Semrush vs Frase 2027: Which Tool Fits a Small Business

Short answer: Semrush for ranking data, Frase for finished articles

Pick Semrush if your main question is how your keywords and AI-search mentions move across several websites, and pick Frase if your main constraint is getting a steady stream of optimized articles out the door with a team of one to three people. The two products overlap less than the search term suggests, because Semrush's published plans are scaled by websites, tracked keywords and daily prompts, while Frase's plans are scaled by articles, audit pages and monthly AI generations.

One ownership fact changes the research. Adobe closed Semrush purchase: April 28, 2026 according to SEC (2026), which records the completed acquisition of Semrush Holdings, Inc. for $1.87 billion, primarily in cash. Adobe says Semrush customers can expect continued investment and an expanded product roadmap as the two companies integrate, according to Pulse 2.0 (2026), in an article reporting the announcement. The sources we opened do not say whether the Semrush name, plan structure or prices will change, and we found no ownership change for Frase in the sources we opened. Treat the Semrush terms as an open question to put to the vendor in writing before any multi-year commitment.

TL;DR: Buy Frase first if article output is your bottleneck and you can live with its usage caps. Buy Semrush if you need broad rank data and already have someone to write and edit the pages. Test whichever you choose on one real task before you commit.

An SEO and AI-search tool is software that shows how your pages appear in search results and in AI-generated answers, and some products also help draft or revise the pages themselves.

Key Takeaways

• Semrush is now part of Adobe after the April 2026 close, so ask for plan names, prices and support terms in writing before you sign.

• Frase's Starter plan has a lower sticker price than Semrush's entry plan, but the two are scaled in different units, so the headline price alone is not a fair comparison.

• Frase's Starter plan stops at its article limit and offers no overage on that tier, so a team that publishes often should price the next tier up.

• Semrush's API bills by line of data returned, so large pulls need budgeting before you design a workflow around them.

• Frase's Trustpilot page splits sharply between praise and complaints, so test draft quality on one real post before paying.

• Semrush counts keywords and prompts per day while Frase counts articles and prompts per month, so read the usage limits rather than comparing the plan names.

How we evaluated these tools

We weighted six criteria for a general small business and checked each vendor against the same questions: what the public pricing page says, which usage caps bind first, whether the data covers what the buyer needs, whether content production happens inside the tool, whether an API or export exists, and what ownership and current-user signals show. The weights below are our judgment, not a published standard, and the buyer guidance in the rest of this article follows from them.

We did not use star ratings. The G2 and Capterra comparison pages returned access errors when we tried to open them, so the review evidence here comes from Trustpilot and from each vendor's own pricing and documentation pages. Factual vendor data appears in the tables and in the cited sentences, and our reading of it is labeled separately in each vendor profile.

Who this is for

Semrush fits an owner or operations lead who needs keyword and visibility data across several websites and already has someone to write or edit the pages. Frase fits a team of one to three people that publishes often and wants a brief-to-draft workflow with AI-visibility tracking before paying for a broad data suite. Neither is a good first purchase for a business that publishes a few pages a year and checks rankings occasionally, because a free search analytics report and a spreadsheet cover that need.

Red flags: you have no one to review AI-generated drafts before they publish, you need a fixed quote before any trial (both vendors route their top tiers through sales), or you expect either tool to replace editorial judgment about what your customers actually need.

What each plan costs and what it includes

Pricing checked November 13, 2026.

Semrush's SEO plan: $117.33 per month billed annually according to Semrush (2026). The same page lists that plan at $139 monthly, Starter at $165.17 billed annually (listed at $199 monthly) and Pro+ at $248.17 billed annually (listed at $299 monthly). It says annual billing saves up to 17 percent, offers a Free plan at $0 with one demo project and 10 reports per day, and marks its Advanced plan as "Talk to sales," which we treat as quote-based.

according to Frase (2026), Frase's Starter plan is $39 per month billed yearly, its Professional plan is $103 and its Scale plan is $239, with Enterprise on a "Talk to sales" quote. The same page shows struck-through "was" prices of $49, $129 and $299, which we did not treat as current. Starter includes one seat, one site, 10 articles and 25 AI generations a month, and it stops at those limits. Professional adds three seats (extra seats $29 per month each), five sites and 40 articles, and pay-as-you-go is optional and off by default, at $5 per extra article on Professional.

