Frase pricing

About

Frase is an agentic SEO and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) platform that researches, writes, optimizes, and tracks content so it ranks on Google and gets cited by AI engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini. The product centers on the “Frase Agent” — a single AI assistant that handles SERP research, content briefs, on-page optimization, site audits, publishing, and AI-visibility tracking through one workflow, positioning Frase as a consolidation play against point tools like Surfer SEO, Clearscope, MarketMuse, Semrush, and Ahrefs.

Frase serves solo content creators, in-house content and SEO teams, agencies, and enterprise marketing organizations. The vendor cites “thousands of teams,” a 4.8-star G2 rating, and reference customers including Andela, ActiveCampaign, Coursera, GitLab, Oracle, Thomson Reuters, and Under Armour. Founded in 2017 by Tomas Ratia (CEO) and Cody Jacques (CTO), Frase is a small, largely bootstrapped company — it raised roughly $947K in 2018 and, per GetLatka, reached about $1.8M ARR with around 16 employees by 2025. Revenue and headcount are not disclosed on its own pricing or enterprise pages.

Frase’s corporate history is unusual for an SEO tool: in October 2022, AI-writing company Copysmith announced it had acquired both Frase and Rytr, bundling the three products under a “Copyrytr” umbrella while letting each keep its own brand. Through that period Frase continued shipping independent pricing changes, and the product is still marketed under the Frase name today.

Positioning has shifted with the rise of AI search: Frase now markets AI-visibility tracking — monitoring how often a brand’s content is cited across leading AI engines — as a first-class capability bundled into every plan, alongside traditional SEO optimization. This GEO angle is the company’s primary differentiation against legacy content-optimization tools.

Pricing summary : How Frase’s tiered subscription with seat and volume add-ons works

Frase uses a tiered subscription model layered with per-seat and volume add-ons. The bill is built from three dimensions:

1. Plan tier (flat platform fee): Starter $49/mo, Professional $129/mo, Scale $299/mo, or a custom Enterprise quote. Annual billing cuts each self-serve tier by 20% (Starter $39, Professional $103, Scale $239 per month).
2. Seats: Each tier includes a fixed seat count (1 / 3 / 5 on Starter / Professional / Scale). Additional seats are a flat $29/seat per month add-on.
3. Metered volume allotments: Each tier caps multiple meters per month — AI-optimized articles (10 / 40 / 100), audit pages (50 / 250 / 1,000), AI generations (25 / 100 / 350), AI diagrams & infographics (— / 20 / 50), AI-visibility prompts (50 / 200 / 500), Content Guard pages watched (3 / 15 / 50), and API requests (250 / 1,000 / 3,000). When a cap is hit, customers either let the plan hold at its limit (Starter always holds; a surprise bill is off the table) or opt into pay-as-you-go overage on Professional and Scale (off by default), or buy add-on packs of articles, audit pages, or AI prompts without changing plans.

What makes this different: Every plan — including the cheapest Starter — runs the full content loop (Frase Answers, AI Agent, SEO + GEO optimization, AI-visibility tracking, site audits, Content Guard, FraseCMS publishing, API & MCP). Tiers gate volume, team size, AI-engine coverage, and how much the agent auto-publishes — not capability — so buyers choose a plan by throughput rather than by which features they unlock. There is no free tier; the on-ramp is a 7-day free trial with no credit card. Pay-as-you-go is optional and off by default on Professional and Scale, billing overage at the end of the cycle only if the customer turns it on.

Pricing by product

Frase platform (self-serve plans)

Add-ons (apply to any paid plan)

Sales motions across products: PLG / self-serve for Starter, Professional, and Scale (sign up online, 7-day trial, add-ons self-served from the dashboard); sales-led for Enterprise.

Hidden costs : what Frase teams actually pay once seats and volume add-ons stack

The advertised tier headline understates what a growing team actually pays, because seats above the included count and volume overages are billed separately — a quieter version of the bill-shock dynamics that hit AI products when usage outruns the base plan.

A 6-person content team on Professional (annual)

A team that doubles the included headcount nearly doubles its Professional base before buying any extra articles or audit pages — so seats, not the plan fee, often drive the bill at team scale.

Want to estimate your own Frase bill? Use the Frase pricing calculator to model your monthly cost based on plan tier, seats, articles, and audit pages.

