fact-checked: 75% of the claims we pulled held up. We have no equivalent figure for Surfer SEO.
Surfer SEO hands you a list of terms to work into the draft. Frase publishes none.
Its crawled top 10 shared 84.6% of its domains with the real Google (us) top 10, against 60.8%. The competitor set it shows you is closer to the one you are up against.
Neither content score told us where a page would rank. If you are picking between these two on the strength of the number each product asks you to work toward, our tests give you nothing to go on.
The runs behind this page
- Frase review — A research-to-draft pipeline with no term list, and a content score that did not predict Google rank in our sample. Tested 2026-08-18
- Surfer SEO review — A full 20-keyword run: its content score did not track Google rank under either URL match, and a day-two re-run swapped terms on three of five keywords while the scores held still. Tested 2026-08-24
Build the term list yourself
The ground truth behind both columns is the set of terms the current top-10 pages share. Our Top 10 Term Finder pulls that list for any keyword, free and without an account, using the same extraction that produced the numbers above.