The table below uses those published figures. Annual totals are 12 times the monthly figure shown, so they are our arithmetic, not vendor-published totals.

The table excludes Frase's extra seats, which are an add-on. A four-seat Professional team would pay $132 per month by our arithmetic ($103 plus one $29 seat), or $1,584 per year. Semrush's pricing page lists an Additional Users add-on and team users on Advanced, but no included seat counts for the other plans, so we cannot make the same seat comparison for it.

Here is an illustrative case, not a customer example. Take a three-person team at a service business that publishes 12 blog posts a month on one website. Frase's Starter plan covers 10 articles and stops there, so the two extra posts push the team to Professional: $103 minus $39 is $64 more per month, or $768 more per year (12 × $64). Professional covers three seats and 40 articles at $1,236 per year, and it includes 20,000 API, MCP and CLI requests per month. A script that makes 100 requests a day through the MCP connector endpoint next.frase.io/api/mcp would use 3,000 requests a month (100 × 30), about 15% of that allowance. Semrush's SEO plan at $117.33 per month billed annually comes to $1,407.96 per year (12 × $117.33), but the page we opened lists no article-writing allowance, so the same team would still need a separate writing step.

Feature matrix: the limits that decide the purchase

This matrix uses only what the two pricing pages and Frase's API documentation state. "Not listed" means the page we opened did not state the item, not that the product lacks it. Semrush counts keywords and prompts per day, and Frase counts articles and prompts per month, so compare those rows with care.

Frase API: 50+ endpoints according to Frase (2026). The REST API covers content and briefs, SERP analysis, AI visibility, site audits, topic research and publishing, and returns JSON. Frase's documentation also says API tasks use the same plan credits as the same tasks in the app, so an automated workflow draws on the same allowance as your manual work.

The matrix shows that the two products are not substitutes on every row. Frase's visible limits center on content production and AI-answer tracking, and Semrush's visible limits center on keyword and site coverage. Neither pricing page lists a feature that would make the other unnecessary for the job it was built for.

The scenario table shows which product to test first, based on the limits above.

Semrush: where it fits and where it strains

Facts: Semrush is now part of Adobe, as described at the top of this guide. Its published plans list websites monitored, keywords tracked each day and AI prompts each day. The pricing page we opened does not list article limits, how far back historical data goes or included seat counts for most plans, so buyers should ask for those details before a trial.

Our read: Semrush fits buyers who want a wide view of rankings across many keywords and who already own the writing step. The keyword and site counts are its strongest reason to buy, and the entry price is the main drawback for a small team. The pricing page lists no article-writing allowance, so a separate writing tool is part of the budget.

Disqualifier: if you need the draft and the data in one subscription, the pricing page we opened does not show that combination, so you would be buying two tools. Choose Semrush if the owner or operations lead wants search and AI-visibility data first and has someone to write, edit and approve posts.

Frase: where it fits and where it strains

Trustpilot: 35% of 68 reviews are one-star according to Trustpilot (2026), and 53% of the reviews are five-star. The most common complaints on that page cover output quality, support and accounts bought through a lifetime deal. Frase's replies on the same page point to a platform rebuild launched in January 2026, and one reviewer's quote describes the AI writer as constantly looping the same text.

Facts: the pricing and documentation pages show that Frase's plans are built around article, audit-page and AI-generation limits, with API access included from the Starter tier. Starter stops at its limits, and overage is optional on the higher tiers.

Our read: Frase fits small teams that publish several posts a month and want briefs, drafts and AI-visibility tracking in one place. Starter's 10-article cap is the first limit most content-heavy teams hit, and because it has no overage option, that team moves up a tier. Keyword-level tracking limits are not listed on the pages we opened, so Frase is a weaker choice when rank-tracking depth is the goal.

Disqualifier: if your team cannot tolerate heavy editing of AI drafts, the output-quality complaints on the review page are a warning, and the free trial exists so you can test that before paying. If you hold an older lifetime-deal account, check its status before subscribing, because reviewers on the same page report that accounts bought through that channel stopped working. Choose Frase if one to three people publish often and want a brief-to-draft workflow, and if they will test one real post on the 7-day free trial first.

