Anyone who writes on the internet knows that there’s a difference between blogging and content marketing. Content marketing doesn’t begin without a proper set of tools that allow for researching and optimizing your texts.
One of the most popular tools for that is Surfer SEO. But it’s far from the only one, there are dozens of alternatives to Surfer SEO.
Whether you’re choosing an SEO tool for content marketing or trying to decide whether to change from Surfer to another tool, you should be interested in getting to know the best Surfer SEO competitors.
Key Factors for SurferSEO Alternatives Selection
What should a tool have to be considered the top Surfer SEO alternative? It has to at least provide the same or similar features for a comparable price.
Surfer offers the following features:
- Basic keyword discovery and keyword grouping tool
- Shareable content editor
- Content optimization tool
- AI writing capabilities
- Integration with writing platforms like Google Docs or WordPress
The pricing starts at $89 per month for 15 article credits.
If a tool manages to offer more features for a similar price or slightly fewer features for cheaper, it makes it to the list of the best Surfer SEO alternatives.
List of Surfer SEO Alternatives
In case you don’t have the time to go through the whole list item by item and just want a quick answer, here are our three top picks for the best Surfer SEO alternative.
- SE Ranking offers deeper analytical and research capabilities than Surfer, it’s a standalone SEO analytics platform, not just a content marketing tool. Its content marketing capabilities match those of Surfer, and it’s still cheaper per article.
- Content Harmony has tools that are very similar to the ones Surfer offers, but provides a few more data points. The price per article is higher though.
- LSIGraph is a bit simpler tool than the others on the list, but it does its job just fine and costs two times less than Surfer.
Now, if you want to learn about every competitor of Surfer, here are the ten best Surfer SEO alternatives.
1. SE Ranking
SE Ranking is perhaps the best Surfer SEO alternative because of how multifaceted it is. Essentially, it’s two tools combined into one.
Primarily, SE Ranking is an SEO research and analytics platform with capabilities far better than those Surfer SEO offers. It also has a content marketing platform that works well as a Surfer SEO alternative.
Let’s dig deeper and discover why SE Ranking might be the best Surfer SEO alternative.
Features
SE Ranking has a lot more tools than Surfer SEO. This is mainly because Surfer started as a content marketing SEO platform and SE Ranking is more of a general SEO tool that can cover every aspect of SEO from competitor research to position tracking.
Here’s a shortened list of SE Ranking tools that can help you with your SEO journey:
- Content idea finder
- Keyword analysis tool
- Full competitor analysis tool
- Website audit tool
- Content brief creation tool
- Content editor & optimization
- AI writer
- Position tracking
So SE Ranking is a tool that covers all steps of the content marketing process as well as provides tools for other SEO jobs.
The tools SE Ranking provides for keyword and competitor research are far better than any of those provided by the other Surfer SEO competitors. You can search for any keyword and receive a list of competing pages, traffic estimates, exhaustive lists of similar keywords, search intent estimates, and more.
Competitive search lets you check any competitor’s website to find what are their highest-ranking pages, what keywords they rank for, historical traffic estimates, their backlink profile, and much more.
All of this can elevate your content marketing strategy above simply mentioning the keywords suggested by a simple tool.
But if you don’t want to do in-depth analytics just yet, you can streamline your content marketing process with specialized tools. Find the right topics to cover with SE Ranking’s idea finder, generate briefs in the content editor with a list of suggested keywords, and send a link to it to your writer.
You or your writer can optimize the text in the editor on the platform or by using a Google Docs add-on. You can also use the SE Ranking AI writer to generate an outline, meta description, or longer text drafts.
Pricing
SE Ranking’s content marketing tools come at a price of a minimum of $29 per month. This grants you 15 articles per month. The other two plans get you 30 articles for $49 and 120 for $99 per month.
But content marketing tools are an add-on to a larger SE Ranking SEO analytics toolset. To get that, you have to pay a minimum of $55 per month.
This puts the cheaper tier with content marketing capabilities included at $84 per month. This is still cheaper than Surfer SEO and makes SE Ranking one of the best Surfer SEO alternatives.
