Reviewed November 2, 2026
Clearscope alternatives depend on which of its four modules you pay for. To track AI answers, Placton from $59 a month adds Perplexity and Grok, with no content grade. For the grade and editor, NeuronWriter from $23, Surfer from $59 or Frase from $39 billed yearly. Clearscope itself starts at $129.
7 days free. No card required.
Clearscope sells Discover, Track, Write and Monitor on one plan. Start from the one your team actually opens. Prices read November 2, 2026.
| If you want | Pick | From, a month | What you give up |
|---|---|---|---|
| You pay mostly for Track: who the AIs name, and how often | Placton | $59 | You give up: The content grade, the sidebars in Docs, Word and WordPress, and all of Monitor. Gemini is not tracked, and Claude, Perplexity and Grok run weekly. |
| You pay mostly for Write and want the closest swap | Surfer | $59$49 billed yearly | You give up: Docs, WordPress and any AI tracking on the entry plan. All three start at Standard, $119, and that tracking is ChatGPT alone. |
| You want a content score for as little as possible | NeuronWriter | $23 | You give up: Search Console, WordPress and unlimited members, which wait until Gold at $69. AI monitoring is 5 to 20 questions. |
| One tool to research, draft, grade and publish | Frase | $39billed yearly | You give up: Seats: 1, 3 or 5 by plan. On AI answers, Claude and Gemini need Scale, $239 billed yearly. |
| You run client work and want content plus AI tracking | Rankability | $97 | You give up: A trial without a card: it asks for one. And a content project is one page, 20 a month at this price. |
| You brief outside writers before anything gets drafted | Content Harmony | $50 | You give up: Volume at this price, with 5 workflows a month. Its pricing page mentions neither AI drafting nor AI tracking. |
| You plan what to publish across a whole site | MarketMuse | Freepaid plans by demo | You give up: A price you can see: every paid plan starts with a demo. Its pricing page does not mention AI search. |
| You want a plain grade with an API from day one | Dashword | $99 | You give up: AI tracking, which its pricing page does not mention. 30 reports a month, then a jump to $349. |
Where “alternative” only half fits. Placton replaces Track and part of Write. It gives you no content grade, no sidebar in Docs, Word or WordPress and none of Monitor’s Search Console views. If that is why you pay for Clearscope, go straight to Surfer, NeuronWriter or Frase.
Where Clearscope holds its ground. Unlimited users on every plan, and extra queries cheap enough that past 75 questions it costs less than Placton. If your writers live in its sidebar, staying may be the better call.
Clearscope, from Mushi Labs, began as a content optimization tool with an editor. Since October 2025 it sells itself as a way to write what Google ranks and AI mentions. Which of the Clearscope alternatives you need depends on which of these four you would be replacing.
Research
Start from a topic or any URL. You get questions and keywords with average monthly searches and a 12-month trend from Google Ads data, plus competition, CPC and a one-line read on what the asker wants. Open a query to see who ranks, what people also ask and which brands Google, Gemini, ChatGPT and Claude name.
AI mention tracking
You choose the questions and the rival brands. It charts a mention rate for each engine and each question, keeps the answers behind every point and runs one project per brand or client. The Track page lists Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude and Google. It does not say how often each query runs, though its headline reads “week by week”.
The content editor
The part most people know. A question becomes an outline and a draft, following your direction, tone and brand guidelines. A content grade from A++ to F compares the text with the pages ranking today, a term map shows the gaps, and Boost content grade fills them in one click. The same sidebar works in Google Docs, Microsoft Word and WordPress.
Live pages
Connect Search Console and every tracked page gets clicks, impressions, position, a fresh grade and an SEO value figure. Saved views flag content decay, queries close to page one, technical issues and missing internal links. Google updates are marked on every chart, so you can see what a core update hit.
Most lists still describe the old product. Of the seven Clearscope alternatives lists we read from Google’s top 10 on , none explains Discover, Track and Monitor as they work today, and one says Clearscope has no framework for answer engines without mentioning Track at all. Compare tools on that old picture, an editor with a score, and you can end up buying something that drops the part you use.
The grade and the AI side are separate things. Its help center says the content grade comes from the terms on top-ranking pages. AI Term Presence sits beside it, as an icon showing which terms the AIs use, and nothing we read says it changes the grade. So an A++ tells you how well you cover what ranks, not whether an AI will name you.
What its website does not say. How often Track asks each query and how many times, whether “Google” means AI Overviews, AI Mode or the normal results, which countries Track covers, how many rivals you can watch and whether the trial asks for a card. We have not used the app. If you take the 14-day trial, those are the questions to settle first.
Its homepage names Intuit, Adobe, Shopify, Deloitte and IBM among its customers, and an undated offer page claims more than nine years in business. This is a settled product with a long record, so the case for leaving rests on fit and money, not on failure.
Clearscope’s cost, read from its pricing page on , in dollars and before tax. Monthly plans carry no contract, and it publishes no yearly price.