Pricing evolution : from content-optimization tool to agentic GEO platform

Frase has rebuilt its packaging roughly once a year, and — unusually — has changed its value metric four times in five years: document credits → articles → search queries → SEO/research documents → today’s bundle of articles, audit pages, and visibility prompts. The throughline is a small, bootstrapped team chasing whatever unit best matched the product of the moment, from a 2020 dual-product (content + on-site Answer Engine) tool to a 2026 agentic SEO and GEO platform.

Cadence

Tracked range: 2020-11 to 2026-06. Snapshots between 2025-03 and 2026-06 rendered as JS skeletons in Wayback, so the exact month of the GEO repackaging is unknown; quarters not listed were verified stable across the readable snapshots.

Notable changes

• 2022-10 — Copysmith announced the acquisition of Frase and Rytr, forming the “Copyrytr” multi-product group (PR Newswire, 2022-10-06).
• 2023-01 — Value metric changed from document credits to articles; Solo cut to $14.99/mo; the $35/mo SEO Add-On was renamed the Pro Add-On (Wayback 2023-01).
• 2024-04 — A $0 Free Trial plan and a new API Add-on (“from $50/mo”) were added; the value metric became search queries (Wayback 2024-04-07).
• 2025-03 — Pay-as-you-go “Rank-Ready AI Documents” launched at $3.50/doc with a volume ladder down to $1.67/doc — the first genuinely per-unit usage meter in Frase’s history (Wayback 2025-03-21).
• 2026-06-07 — Repackaged into Starter / Professional / Scale / Enterprise with metered AI-visibility prompts and audit pages, marking the pivot from a content-optimization tool to an agentic SEO + GEO platform (live page, 2026-06-07).
• 2026-06-24 — A second packaging rebuild — same prices — recast Frase as a “content operating system for AI search” and surfaced four new meters (AI generations 25/100/350, AI diagrams —/20/50, Content Guard pages watched 3/15/50, API requests 250/1,000/3,000). Overage flipped from dashboard add-on packs to optional pay-as-you-go that is off by default (Starter holds at its limit; Professional and Scale opt in), per-tier AI-engine coverage was made explicit, and Frase Answers was productized as a free widget plus a paid conversation add-on (live page, 2026-06-24).

The metric-churn pattern in detail

Frase is a textbook case of a small team repeatedly re-choosing its usage metric as the product changed underneath it. The unit moved from document credits (2020–2022) to articles (2023) to search queries (2024) to SEO/research documents (2025) before landing on today’s multi-meter bundle in 2026. The most consequential single step was March 2025’s $3.50/doc pay-as-you-go option, which briefly exposed customers to pure per-unit billing before the 2026 repackaging reabsorbed that volatility into capped, add-on-topped tiers.

What changed with the June 24, 2026 rebuild is the shape of the churn. The first nine months of 2026 metric-instability was replacement — one unit swapped for another. The June 24 move is accretion: instead of renaming the metric again, Frase kept the same three core meters and added four more (AI generations, AI diagrams, Content Guard pages, API requests), so a single plan now exposes seven parallel billed dimensions. That trades one kind of instability (a moving value metric buyers can’t budget around) for another (a metering surface so wide that a plan’s “fit” depends on seven numbers at once). It is the same restlessness expressed through a denser feature matrix rather than a renamed unit — still the value-metric instability that makes a tool harder to budget and to compare against steadier rivals like Surfer SEO and Clearscope.

The loudest external signal in Frase’s history is corporate, not community: Copysmith’s October 2022 acquisition of Frase and Rytr drew coverage from PR Newswire and several trade outlets but no notable Hacker News or large-subreddit discussion. A search of Hacker News returned no stories about frase.io (all “frase” hits referred to people named Fraser), and Reddit threads were small and scattered across r/SEO and content-marketing communities — so the pricing changes above were quiet packaging decisions, not publicly contested moves.

What’s unique : capability-flat tiers and metered AI-search visibility

1. Every plan ships the full feature set. Frase gates volume and team size, not capabilities — even Starter includes the full AI Agent, GEO optimization, AI-visibility tracking, site audits, and API & MCP access. Buyers pick a plan by throughput, not by which features unlock.

2. AI-search visibility is itself a metered dimension. Plans cap “visibility prompts/month” (50 / 200 / 500) and which AI engines are tracked (ChatGPT + Google AI → +Perplexity → +Claude + Gemini → all named engines), making GEO monitoring a first-class billed unit rather than a bolt-on.