Verdict
SE Ranking is one of the top Surfer SEO competitors. It has features that can be used for professional deep analysis, and it can be used by absolute beginners because it can streamline content marketing.
On top of that, SE Ranking is cheaper than Surfer SEO while providing more features. So overall, it’s a flexible and affordable Surfer SEO alternative.
2. Clearscope
Clearscope is a Surfer SEO competitor that focuses primarily on content production and keyword analysis. So essentially, a tool that is very similar to Surfer SEO, yet might not have all the features necessary to fully compare to it.
Can it be a decent competitor to Surfer SEO? Let’s take a look at what you’ll be getting with a Clearscope subscription and find out.
Features
Clearscope has three main tools in its arsenal that put it on the list of Surfer SEO alternatives:
- keyword analysis tool,
- brief editor,
- content performance monitoring tool.
With Clearscope, each content piece starts with keyword analysis. The tool lets you run analytics on several keywords, find their monthly searches, competition, and paid advertising bids. This tool helps you figure out what keywords would be good picks for writing about them in your blog.
Once you pick a few keywords, you can start creating briefs. You can form a brief from a template automatically or do it manually. In any case, Clearscope will provide an exhaustive list of keywords that you might want to include in the article just like Surfer SEO.
Like Surfer, Clearscope also can be integrated with your WordPress editor or a Google Docs document as an add-on. You can write the draft in either these two or in the platform’s built in editor.
The editor will highlight what keywords you’ve used already, how many more words you have to write, and give a general content health score. The score is based on how many of the requirements Clearscope suggests you’ve covered.
After the draft is written and the content is live, you can add the link to Clearscope and use the platform to monitor its performance. The monitoring tool will show the number of clicks your content receives, how this number changes over time, SEO value and a content score for multiple keywords within one content piece.
Pricing
Clearscope is slightly more expensive than Surfer SEO, the pricing starts at $170 per month, the price of the Essential Clearscope plan. For this price, you’ll only receive one user seat and ten content reports per month.
The plans that are more expensive than this one have custom pricing, so the final price may depend a lot on the type of organization you run. It’s safe to assume the more content reports you need, the more expensive it’s going to be.
Verdict
Clearscope is a neat tool, but it may lack some of the more advanced features to be considered better than Surfer SEO. If you need the basic tools for content creation with an easy to operate UI, and ones you can share with your writers, Clearscope is a decent choice.
However, if the pricing is a bit too steep for you, you should look into Clearscope alternatives.
3. Frase
Frase is a very similar tool to Surfer SEO and has a similar range of functions. Let’s unpack what this tool can offer.
Features
Frase has a few key features that make it a good alternative to Surfer SEO:
- Content analytics tool,
- Brief editor and optimization tool,
- AI writer tool,
- Performance monitoring tool.
Frase doesn’t have a very sophisticated way to analyze everything there is to know about the competition. The tool just does an analysis of competing articles for a keyword you chose. It then produces a rather detailed analysis of the top ten articles that appear for that keyword.
With this analysis, you can generate a brief, either manually or automatically, with the help of AI. It will create ideas for headings, a list of keywords you could insert in the article, and an estimated word count.
You can use this editor as the optimization tool, as it will guide you in the general content topic score as well as provide all the suggestions you could follow to make this piece of content better.
The writing process can be taken a step further with the Frase AI writer. This tool can generate parts of the text that don’t require a lot of research like blog intro or the FAQ section.
When you’ve created and published a blog, you can follow its performance on the platform. This tool also doesn’t add a lot in terms of features as it’s just a Google Search Console integration, but it does make it easier to follow your content in one platform.
Pricing
Frase has a pretty competitive pricing, the cheapest plan starts at $14.99. For this price, you get one user seat and four articles per month. For $114.99, you can get a plan with three user seats and unlimited articles, and that’s a great price for what Frase offers.
The middle pricing point at $44.99 per month gives you access to 30 articles per month, but only with a single user seat. A good choice for small agencies and freelancers.
The AI writer add-on costs $35 per month and works for all pricing plans.