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| Plan | A month | Tracked queries | Pages | Discoveries | Drafts | Users, projects | Also |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Essentials | $129 | 50 | 50 | 20 a month | 20 a month | Unlimited | Training and priority support, as on every plan |
| Business | $399 | 300 | 300 | 50 a month | 20 a month | Unlimited | Dedicated account manager |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom | Custom | Custom | Unlimited | Custom credits and agreements, Crawler whitelisting, SSO |
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| Add-on | On Essentials | On Business |
|---|---|---|
| One extra tracked query, sold in blocks of 10 to 500 | $0.65 a month | $0.55 a month |
| 100 extra pages in Monitor | $25 a month | $15 a month |
| One extra draft, sold in blocks of 10 to 500 | $5 | $2 |
Worked out from the selector on its pricing page: 10 extra queries show $6.50 on Essentials and $5.50 on Business. The page does not say whether extra drafts repeat every month.
Rarely because it is bad. Clearscope reviews are strong: on it held 4.9 out of 5 on Capterra (opens in a new tab) from 60 ratings and 4.9 on G2 (opens in a new tab) from 92 reviews. The dated reviews we could read on Capterra run from 2018 to 2022, so they judge the old editor, and most of them like it.
This is the complaint that keeps coming back, and much of it predates the $129 plan. It still bites if you publish little: a freelancer writing four posts a month pays for 20 drafts and 50 tracked queries they will not use. NeuronWriter covers that case at $23. Reviewers who write at scale tend to say the opposite, that the cost pays for itself.
Four modules on one plan are good value if you use all four. If your team opens Write and nothing else, you are funding Track and Monitor. If you bought Clearscope to see what the AIs say, you are paying for an editor you may not open. Either way a narrower tool usually costs less, which is why this page starts from the module.
Track lists four engines, with no Perplexity or Grok on the pages we read, and it publishes neither a cadence nor how many times it asks each query. If you report these numbers to a client or a board, that gap matters. Rankability lists 11 AIs, and Placton lists five with a published method.
A grade built from the pages that already rank pushes everyone toward the same article. One Capterra reviewer wrote in 2019, “It’s possible to get an A++ just by stuffing keywords”. Several lists of alternatives to Clearscope use this against it, and it is a fair warning, but it applies just as much to every SERP-based content score on those lists. Switching editors will not fix it. Adding what only you know will.
One list in Google’s top 10 says the cost climbs as you add seats, yet every Clearscope plan has unlimited users and projects. Complaints about a basic keyword tool come from old reviews, and Discover now shows monthly searches, a 12-month trend, competition and CPC. A recent review that says it has no WordPress connection is plainly out of date. If your reason for looking is one of these, look again.
Content optimization tools and AI trackers, with what each one covers from Clearscope’s four modules, who it suits and where it falls short. Every price is from the maker’s own pricing page on . We compared what each one publishes and did not sign up to any of them.
AI tracking plus a writer
$59/ month
$602 billed yearly ($50.17 a month). Growth costs $129 and Scale $299.
Best for: Teams whose real question is what ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Claude, Perplexity and Grok say about them, and who want a first draft for the questions they are absent from. It costs less than half of Clearscope’s entry plan and publishes how often it asks.
Weak point: There is no content grade, no sidebar in Docs, Word or WordPress, no Search Console and no export of the data. Claude, Perplexity and Grok are asked weekly through their APIs, and Gemini is not measured.
Content editor and AI tracker
$59/ month
$49 billed yearly, with no AI tracking. Standard at $119 tracks ChatGPT weekly; Pro at $219 tracks five AIs daily.
Best for: Teams that use most of what Clearscope sells and want one vendor for it. The editor gives live NLP guidance on terms and structure with a Content Score on top, and all five AIs named it, four of them first.
Weak point: Plans split the jobs. Five-AI tracking starts at Pro, $219, against $129 at Clearscope. Seats run 1, 3 and 5, and its trial asks for payment details.
Per its pricing page, read November 2, 2026Thinking of leaving Surfer too? Its alternatives
Content editor
$23/ month
Then $45, $69, $93 and $117. Yearly billing gives 2 months free.
Best for: Freelancers and small sites that want a real content score at the lowest price on this page. At $23 you get 25 documents a month, against 20 drafts in Clearscope’s plan, though a document and a draft are not quite the same thing.
Weak point: Bronze and Silver have read-only sharing and no Search Console or WordPress connection. Those arrive at Gold, $69, along with unlimited team members.
Per its pricing page, read November 2, 2026
Editor and AI tracking
$39/ month
Billed yearly. $49 appears struck through, which looks like the monthly price. Larger plans: $103 and $239 billed yearly.
Best for: Small teams that want the whole loop in one place, including a step Clearscope’s pages do not mention: it publishes to WordPress, Webflow, Sanity or Wix. Its 40 articles on Professional are twice Clearscope’s 20 drafts at about the same price.
Weak point: Seats are the catch, with 1, 3 or 5 included and extras at $29 each. AI coverage climbs with the plan, so check what your tier tracks, not what the top one does.
Per its pricing page, read November 2, 2026Frase compared on its own page
Content and AI tracking for agencies
$97/ month
Then $297 and $497. Yearly billing is $970, $2,970 and $4,970.
Best for: Agencies. Unlimited client workspaces and team members from the first plan, weekly Google rankings, branded reports, and the widest AI coverage on this page. On paper its $97 plan gives more tracked queries than any plan near that price here.