3. Overage is opt-in, not automatic. As of the June 24, 2026 repackaging, Starter always holds at its monthly limits — “a surprise bill is off the table” — while Professional and Scale offer pay-as-you-go that is off by default; customers must deliberately turn it on to bill past a cap. This is a clean inversion of the usual usage-pricing default (overage on, with alerts) and an explicit answer to AI bill-shock anxiety. Seats, audit pages, and AI prompts are also top-uppable from the dashboard in one click without a plan change.

4. Frase Answers is a free-widget-plus-add-on conversation meter. The same on-site Answer Engine that Frase sold standalone in 2020 (and later buried) is back — now bundled as one free conversational widget per site on every plan, with higher conversation volume sold as a paid add-on. It is the eighth metered surface and the clearest sign of the “content operating system” widening: a buyer-facing capture point that feeds the rest of the loop while opening a fresh expansion lever.

Strengths & weaknesses

Billing UX : self-serve add-ons, instant pro-rated plan changes

• Monthly / Yearly toggle — a pricing-page switch flips all tiers between monthly and yearly (SAVE 20%) pricing, with each card showing the per-month rate billed yearly alongside the month-to-month price (“$39/mo billed yearly · $49/mo month to month”).
• “Holds at limit” by default — when a plan reaches its monthly caps it simply stops at the limit, so a surprise bill is off the table; Starter always holds and has no overage at all.
• Optional pay-as-you-go (Pro & Scale) — on Professional and Scale, customers can turn on pay-as-you-go to keep working past a cap; it is off by default and overage bills at the end of the cycle only when enabled.
• Dashboard add-on purchase — extra seats, audit pages, and AI prompts are added directly from the dashboard (“Add seats, audit pages, or AI prompts as you go”), with no plan change or service interruption.
• Per-seat add-on — extra seats beyond the included count are a flat $29/seat per month on Professional and Scale (Enterprise includes them).
• Frase Answers free widget + add-on — every plan gets one free conversational Answers widget per site; higher conversation volume is a paid add-on.
• 7-day free trial, no credit card — every plan starts with a full-access trial that requires no card up front.

Strategic wins : packaging decisions that reduce buyer friction

1. Capability-flat tiers turn the buying decision into a volume question

By shipping every feature in every plan, Frase removes the “which tier unlocks X?” friction that plagues feature-gated SaaS. Buyers compare throughput numbers instead of feature checklists, which shortens evaluation — a pattern worth studying alongside usage-based packaging fundamentals.

2. Flat $29/seat add-on keeps team expansion predictable

A single, flat seat price across all paid plans makes headcount growth easy to forecast and removes the per-tier seat-price confusion common in seat-plus-usage models and broader usage-based SaaS and AI pricing structures.

3. Metering AI-search visibility productizes the GEO trend

By making “visibility prompts” and “AI platforms tracked” billed dimensions, Frase converts the emerging demand for AI-search monitoring into recurring, expandable revenue rather than a free differentiator — a sharp example of choosing the right usage metric aligned to a new buyer need, and a direct response to the value-metric problem in AI pricing.

4. Off-by-default overage turns bill-shock anxiety into a selling point

The June 24, 2026 packaging made pay-as-you-go opt-in — Starter simply stops at its caps, and Professional and Scale only bill past a limit if the customer turns overage on. Inverting the industry-default “overage on, hope you watch the alerts” posture lets Frase market predictability directly (“a surprise bill is off the table”) rather than burying it in fine print — a packaging answer to the bill-shock dynamics that make buyers wary of usage meters in the first place.

Areas to improve : pricing transparency gaps to close

1. Publish add-on and pay-as-you-go per-unit rates

The pricing page promises article, audit-page, and visibility-prompt add-ons, opt-in pay-as-you-go overage on Professional and Scale, and a paid Frase Answers conversation add-on — but lists no per-unit price for any of them. The June 24, 2026 repackaging actually widened this gap: it made overage a headline feature (“turn it on to keep working past the cap”) while leaving the cap’s price unstated, so a prospect who opts into pay-as-you-go cannot model what they’ll owe. Publishing these rates (even as “from $X per pack” or “$X per article over cap”) would let buyers self-qualify and reduce sales friction.

2. Reconsider the absence of a free tier

With no free plan, Frase’s only on-ramp is a 7-day trial — short relative to the time SEO results take to materialize. A capped freemium tier or longer trial could widen the product-led funnel against free-to-start competitors.