Verdict
Overall, Frase is a pretty decent Surfer SEO alternative. It offers most of what Surfer does, even the AI writing, and is priced lower than Surfer. The only thing it lacks is more robust competitor analytics tools. If you find that you need more in-depth analysis, you may want to look into the list of Frase alternatives.
4. MarketMuse
MarketMuse has all the basic components that make Surfer SEO great apart from the AI-augmented writing. It does have an integration with ChatGPT though, so you can still comfortably generate bits of text within the MarketMuse platform if that’s what you’re after.
Let’s see what MarketMuse has to offer.
Features
MarketMuse has several core features and an important integration that put in on the list of Surfer SEO alternatives:
- Keyword analysis tool focused on topic clusters
- Competitor SERP research tool
- Brief creation tool
- Content editor and optimization tool
- Integration with ChatGPT for generative writing
MarketMuse goes specifically after an advanced approach to SEO, and topical authority. It doesn’t just analyze keywords individually, it ties groups of keywords to a single topic that you can cover. It also creates a map of topics that your competitors cover, providing you with a complete map of gaps in topic authority.
This research plays its role when you’re creating briefs in MarketMuse internal content editor. You can either form the briefs manually based on data on the top 10-30 competitors for the topic, or with the help of built-in AI brief generator.
The content editor also acts as an optimization tool as it shows you the number of keywords you have to mention and gives a content score. MarketMuse doesn’t have an AI writer of its own, but you can connect it to your ChatGPT account to generate text based on briefs provided by MarketMuse.
Pricing
MarketMuse has four subscription tiers: free, $149 per month, $399 per month, and flexible price enterprise subscription. The middle two tiers give you most of the features at 100 and an unlimited number of queries respectively.
The free tier gives you only ten analytics queries per month and a limited set of features, so it’s a way to test out MarketMuse at best. It can work for a very small content team for some time, but ultimately, it’s not a long-term solution.
Verdict
Overall, MarketMuse has tools very similar to those of Surfer SEO, perhaps with a slightly higher level of sophistication. The fact that it groups keywords into topics gives a better understanding of how keywords are supposed to work in SEO to an average user. The pricing is on par with Surfer SEO.
If you find that it’s not what you’d love to see for almost the same price as Surfer SEO, you might want to check out MarketMuse alternatives.
5. Use Topic
Topic is a straightforward tool for content creation for SEO purposes. It lacks tools for deeper SEO analytics, but the basics that it tackles make it a pretty good Surfer SEO alternative.
Let’s see what it has to offer.
Features
Topic has most of the tools that you’re looking for in a content creation tool:
- Competitor SERP research
- AI brief generator
- Content editing and optimization tool
- AI description generator
- Copilot, AI-based writing tool
The competition research tool doesn’t provide you with detailed information on each keyword or competitor. It does what most Surfer SEO competitors do, analyses the SERP for a keyword you provide, and finds what topics the competing articles cover, what keywords they use, etc.
It can generate a brief for you or your writer, and can even help with generating some bits of text like title and description tags with AI. The editor you’re working on has all the data that you want to include in the text like the number of keywords or suggested word count.
The editor can be used as a WordPress or Google Docs integration.
You can use a Topic add-on, the Copilot to generate texts based on the briefs in the editor. It’s Topic’s integration with ChatGPT, so you can use the AI writing platform without having to add your account manually.
Pricing
Topic has three pricing tiers, $99 per month, $199 per month, and $299 per month. They all offer 10, 25, and 50 content briefs and optimizations per month.
If you want to add AI text generation, the Copilot costs an additional $99 per month.
Verdict
Topic is a tool designed to simplify SEO content creation. It doesn’t provide very deep analytics, and simply suggests a good course of action when it comes to the keywords you need to include in a piece of content. That can be both an advantage and a no-go, depending on what your goals are.
One problem that you run into with Topic is that if you need more than 50 briefs per month, you have to go for custom enterprise pricing. If that’s a deal breaker for you, look into Use Topic alternatives.
6. Content Harmony
Content Harmony provides a minimalistic, but surprisingly nimble and sophisticated toolset for SEO specialists and content teams that want to understand their content a bit better. Even though it lacks AI-generation capabilities, it’s a decent Surfer SEO competitor.