Weak point: The 7-day trial needs a card and runs on monthly plans only. A single brand with no clients pays for agency features it will not open.
Per its pricing page, read November 2, 2026
Briefs and workflows
$50/ month
Then $99, $199, $299, $599 and $799. Enterprise from $1,000. About 10 to 16% less billed yearly.
Best for: Editors who hand work to outside writers and want every content brief to look the same. You pay per workflow, with unlimited users and projects, and the first 10 workflows cost $10 with no automatic billing.
Weak point: Credits last 90 days. Its pricing page mentions neither AI tracking nor AI drafting, so plan on a second tool if you need either.
Per its pricing page, read November 2, 2026
Content strategy across a site
Free
Optimize, Research and Strategy show no public price. Each one goes through “Book a demo”.
Best for: Larger content programs deciding what to publish next. Paid plans add a site inventory, tracked topics, strategy documents and, on Strategy, all nine brief types. Its Topic Navigator, SERP X-Ray and heatmaps are about the whole site more than the single page.
Weak point: You cannot see a paid price without talking to sales, and the lists that quote one disagree wildly. Its pricing page does not mention AI search. Seats stop at 1, 3 or 5.
Per its pricing page, read November 2, 2026MarketMuse compared on its own page
Briefs and content scoring
$99/ month
Business starts at $349. It offers 20% off on annual billing if you contact it.
Best for: Small teams that find Clearscope’s platform bigger than they need. Scoring is free and unlimited, only reports use credits, and every account gets the API and an MCP server, which Clearscope does not mention.
Weak point: At $99 it sits close to Clearscope’s price without the AI side. Past 30 reports the next plan starts at $349.
Per its pricing page, read November 2, 2026
* On paid plans. ChatGPT is read on chatgpt.com in every country Placton tracks except Venezuela and Puerto Rico, where it is asked weekly through its API.
The lists in Google’s top three and the AI answers below name these too. Some are worth a look for a narrower job, and some have changed since those lists were written. Where we could not read a price, we give none rather than copy one. Comparing AI trackers only? See how Peec AI compares, Otterly.AI or Semrush’s AI toolkit.
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| Tool | What we read | Our take |
|---|---|---|
| Semrush SEO Writing Assistant | Part of its SEO Toolkit, with a sidebar for Docs, WordPress and Word. Its help center allows free and Pro accounts 2 documents per account, and Guru and Business unlimited. The first paid plan showed us €134 a month, in euros. | Worth using if you already pay for Semrush. Four of five AIs named Semrush, but free here means two documents. |
| Search Atlas | $99, $199, $399 and from $999 a month, spent as shared credits across every tool, with a 7-day trial. AI visibility: one provider on Starter, three on Growth, six on Pro. | A full SEO suite rather than a Clearscope swap. One more dashboard to learn if you only want a grade. |
| Scalenut | $59, $89 and $199 a month. An early-access deal shows $21, $31 and $70 billed yearly. A 7-day trial. Starter tracks 10 prompts weekly on ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews. | The yearly figures are a promotion, so read the renewal terms before you count on them. |
| Leaps | $99, $199 and $299 a month, 14-day trial with no card. It interviews your experts before it drafts. | A different idea of the job: original input first, no grade to chase. Its own December 2025 list shows lower prices than its pricing page does now. |
| WriterZen | One-time payments of $135, $270 and $405, not a subscription. | Keyword and topic discovery more than grading. One of Google’s top three lists still shows $75, $150 and $225. |
| Topic | $99, $199 and $299 a month with 10, 25 or 50 briefs, on a page still showing a sale that ended in July 2021. It says it joined the CafeMedia family. | A page that old may not reflect what you would pay. Ask before you plan around it. |
| Page Optimizer Pro | $40, $72 and $143 a month, in credits. It lists ChatGPT, Google AI, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity. Claude named it in the answers below. | For technical SEOs who think in page signals, not for a team of writers. |
| SE Ranking | A whole SEO suite with a content editor, from €109 as shown to us in euros, with a 14-day trial and no card. | Fits if you also want to replace a rank tracker. Heavy if you only want a grade. |
| AirOps | AI discovery measurement and content workflows. Its pricing page shows no dollar price for its plans. | For teams building a content operation, with setup to match. |
| Ahrefs | Named by Claude, Perplexity and Grok. Claude itself described its content tools as less specialized than Clearscope’s. | A research suite for keywords and backlinks. It sits beside a content editor rather than replacing one. Its AI side is Brand Radar. |
| Peec AI and Otterly.AI | AI trackers only: $95 and $29 to start, with no editor at all. | Relevant only if Track is the one module you use. Compare Peec AI and Otterly.AI with Placton. |
| Outranking and GrowthBar | Their pricing pages would not open for us on November 2, 2026. | So no price here. Other lists quote figures for both that we could not confirm. |
| SimilarContent | Its address now opens Onpage, a website builder. | Older lists still recommend it. We could not find the tool they describe. |
| TeamBench and Rankfender | Each was named by Grok alone, in answers citing their own pages. | We did not read their pricing, so we leave them out. |
The same tools, read across. Use it backwards: find the module you depend on, then see who keeps it and who drops it.