3. Surface an Enterprise price floor

Enterprise is entirely “talk to sales.” A published starting band would help larger buyers self-qualify before committing to a demo.

4. Stabilize and simplify the metering surface

Frase has changed what it charges for four times since 2020 — document credits, articles, search queries, and now a multi-meter bundle (see the Pricing evolution chronology) — and the June 24, 2026 rebuild widened that bundle from three meters to seven (articles, audit pages, AI generations, AI diagrams, visibility prompts, Content Guard pages, API requests). Each change tracked the product, but a buyer now has to reason about seven monthly numbers to know whether a plan fits, and frequent churn erodes the muscle memory buyers build around budgeting. Committing to this meter set for several cycles, collapsing the lower-salience meters (AI diagrams, API requests) into a simpler headline, and grandfathering existing customers cleanly when it must change would convert a history of churn into a credibility asset — the discipline that underpins durable usage-based SaaS and AI pricing.

Key takeaways

1. Capability-flat tiers simplify the buy. Putting every feature in every plan and differentiating only on volume turns tier selection into a throughput comparison, shortening evaluation.
2. Flat seat add-ons beat per-tier seat pricing for predictability. A single $29/seat rate across plans makes team-growth cost trivial to forecast.
3. You can meter an emerging trend. Frase turned AI-search visibility into billed “visibility prompts,” converting a differentiator into expandable revenue.
4. Off-by-default overage makes predictability a feature, not a hope — but meter accretion adds its own friction. Frase’s June 2026 rebuild stops a plan at its cap unless the customer opts into pay-as-you-go, inverting the usual “overage on, watch the alerts” default; yet rather than rename its value metric a fifth time, Frase added four more meters, so budgeting difficulty now shows up as a seven-number matrix and still-unpublished overage rates.
5. No free tier raises the bar on trial conversion. Without freemium, the 7-day trial must do all the qualifying work, so trial-to-paid mechanics matter disproportionately.

UBP implications

1. Opt-in overage is usage-based pricing with the bill-shock removed. Frase’s June 2026 default — a plan holds at its cap unless the customer turns pay-as-you-go on — shows you can keep usage-aligned upside (overage revenue from heavy users who choose it) while guaranteeing the budgeting certainty that makes wary buyers say yes to a meter at all.
2. Meter accretion grows a “soft” usage model without repricing — at a comprehension cost. Rather than raise headline prices or rename its value metric, Frase added four new capped meters plus a productized conversation add-on to the same tiers; every fresh meter is an expansion lever, but each also widens the surface a buyer must understand, the trade-off at the heart of multi-meter usage-based pricing. “Visibility prompts” and “AI platforms tracked” remain the standout net-new units born from GEO.
3. Transparency is the cost of the add-on model. An overage-and-add-on structure only delivers its predictability promise if the per-unit rates are public; hiding them reintroduces exactly the uncertainty UBP is meant to remove.

Sources

• Frase pricing page (accessed 2026-06-24)
• Frase for Enterprises (accessed 2026-06-24)
• Frase blog (accessed 2026-06-07)

Bottom line

Frase prices itself as a capability-flat, volume-tiered SEO and GEO platform: $49 / $129 / $299 a month (20% off annual) buys the same full “content operating system” at three throughput levels, with a flat $29/seat add-on. Its June 2026 rebuild held those prices but widened the meters to seven per plan and made overage opt-in — a plan now holds at its cap unless the buyer turns pay-as-you-go on, which is the model’s sharpest predictability move. The trade-off is comprehension: seven monthly numbers and still-unpublished add-on rates, alongside the absent free tier, are the seams a sharper pricing page would close.

Want to compare Frase against other content and marketing pricing? Browse the pricing blueprint.

Pricing timeline : Major events on a vertical axis

Each milestone below corresponds to a public pricing change, product launch, or material adjustment. Major events use a filled marker; minor adjustments use a faded one.

'Content operating system' repackaging: new meters (AI generations, Content Guard pages, API caps) and optional pay-as-you-go

Jun 2026

Headline prices held (Starter $49 / Professional $129 / Scale $299, 20% off annual; +$29/seat; Enterprise custom), but Frase rebuilt its packaging around a 'content operating system for AI search' narrative. New per-plan meters appeared: AI generations (25 / 100 / 350), AI diagrams & infographics (— / 20 / 50), Content Guard pages watched (3 / 15 / 50), and API requests (250 / 1,000 / 3,000). Frase Answers became a productized free-widget-plus-add-on conversation meter, and overage shifted to optional pay-as-you-go that is off by default (Starter always holds at its limit; Pro/Scale opt in). AI-Visibility engine coverage is now explicit per tier (ChatGPT + Google AI → +Perplexity → +Claude + Gemini → all named engines). Source: live pricing page screenshot 2026-06-24.