Features
Content Harmony doesn’t have that many tools, but it serves it well to separate the functions of SERP analysis tool into different elements. Here they are:
- Keyword research tool with search intent insights
- Competitor SERP analysis
- SERP question analysis
- Visual and video SERP analysis
- Content brief template builder
- Content editor and optimization tool
Just like the other Surfer SEO alternatives, its analytics tools can find information on the right keywords to feature in an article, its lengths, and its structure. But Content Harmony adds so much on top of those basic features.
It provides an AI-based analysis of search intent for the keyword to make sure you know it’s not served better by a video or an image. It also analyses video and image results in case you want to produce a better visual to compete in SERP.
Another handy addition to the SERP analytics tool is question analysis. The tool looks at the People Also Ask section on Google search results as well as common questions on Quora and the like. This allows you to figure out what topics should be mentioned in the article.
The platform’s editor lets you incorporate all the findings and optimize the text accordingly.
Pricing
Content Harmony pricing is flexible and depends on how many content briefs you need per month. The minimum you could get is 5 briefs at $50 per month, and the highest subscription tier is 150 briefs for $799 per month. Enterprise plans start at $1000 for 200 or more briefs per month.
You can get a $10 trial for an unlimited amount of time, it grants you ten content briefs.
Verdict
Content Harmony has an incredibly well-thought-out research tool, so if you need a content optimization tool with great SERP analysis features, this one is for you. If you need deeper keyword or competitor analytics, look into Content Harmony alternatives.
7. LSIGraph
LSIGraph has a basic collection of tools that have immense value in them and offers it for a very appealing price. Let’s dig in and see what that means for you.
Features
This platform has three main tools to help you with SEO:
- Competitor and keyword analysis tool
- Content editor and optimization tool
- Interlinking tool
LSIGraph analytics tool can highlight keyword difficulty of the keywords you’re researching and group keywords by clusters. This lets you know what keywords are safe to go for and how much traffic you can get by optimizing a content piece for multiple keywords.
The optimization tool built into the editor can suggest a brief based not only on what the competing articles cover but also based on the things they don’t. What’s even more important, LSIGraph can later suggest how to link between the articles to make sure you’re getting the best SEO output possible.
Pricing
Surprisingly, LSIGraph isn’t expensive at all. The company offers only one plan that costs $43.99 per month. The price can be reduced to $14.69 per month if you pay for three years in advance.
Verdict
LSIGraph is a pretty good Surfer SEO alternative, even though it lacks some of the functions of Surfer. The tools LSIGraph provides add a bit more depth to the standard SEO content toolset. But if you find that you need a bit more of an analytical capacity, you might want to take a look at LSIGraph alternatives.
8. Copywritely
Copywritely is a tool that’s more focused on writing than SEO, even though it has some SERP analytics capabilities.
Features
Copywritely offers two basic tools:
- Content editor and optimization tool
- SERP analytics tool
The content optimization tool, however, is much more multifaceted than most tools that Surfer SEO alternatives offer. Apart from the standard optimization advice and grammar checks, Copywritely has a keyword density checker, readability checker, and duplicate content checker.
It also has a few smaller handy tools like a tool that estimates how long a text is in minutes of reading or a term alphabetizer.
The SERP analytics Copywritely provides is pretty basic, it just provides suggested keywords, structure, and word count based on the keyword you want to focus on and doesn’t go into much detail.
Pricing
Copywritely offers flexible pricing that depends on how many briefs you need per month. The payment tiers start at 50 pages at $29 per month. The highest subscription tier you could pay for is 5000 articles at $1250 per month.
Verdict
Copywritely has one of the cheapest prices per brief among all the top Surfer SEO alternatives, but it’s not the most potent tool in terms of analytical capabilities. It can be a great tool, if you need what is basically a lite version of Surfer SEO, but if you want a bit more than that, look for Copywritely alternatives.