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| Tool | Discover | Track | Write | Monitor |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Placton | Suggested questions with Google and AI search figures. No site research | Five AIs on every plan | Articles and rankings, no grade | No |
| Clearscope | Volume, intent and brands by engine, from a topic or a URL | Four engines, per its Track page | Grade from A++ to F, drafts, three sidebars | Search Console, decay, technical issues and internal links |
| Surfer | Keyword research, Topical Map, SERP Analyzer | ChatGPT on Standard, five AIs from Pro | Content Score, AI articles, Docs and WordPress from Standard | Content Audit, Search Console, drop alerts |
| Frase | SEO research and topic clusters | Two AIs, up to five on Scale | SEO and GEO scores, drafts, publishes to four CMSs | Content Guard, on 10 to 300 pages |
| NeuronWriter | Content planner, new ideas from Gold | 5 to 20 questions, more through an add-on | Content score, 25 to 150 documents, AI credits | Search Console from Gold |
| Rankability | Keyword and topic research | 11 AIs on every plan | Research, brief, draft and optimization guidance per project | Search Console and Analytics in client reports, weekly Google rankings |
| Content Harmony | Keyword reports with search intent | Not on its pricing page | Brief and grader, no drafting on its pricing page | Not on its pricing page |
| MarketMuse | Topic Navigator, Keywords, SERP X-Ray | Not on its pricing page | Briefs and an Optimize application | Site inventory on paid plans |
| Dashword | Reports start from a keyword you bring | Not on its pricing page | Briefs, scoring, AI writer, Docs add-on | Content monitoring |
Only Surfer, Frase and Rankability come close to all four. They are the ones to test if you use most of Clearscope. Each packages it differently: Surfer splits by plan, Frase by seats and AIs, and Rankability around client work.
“Not on its pricing page” is not the same as “no”. It means the maker does not mention it where you would look before buying. Ask them if it decides your choice.
Clearscope’s entry price, spent elsewhere. None of the lists we read lines this up, because it means reading eight pricing pages on the same day. We read them on .
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| Plan | A month | AI questions | AIs | Texts | Seats |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Placton Growth | $129 | 75 | 5 | 15 | 10 |
| Clearscope Essentials | $129 | 50 | 4, per its Track page | 20 drafts | Unlimited |
| Frase Professional | $103billed yearly; $129 struck through | 50 | 3 | 40 articles | 3 |
| Rankability Starter | $97 | 100 | 11 | 20 content projects | Unlimited |
| Surfer Standard | $119$99 billed yearly | 25 | 1, weekly | 360 a year | 3 |
| NeuronWriter Platinum | $93 | 15 | Not stated without its add-on | 100 documents | Unlimited |
| Content Harmony 12 | $99 | None on its page | None on its page | 12 workflows | Unlimited |
| Peec AI Starter | $95 | 50 | 3 you pick | None | Unlimited |
The units are not the same. A draft, a document, a workflow and a content project each cover different work, and a tracked query in one tool is not an answer count in another. Read this as a map of the trade-offs, not a league table.
Up to 75 tracked questions Placton costs the same or less. Above that, Clearscope’s cheap add-ons win, and its price includes an editor and Monitor as well.
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| Questions | Clearscope | Placton |
|---|---|---|
| 20 | $129Essentials, 50 included | $59Starter, 20 prompts |
| 50 | $129Essentials, 50 included | $129Growth, 75 prompts |
| 75 | $148.50Essentials plus a block of 30 | $129Growth, 75 prompts |
| 100 | $161.50Essentials plus a block of 50 | $299Scale, 250 prompts |
| 250 | $259Essentials plus a block of 200 | $299Scale, 250 prompts |
| 300 | $399Business, 300 included | $510Agency, with its minimum of 3 clients |
Clearscope gives unlimited projects from one pool of queries. Placton Agency charges $15 per client plus prompts. Placton wins while the book is small, and the lines cross near 60 questions with three clients.
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| Clients, questions | Clearscope | Placton Agency |
|---|---|---|
| 3 and 20 | $129 | $77 |
| 3 and 50 | $129 | $125 |
| 5 and 100 | $161.50 | $235 |
| 10 and 250 | $259 | $550 |
How we worked it out. Clearscope is the cheaper of Essentials or Business plus the smallest add-on block that reaches the number, on monthly billing and before tax, assuming one block per plan. Placton’s rows use its card plans up to 250 prompts and Agency above that. Billed yearly, its Scale plan drops to $254.17 a month, just under Clearscope in the 250 row.
A question is not an answer. Placton publishes what a prompt gets: about 72 answers a month across five AIs, with two of them daily and three weekly. Clearscope does not publish how often it asks, so we cannot compare the cost per answer. That makes these tables a comparison of questions and nothing more.
The number to beat is Rankability’s. On paper $97 a month gives 100 queries on 11 AIs, 20 content projects and unlimited clients, with the catch of a card to start the trial. If agency volume drives your decision, price that plan as well.
People ask this in chat windows now too. So on we put the search as written to ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Claude, Perplexity and Grok, using the engine behind Placton, and noted who each one named and which sites it leaned on.
4
tools named by all five: Surfer, Frase, MarketMuse and NeuronWriter. Semrush came next, in 4 of 5 answers.