GEO repackaging: Starter/Professional/Scale/Enterprise with metered AI-visibility

Jun 2026

Frase repackaged into three self-serve tiers — Starter $49, Professional $129, Scale $299/mo (20% off on annual: $39/$103/$239) — plus a sales-led Enterprise plan. Every tier bundles the full AI Agent, AI-visibility tracking, site audits, and API/MCP; tiers scale volume (AI-optimized articles 10/40/100, audit pages 50/250/1,000, visibility prompts 50/200/500, domains, seats). Extra seats are a flat $29/seat; articles, audit pages, and visibility prompts are dashboard add-ons. The exact 2025→2026 transition month is not preserved in Wayback (snapshots after 2025-03 rendered as JS skeletons).

Pay-as-you-go 'Rank-Ready AI Documents' at $3.50/doc — first true per-unit usage pricing

Mar 2025

By Mar 2025 Frase added genuine usage-based pricing: 'Rank-Ready AI Documents' billed pay-as-you-go from $3.50/doc with a volume-discount ladder ($3.50 → $2.75 at 5 → $2.00 at 20 → $1.67 at 30, custom above), no subscription required. Plans were Basic $45 / Team $115 / Enterprise (Custom); the standalone Pro Add-on dropped out, folded into the per-document model. Source: Wayback snapshot 2025-03-21.

Solo tier removed; Enterprise plan added; metering becomes 'SEO documents'

Jan 2025

By Jan 2025 the Solo tier was gone, leaving Free Trial $0 / Basic $45 / Team $115 plus a sales-led Enterprise plan (Book a Demo) — the first appearance of a true Enterprise tier on the main page. Metering was relabeled 'SEO documents/mo' (30 / unlimited) with unlimited AI words and per-site page tracking. Pro Add-on $35, API Add-on $40. Source: Wayback snapshot 2025-01.

Free Trial $0 plan added; metering shifts to search queries; API Add-on appears

Apr 2024

By Apr 2024 a $0 'Free Trial' plan (1 user, 1 search query, no credit card) became the on-ramp, prices were rounded (Solo $15 / Basic $45 / Team $115; annual $12/$38/$97), and the value metric changed again to 'search queries/mo' (10 / 30 / unlimited). A new API Add-on appeared at 'starts at $50/mo'; the Pro Add-on held at $35/mo. Source: Wayback snapshot 2024-04-07.

Metering shifts from document credits to articles; SEO Add-On renamed Pro Add-On; Solo cut to $14.99

Jan 2023

By Jan 2023 the value metric flipped from 'document credits' to 'Write + Optimize N Articles/month' (Solo 4 / Basic 30 / Team unlimited) plus an AI-words cap (4,000/mo). Solo dropped from $19.99 to $14.99/mo ($12.66 annual). The $35/mo SEO Add-On was renamed the Pro Add-On and rebundled around the AI Writer. Source: Wayback snapshot 2023-01.

Answer Engine dropped from main pricing; Solo $19.99 tier added

Feb 2022

By Feb 2022 the Answer Engine / Frase Answers product was no longer on the main pricing page (moved to a sales demo), leaving a content-only ladder: Solo $19.99/mo (7 document credits), Basic $44.99/mo (30 credits), Team $114.99/mo (unlimited, 3 seats at $25/extra). The SEO Add-On stayed $35/mo. This snapshot brackets the Oct 2022 Copysmith acquisition that formed 'Copyrytr.' Source: Wayback snapshot 2022-02-15.

Document credits + Answer Engine (two products)

Nov 2020

Earliest archived Frase pricing ran two product lines side by side. Frase Content (the SEO optimizer) priced Basic $44.99/mo (30 documents/mo, 1 user) and Growth/Team $114.99/mo (unlimited documents, 3 users at $25/extra), while Answer Engine added a $199.99/mo tier with 500 answers/mo ($50 per extra 100 answers) for on-site question answering. Value metric was the document credit. Source: Wayback snapshot 2020-11-01.