9. WriterZen
Another company that can be the top Surfer SEO competitor, WriterZen, offers several tools analogous to those Surfer has and can connect to an AI assistant for AI-based text generation. Like MarketMuse, it focuses on topic clustering.
Features
WriterZen offers the following tools:
- Topic and keyword explorer
- Keyword clustering tool
- Content creator with AI text generation capabilities
- Plagiarism checker
- Workflow manager
The topic clustering and discovery features combine two benefits for SEO content teams. Firstly, it lets you explore not just keywords that are relevant for the keyword you research, but topics that can easily be made into articles. And since the tool groups multiple keywords into a single topic, you’ll be getting more SEO results for a single article.
The content editor that also works as an optimization tool doesn’t just provide suggestions on what the outline should be or what keywords to include. It also can be used to generate the parts of the text that are typically the hardest for writers or generate the whole text as the first draft.
Pricing
The pricing starts at $23 per month. This gives you 10,000 keyword analysis credits, which is more than enough for most writers. The $89 per month plan lets you share links to the editor with your writers and increases the number of keywords you can check. The other two plans cost $219 and $399 and expand collaboration capabilities and the number of keyword analytics credits.
Verdict
WriterZen gives users a great Surfer SEO alternative. It’s a nimble tool that provides decent research capabilities and the option to use AI to generate text. And it comes at a pretty affordable price.
If you believe you need more options than that, you might want to explore WriterZen alternatives.
10. Scalenut
Scalenut is a content SEO tool that makes a great Surfer SEO alternative. It offers very similar tools as just like Surfer, it can help you generate text with the help of AI. Let’s see if it’s worth it.
Features
Scalenut is an AI-focused tool, but it has more things to offer than just AI writing:
- Keyword exploration and clustering tool
- Brief builder
- Content editor and optimization tool
- AI-powered writing and rewriting.
The analytical tools are not the most in-depth ones, but Scalenut does provide a comprehensive list of keywords you can use together to cover a certain topic. What it provides in the brief builder is even more valuable — a collection of questions on that topic found online, competing articles, and statistics you can use in your article.
When you’re writing the article, you can use Scalenut’s AI writer to generate the whole text or fix a small part of it. A neat thing you can do is write a text on your own, and then have the AI add the missing keywords for you.
Pricing
The cheapest plan you can get with Scalenut costs $39 per month, but it doesn’t provide a whole lot of value for that price. You only get to work with five articles per month and generate 100,000 words with AI.
The $79 per month plan gives you 30 articles per month and the plan that costs $149 per month ups that number to 75.
Verdict
Scalenut provides pretty decent tools, especially if you need more of an AI-focused tool and don’t want to go deep into keyword analytics. However, it doesn’t have a good price-to-value ratio.
If you feel like you need more functions for the same price, take a look at Scalenut alternatives.
Conclusion
This concludes the list of best Surfer SEO alternatives. Some of them offer similar tools for a smaller price. Others offer much better tools for a higher price. Yet others can offer better tools for a comparable price.
What’s the best Surfer SEO competitor? The final decision depends on your business goals. If you’re looking for a cheaper tool with similar features, your best alternative to Surfer SEO is LSIGraph.
If you’re looking for a tool with a bit more functions and don’t care about the higher pricing, the best Surfer SEO competitor is Content Harmony.
Need a multipurpose tool that can be used for easy content creation and for deep SEO analysis? Then the best Surfer SEO alternative is SE Ranking.
SE Ranking is the best Surfer SEO alternative because they have all the necessary SEO tools, not only Content Editor, so you don’t have to pay twice.
I use several tools for different projects. But Surfer is in the past. My go-to list of tools now SEMrush, SE Ranking, Ubersuggest.
SE Ranking is BTW has almost everything that SEMrush does, but my clients preferred SEMrush
I’ve tried several content tools and in my opinion, all of them are similar. even the interfaces look pretty much the same. but some of them may offer just a content solution and some – an SEO tool in addition. I prefer having all tools for seo in one platform
Great read! The breakdown of Surfer SEO alternatives, especially SE Ranking and Clearscope, was insightful. The affordability of LSIGraph also caught my eye. Definitely worth exploring these options further.