1 of 5
answers brought up a tool for tracking AI visibility: Grok, with Rankfender. The others read this search as content grading and SEO.
19 of 32
sites the AIs cited belong to software companies in or near this market, many with a list that ranks their own tool first.
$89 to $99
is what Google’s answer and Grok gave as Surfer’s starting price. Surfer’s pricing page shows $59 and $119.
Asked . The number is the order each AI named the tool in.
| Tool |  ChatGPT |  Google AI Overviews |  Claude |  Perplexity |  Grok | AIs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Surfer | Named 1 | Named 1 | Named 1 | Named 2 | Named 1 | 5 |
| Frase | Named 2 | Named 2 | Named 2 | Named 1 | Named 2 | 5 |
| MarketMuse | Named 4 | Named 4 | Named 5 | Named 3 | Named 3 | 5 |
| NeuronWriter | Named 3 | Named 3 | Named 3 | Named 10 | Named 7 | 5 |
| Semrush | Not named | Named 5 | Named 6 | Named 4 | Named 4 | 4 |
| Ahrefs | Not named | Not named | Named 7 | Named 7 | Named 5 | 3 |
| Content Harmony | Named 5 | Not named | Not named | Named 5 | Not named | 2 |
| Dashword | Named 6 | Not named | Not named | Named 6 | Not named | 2 |
Named by one AI: Page Optimizer Pro (Claude), TeamBench (Grok), Rankfender (Grok), SE Ranking (Perplexity), Rankability (Perplexity).
The AIs have not noticed Track either. Not one of the five answers says Clearscope now follows AI mentions. ChatGPT describes its main appeal as content grading and semantic keyword recommendations. Anyone asking an AI what replaces Clearscope gets a list of editors, even if Track is what they pay for.
Prices in answers run behind. Two AIs gave a Surfer price that matches no plan on its page. Grok put MarketMuse at $149 while ChatGPT said to contact the vendor, and MarketMuse’s own page shows no price. Treat a figure from a chatbot as a lead to check, the same way you would treat one from a list.
The citations are scattered. The AIs cited 32 sites, and only 6 of them were cited by more than one AI. Perplexity alone cited 17, and Claude none, because it answered this time without running a search.
It is one reading. One answer per AI, on one day, from the United States, in English. Another day can bring different names, which is why Placton repeats each question and publishes its margins of error.
ChatGPT
Its search also returned, without citing them: Surfer, itechguides.com.
Google AI Overviews
Claude
Perplexity
Grok
In bold, sites cited by more than one AI for that question.
ChatGPT: read on chatgpt.com, logged out, with web search on, with gpt-6.Google AI Overviews: the AI Overview Google shows above its results.Claude: asked through its API with live web search, with claude-haiku-5-5.Perplexity: asked through its API, which always searches, with sonar.Grok: asked through its API with live web search, with grok-4.3.“best Clearscope alternatives”, as written, with no brand and no instructions added. Placton’s reader extracted the names, and we checked every one by hand, counting each vendor once and keeping the order of each answer. “Surfer SEO” counts as Surfer, “PageOptimizer Pro” as Page Optimizer Pro, and Semrush’s Writing Assistant as Semrush. Claude had web search available and did not use it on this question.
The four tools every AI named, next to Clearscope and Placton, on the points buyers actually weigh.
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| Point | Placton | Clearscope | Surfer | Frase | MarketMuse | NeuronWriter |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starts at | $59 | $129 | $59, or $49 billed yearly | $39 billed yearly | Free, then by demo | $23 |
| Grade or score | None for Google | A++ to F | Content Score out of 100 | SEO and GEO scores | An Optimize application; no grade on its pricing page | Content score |
| Where writers work | Its own editor, then copy or export | Its editor, Docs, Word, WordPress | Its editor; Docs and WordPress from Standard | Its editor, then publishes to four CMSs | Its applications | Its editor; WordPress from Gold |
| AIs tracked | ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Claude, Perplexity, Grok | Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, Google | Up to five, no Claude or Grok | Two to five by plan, Grok on Enterprise | Not on its pricing page | A small monitor; five listed with its add-on |
| Texts a month | 5, 15 or 40 | 20 on both card plans | 10 to 30 on average | 10, 40 or 100 | 5, 10 or 20 briefs | 25 to 150 documents |
| Seats | 2, 10 or unlimited | Unlimited | 1, 3 or 5 | 1, 3 or 5 | 1, 3 or 5 | Unlimited from Gold |
| Live page tracking | No | Monitor, with Search Console | Content Audit, Search Console | Content Guard | Site inventory | Search Console from Gold |
| Trial | 7 days, no card | 14 days; card terms not stated | 7 days of Pro, with payment details | 7 days, no card | Free plan; trial length not stated | 7 days once you register |
The classic matchup. Both grade a draft against what ranks. Clearscope keeps it to a letter and a term list that a new writer picks up quickly, and Surfer gives more dials, with a Content Score that adds an SEO part and an AI Search part. Surfer costs less to start at $59 but has one seat and no Docs connection until Standard. Clearscope has unlimited users from $129. For a big writing team Clearscope tends to come out cheaper. For one person or a small team, Surfer.
