Frase vs MarketMuse

Frase

The brief builder is still the reason to buy it — pulling competitor headings and questions into a usable outline in a minute — but the article and audit caps are tight enough that the entry tier suits one writer, not a content team.

Pros

• +SERP extraction into a structured brief remains fast and genuinely useful
• +API and MCP access are included on every plan rather than being an upsell
• +Direct publishing to WordPress, Webflow, Sanity and Wix removes the copy-paste step
• +Now scores against AI answer engines, not just Google rankings

Cons

• −No free tier and a short 7-day trial
• −Monthly billing costs about 25% more than the advertised annual rate
• −Article, audit-page and Content Guard caps are all separate meters to track
• −Extra seats at $29/month add up quickly on a 3-seat plan

MarketMuse

MarketMuse is the strategy end of content SEO: it is less about polishing one article than about deciding which fifty to write, which twenty to refresh and which ten to merge, scored against your own site rather than a generic keyword list. That planning layer is what Clearscope and Surfer do not really offer, and it is why agencies and in-house teams with a real backlog pay for it. The price is the catch - the paid tiers are quote-only and have been positioned well above the per-article optimizers - and the Free plan is a demo, not a working tier.

Pros

• +Inventory and topic model score opportunities against your site, not a generic difficulty number
• +Nine brief types on the Strategy tier, including cluster and link-structure guidance
• +Optimize grades drafts on depth and expertise instead of keyword counts
• +Operating under Siteimprove since 2024, so vendor continuity is less of a worry than with a small SaaS

Cons

• −No prices on the pricing page; every tier goes through a demo call
• −Free plan is ten queries a month with no inventory or briefs, enough to look but not to work
• −No API or integrations listed on the public pages
• −Single site inventory on every listed tier, so multi-site agencies need to ask about scaling

Is Frase cheaper than MarketMuse?

Frase starts at $39/mo. MarketMuse has a free tier; what its paid plans cost is not confirmed by us yet.

Does Frase or MarketMuse have a free tier?

MarketMuse has a free tier; Frase has paid plans only.

Which has a public API, Frase or MarketMuse?

Frase ships a public API, as of our last verification. A public API for MarketMuse is not confirmed by us — check its developer docs before you plan an integration.