Frase

Frase started as a chatbot company in 2016 before pivoting hard into content optimization. That origin story matters because the tool still treats content research like a Q&A system — it mines questions, organizes them into clusters, and surfaces data points that answer searcher intent. Where Clearscope focuses on term frequency and MarketMuse builds topical models, Frase emphasizes the specific questions your content needs to answer.

The core workflow is straightforward. Paste in a target keyword, Frase scrapes the top 20 Google results, and generates a brief showing what headings competitors use, what questions they answer, and what stats they cite. The interface displays this as cards you drag into your own outline. It's faster than manually opening 20 tabs and less abstract than a list of semantically related keywords. The brief tells you what to write, not just what words to include.

Frase works best for content teams that publish 10-50 articles per month and need a repeatable research process. At $45/mo for 30 articles, the math makes sense if you're writing briefs yourself or paying a contractor $50-$75 per brief. Solo freelancers on the $15/mo plan get 4 articles, which is tight if you're doing client work. The Team plan at $115/mo unlocks unlimited articles but lacks granular role permissions — everyone gets the same access level, which is fine for a 3-person content team but breaks down at scale.