Frase goes further at both ends. It researches and drafts before the grade, and after it publishes to your CMS and watches pages for decay. At about the same money you get 40 articles against 20 drafts, but 3 seats against unlimited. Clearscope stays stronger where the writer is, with the same sidebar in Docs, Word and WordPress. Pick Frase if one or two people run the whole process, and Clearscope if many people write and someone else publishes.
These answer different questions: how good is this page, against what should we publish next across the site. MarketMuse leans on inventory, topic models and strategy documents, and Clearscope’s Monitor now reaches toward that with its saved views. Price is the hard part. MarketMuse shows none for paid plans, and lists quote anything from $99 a month to $7,200 a year, which is why we quote none. If you need a number this week, that alone may decide it.
The budget question. NeuronWriter’s $23 plan gives 25 documents against Clearscope’s 20 drafts, for about a sixth of the price. What you give up is polish and team features: read-only sharing and no connections until Gold, a much smaller AI monitor, and no Word sidebar on its plan list. For a solo writer that is a good trade, and for a managed team of freelancers it often is not.
If what you value in Clearscope is the brief you send to a writer, Content Harmony is built around that moment. You pay per workflow, from $50 for 5 to $99 for 12, with unlimited users on all of them. Clearscope has brief templates as well, plus drafting and tracking, but its allowance is built for the whole cycle. Test one real brief in each and hand both to the same writer.
Rankability ranks first on Google for this search with its own list, and its plan is the closest match to Clearscope’s spread: research, content and tracking, at $97. It leans hard toward agencies, with client workspaces and branded reports, and it lists more AIs. Clearscope has the sidebars and a trial page that does not mention a card, where Rankability requires one.
Clearscope takes 10 rows, Placton 7, and 7 go either way. Placton’s case rests on a lower entry price, Perplexity and Grok, and what it publishes about how it measures.
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| Row | Clearscope | Placton | Better |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry price | $129: 50 queries, 20 drafts, 50 pages | $59: 20 prompts, 5 texts | Placton |
| At $129 a month | 50 queries, 20 drafts, unlimited users | 75 prompts, 15 texts, 10 members | It dependsPlacton on questions. Clearscope on drafts and users. |
| Yearly billing | No public yearly price | 15% off, shown on the pricing page ($50.17 a month on Starter) | Placton |
| AIs covered | Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude and Google, per its Track page. Its pricing page names only ChatGPT and Gemini | ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Claude, Perplexity and Grok | It dependsPlacton adds Perplexity and Grok. Clearscope adds Gemini. |
| Refresh | Not published, beyond the “week by week” in its headline | ChatGPT and AI Overviews daily*, the other three weekly | PlactonOn what each one publishes. |
| What it measures | Mention rate and trend, by engine and by query | Visibility, direct and indirect mentions, position, sentiment and how often answers cite your site | PlactonOn what each one publishes. We have not used its app. |
| Sources behind answers | Fan-out searches and the sources answers lean on. An undated offer page says it tracks citations | Each cited URL and domain, how often, whether it is yours, a rival’s or a third party’s, and the searches behind it | PlactonOn what each one publishes. |
| Answers and gaps | Every answer kept, with the model and where you were named, plus who each engine names instead | Every answer kept with its sources, plus each question against each AI and who shows up instead | It dependsLevel. |
| What to do next | Term gaps and saved views for decay, near-page-one queries and links | A short weekly list of tasks from a closed catalog, each with its level of evidence | It dependsClearscope for Google. Placton for AI answers. |
| Where a draft starts | A question’s intent, with your direction and tone, graded against ranking pages | What the AIs answer and cite, the top of Google and your site, with marked gaps for what only you know | It dependsWe know of no blind test of either. |
| Texts a month | 20 on both card plans, then $5 or $2 each. 40 would cost $229 | 5, 15 or 40. 40 comes with Scale, $299 | Clearscope |
| Grade for Google | A++ to F, live, against the pages ranking now | No grade. Coverage from 0 to 100 against cited pages, which does not predict citations | Clearscope |
| Writing inside Docs, Word, WordPress | The same live sidebar in all three | Its own editor. Copy, or export to HTML, Markdown or Word | Clearscope |
| Sharing a draft | A link that opens the editor with no account | No share links | Clearscope |
| Search Console and decay | Built into Monitor | Neither | Clearscope |
| Search demand | Monthly searches, 12-month trend, competition and CPC on any topic or URL | Suggested questions show Google and estimated AI searches when data exists. No trend, competition or CPC | Clearscope |
| Getting data out | CSV of Discover, Track and Pages lists | Written texts only. It has no CSV, PDF or report export | Clearscope |
| Users | Unlimited on every plan | 2, 10 or unlimited | Clearscope |
| Countries and languages | A city or region for the grade. Its Track page does not say | 40 countries and 7 languages, one of each per workspace | PlactonOn what each one publishes. |
| Client brands | Unlimited projects, one per brand, sharing the plan’s queries. 5 brands and 100 questions: $161.50 | $15 per client plus prompts. 5 brands and 100 questions: $235. Neither white label nor a combined dashboard | It dependsPlacton at low volume. Clearscope from about 60 questions with 3 clients. |
| Trial | 14 days. The page does not say whether it asks for a card | 7 days, no card, 10 prompts and 1 text | It dependsClearscope on length. Placton on stating its terms. |
| Free tools, no signup | None we came across | An 18-point audit, an AEO checker, llms.txt tools, a crawler checker and a question generator | Placton |
| People helping you | Live onboarding and training on every plan, and it pitches a strategist working inside your account | Self-serve | Clearscope |
| Track record | More than nine years by its own count, named enterprise customers, 4.9 on Capterra and G2 | On the market since October 2026, no public reviews | Clearscope |
* On paid plans. ChatGPT is read on chatgpt.com in every country Placton tracks except Venezuela and Puerto Rico, where it is asked weekly through its API. Clearscope: its website, read . Placton: pricing and methodology.