Where a workflow layer fits: proposed design, not a live result

A proposed design from US Tech Automations would start with a trigger that is easy to audit: a post is marked "ready for review" in the team's content tracker. The workflow would then read the post's target keyword and status, pull the latest rank value for that keyword from a Semrush export, and create one review card for the owner with the draft link, the keyword and the last recorded position. The prerequisites are a Frase API key on a plan that includes API access, which Starter does at 5,000 requests a month, and a Semrush export the team is permitted to take on its subscription. The human review point is the owner's approval, so the proposed flow would hold the card until someone approves it and would never publish on its own.

Semrush API: 10 units per line of live data according to Semrush (2026). The Domain Organic Search Keywords report costs 10 API units per line of live results and 50 for historical data, so a 1,000-line live pull would use 10,000 units by our arithmetic. Semrush's API docs say all of its API options require an eligible subscription, and that the SEO API and Projects API need a Business subscription on the SEO Toolkit. We could not find that Business tier on the pricing page we opened, so confirm the tier before you design around the API.

In a second proposed flow, the trigger is a weekly schedule. The workflow would export the keyword list from the team's Semrush project, compare it with last week's file, and flag any keyword whose position dropped by a threshold the owner sets. The output is a summary row in a shared sheet, not an edit to a live page. The review point is the owner's decision about what to change, and the flow should keep a copy of each week's export so the comparison can be rerun if a file is corrupted.

The realistic alternative for many small teams is stitching these steps together in Zapier, Make or n8n, or writing a script in-house. Those tools can keep run histories, retries, error branches and audit evidence when a builder configures them that way. The buyer still has to design and own idempotency, so a retried run does not create a second review card. The buyer also owns escalation to a named person when a run fails, access controls on the API keys, and maintenance when either vendor changes an endpoint. A proposed US Tech Automations design could configure the same branches and logs as one flow, with the same prerequisites and the same approval step, but buyers should confirm that the audit trail meets their own record-keeping needs before relying on it.

When NOT to use US Tech Automations

Skip a workflow layer if you publish one or two posts a month and check rankings once a quarter, because Frase's Starter plan or a free search analytics report is simpler and cheaper to run. Skip it if you only need a one-time keyword list, since a single export from Semrush answers that without a connector. Skip it too if nobody on the team will own the API keys, the approval step and the monthly check, because an unmaintained flow fails quietly while a spreadsheet at least fails where people can see it. In those cases the right answer is one vendor tool, used by one named person.

Decision checklist before you buy

• Count the posts you publish each month and compare that number with the article limit on the plan you need.

• Count the websites and seats you need, because Frase's Starter plan covers one site and one seat.

• Decide whether you need keyword rank data across hundreds of keywords, which is where Semrush's SEO plan is built to compete.

• Confirm that the tier you choose includes the export or API access your process depends on.

• Run Frase's 7-day free trial on one real post and judge the draft against your own editorial standard.

• Ask Semrush in writing whether plan names, limits or prices will change under Adobe's ownership.

Frequently asked questions

Is Semrush still separate from Adobe?

No, Adobe closed its acquisition of Semrush on April 28, 2026, so plan terms and product names can change under the new owner. Ask for those terms in writing before you sign.

Which tool is cheaper for a small team?

On the pricing pages we opened, Frase's Starter plan has the lower sticker price, but its article cap means a team that publishes more than 10 posts a month must move to a higher tier. Compare the tier you would actually need, not the cheapest plan's headline figure.

Can Frase replace Semrush for rank tracking?

Not on the evidence we opened. Frase's listed limits cover AI-visibility prompts and articles, while Semrush's listed limits cover keywords tracked each day, so the two products measure different things.

Does either tool publish content on its own?

Frase lists direct publishing to WordPress, Webflow, Sanity, Wix and FraseCMS on its Starter plan. The Semrush pages we opened do not list a publishing feature, so keep a human approval step in place whichever tool you choose.

What should I verify before signing?

Check the current plan page on the day you buy, confirm the trial terms and usage limits, and get written confirmation of any change to plan names or prices under Adobe's ownership of Semrush.

Make the call for your team

If you publish several articles a month on one website and need a draft workflow, start with Frase's 7-day free trial and test one real post before paying. If you need a wide view of keyword rankings and AI-search visibility, Semrush is the cleaner fit, and you should get its plan terms in writing given the Adobe ownership change. Either way, keep a person approving each post before it goes live. If the work spans several tools, see how US Tech Automations configures this kind of approval-and-alert flow, and confirm the prerequisites above before you commit.