We run 18 checks on what helps AI assistants find, read and cite your site, and tell you what to fix first.
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Knowing the list is the easy part. Here is how the dashboard handles it, on the same question we just asked.
Where you are missing
Every question you follow sits against every AI, with the worst ones on top. A count tells you how many answers bring you up, and a color reads it at a glance: red for none, orange for under half, green for half or more.
Clearscope’s Track shows something close to this, so you lose little here. The extra is what comes next: open the answers behind a count, see who takes your place, and start a text from that same row.
Improvements
Depending on the plan you get 3, 5 or 8 tasks a week, picked by code from a closed catalog of 17 actions. Each one names the pages that decide the answer, whether they mention you or a rival, and how much proof sits behind the advice.
Placton re-reads those pages weekly to see if anything changed and sends nothing on your behalf. Be realistic: expect a few points over 8 weeks in answers that search the web, and little or none in those that answer from memory.
Writer
Where Clearscope grades your text against pages that rank, Placton’s Writer starts one level earlier. It reads what the AIs answered, the sources they cited and the searches they ran, then the top of Google and your own site. What only your company knows stays as a marked gap, so it does not make up numbers or customers.
An article or a ranking takes a minute or two. You can edit it there, copy it, or export it to HTML, Markdown or Word. Plans include 5, 15 or 40 texts a month. You get no terms panel or grade, and a published text is no promise that any AI will name you.
It helps you cover a topic. Whether it moves rankings is much less clear, for Clearscope and for every tool it competes with.
What the grade measures. Clearscope’s help center is plain about it: it scrapes top-ranking content, scores each term by how much competitors use it, and rewards you for including those terms. It uses the top 30 pages for outlines and term maps, sets a word count range from competing pages, and adds a Flesch-Kincaid readability figure. In other words it measures term coverage against the SERP. NLP tools like this are good at showing what you forgot.
What the studies say. Ahrefs’ study, updated in May 2025, looked at 20 keywords and five tools and found weak correlations across the board, with Clearscope, Surfer and Frase among the very weak. It is a small sample, and Ahrefs sells one of the five. Surfer’s own study of 10,000 queries puts its score at a 0.28 correlation with position. Clearscope’s own view, published in June 2025, is that correlations this low do not predict rank. None of this comes from a controlled experiment, and we did not find one.
What buyers report. Some Capterra reviewers say their pages climbed after optimizing with it, and one who optimized about 30 articles calls the lift visible but modest. Those are single accounts with no control group. Treat them as encouragement, not as data.
How to use any grader. Run it after you have written from your own knowledge, as a final check on what you missed. Stop when the suggestions start to feel forced. A chasing-the-score habit is what produces the copycat pages critics complain about, whichever tool you pay for, and answers from AI tend to reward a source that says something the others do not. That last part is a judgment on our side and not a measured fact.
No tool we read gives you a full content editor free for good. These come closest, and each one has a low ceiling.
The order saves you money. Most of the work is finding out what you actually depend on before the renewal date arrives.
Before you compare anything, list the last two months: tracked queries that mattered, drafts created, pages in Monitor and any add-on on the invoice. That list is the workload to price elsewhere. Most surprises come from a module nobody remembered was in use.
Clearscope exports CSV lists from Discover, Track and Pages, and its help center covers exporting terms and the Drafts list. Text you wrote in Docs or Word stays there. Grades and history will not move with you, so screenshot any trend you report on.
An A++ in Clearscope is not an 80 somewhere else, and no tool converts between them. Score a few pages you know well in the new editor and check whether its advice matches what Clearscope told you. Warn freelancers before you cancel, because we do not know how long share links last after that.
Placton cannot import another tool’s history, so your trend lines start again on day one. Paste your questions in as they are, add your rivals and let both tools run for a week or two. If you follow Gemini in Track, note that Placton does not measure it.
Monthly plans carry no minimum contract, and Clearscope says you can cancel without penalty. Its help center says add-ons bill on their own once you pass your credits, so check that nothing extra lands on the last invoice. If you are on a yearly custom plan, read your agreement first.
Sometimes the right answer to “which alternative” is none. Keep paying if any of these sounds like your team.
If the grade in Docs, Word or WordPress is part of your editorial process, moving costs more than the plan. Placton has no such thing, and only some alternatives cover those three editors.
Decay views, near-page-one queries and internal link gaps are real work saved. Placton has none of it, and it is the module most lists forget to price.
At $0.65 per extra query, 250 questions cost $259 here and $299 on Placton Scale. If volume drives your choice and you do not need Perplexity or Grok, stay.
Unlimited users on the $129 plan is unusual. Frase, Surfer and MarketMuse all stop at a handful of seats, so count heads before you compare prices.
Clearscope’s Track page lists it, and Placton does not measure it. Surfer and Rankability do, if you want to move anyway.
Live onboarding and training come with every plan, and reviewers keep praising the support. A younger, self-serve product such as Placton will not match that yet.
The best Clearscope alternatives replace what you use and leave the rest behind. Here is the short version.
If you bought Clearscope to see what ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Claude, Perplexity and Grok say about you, Placton does that job for $59 a month, or $129 for 75 prompts, and adds a writer for the questions where you are absent. If your writers depend on a live grade, choose Surfer for the fullest swap, NeuronWriter to spend least, or Frase to run it end to end. Agencies should price Rankability next to Placton’s Agency plan. And if you use all four modules with a large team, Clearscope at $129 is hard to beat, so stay.
Every Clearscope figure and every rival price traces back to one of the pages below, with the day we read it. We have not used Clearscope’s app, and we could not read Reddit, where one of the top results sits.
About Placton itself? Read the full FAQs or see every plan and price.
The best Clearscope alternative depends on the module you use. To track AI answers, Placton from $59 a month, which adds Perplexity and Grok but has no content grade. For the closest editor, Surfer from $59. For the lowest price, NeuronWriter from $23. For research through publishing, Frase from $39 billed yearly. All read on November 2, 2026.
Essentials is $129 a month with 50 tracked queries, 50 pages, 20 Discoveries and 20 drafts. Business is $399 with 300 queries, 300 pages, 50 Discoveries and the same 20 drafts. Enterprise is custom. Users and projects are unlimited on all of them, and add-ons are extra. If you see $170 or $189, that is the price from before October 2025.
A content optimization platform from Mushi Labs, best known for grading a draft from A++ to F against the pages ranking on Google. It is now sold as four modules on one plan: Discover for research, Track for AI mentions, Write for drafts and grading, and Monitor for live pages through Search Console.
Yes, since its 2025 relaunch. Its Track page lists Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude and Google, while its pricing page names only ChatGPT and Gemini. It reports a mention rate per engine and per query and keeps the answers. It does not publish how often each query runs, and Perplexity and Grok do not appear on the pages we read.
A 14-day free trial, yes. Its pricing page does not say whether it asks for a card or what happens when it ends. We saw no free plan.
Not a full one. The nearest are Dashword’s free first report with free scoring, MarketMuse’s Free plan with 10 queries a month, and Semrush’s Writing Assistant with 2 documents per account. Content Harmony’s $10 trial covers 10 workflows. If what you need is a read on AI, Placton’s audit is free with no account.
For a content score, NeuronWriter at $23 a month with 25 documents. Next come Frase at $39 billed yearly and Content Harmony at $50. For AI tracking, Otterly.AI starts at $29 and Placton at $59. Cheapest to start is not cheapest to grow, so price your real volume.
For a large team of writers, Clearscope: unlimited users, a simple grade and the same sidebar in Docs, Word and WordPress. For the most tools per dollar at the low end, Surfer, from $59. To track AI on a budget, Clearscope covers four engines at $129, while Surfer’s five-AI plan with the editor costs $219.
Only partly. It replaces Track, and it writes first drafts with a different starting point. It does not replace the content grade, the sidebars or Monitor. If your team works from the grade every day, choose an editor such as Surfer, NeuronWriter or Frase instead.
There is no solid proof either way. Ahrefs’ 2025 study of 20 keywords found weak correlations for all five tools it checked, and Ahrefs sells one of them. Clearscope itself argues that correlations this low do not predict position. Treat the grade as a coverage checklist rather than a ranking forecast.
Rankability is built for it: unlimited client workspaces from $97 and branded reports. Placton’s Agency plan is $15 per client plus prompts, which beats Clearscope at low volume and loses from about 60 questions, with no white label. Clearscope itself gives unlimited projects at $129.
Content Harmony if the content brief is the product: each workflow gives a keyword report, a brief and a grader. MarketMuse if the brief is part of a site-wide plan, with nine brief types on Strategy. Clearscope’s Write has brief templates too, so test one brief in each before you decide.
In content editors, Surfer, Frase, NeuronWriter and MarketMuse, the four that all five AIs named when we asked. Content Harmony, Dashword and Rankability also compete there. In AI tracking, which Clearscope entered in 2025, its rivals include Placton, Peec AI, Otterly.AI and Profound.
For a content team writing every week, its ratings suggest so: 4.9 out of 5 on Capterra from 60 ratings and on G2 from 92 reviews, read on November 2, 2026. The complaint that repeats is price. The reviews we could read date from 2018 to 2022, so none of them speaks to Track or the 2025 plans.
We read each maker’s pricing page, plus Clearscope’s product pages and help center, on November 2, 2026. We asked the five AIs with Placton’s own engine. We did not use Clearscope’s app or the others’, so anything that only shows inside a product is marked as unknown. Plans move often, so confirm on the maker’s site before you pay.
By the Placton team. Last reviewed .
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