Frase is a focused content platform with public pricing from $39 a month billed yearly. BrandWell (formerly Content at Scale) starts its RankWell content product at $249 a month and sits inside a wider growth suite with intent data, visitor identification and outreach. Frase suits teams that want a content tool, and BrandWell suits teams that want content tied to those growth products. DeepSmith is a strong third option on terms, with AI answer tracking and publish-ready articles on one plan from $99 a month, a 7-day trial and no long-term contract.
Frase vs BrandWell mostly comes down to how much product you want around your articles. Both write, optimize and publish SEO content, and both now track answers in AI engines, so the feature lists overlap more than the prices suggest. What separates them is scope and cost. Frase stays inside content and search, while BrandWell treats content as one product among several. If you want to see how DeepSmith compares with Frase directly, we have a page for that. DeepSmith belongs in this decision too, because it tracks AI answers and produces the articles from one plan with a published price.
Frase vs BrandWell: the short answer
- Choose DeepSmith if you want AI answer tracking and publish-ready articles on one self-serve plan, from $99 a month with a 7-day free trial and no long-term contract.
- Choose Frase if you want a focused content platform at the lowest published entry price, $39 a month billed yearly, with daily AI visibility tracking on every plan.
- Choose BrandWell if you want RankWell's article workflow, from $249 a month for 25 articles, next to buyer-intent data, visitor identification and outreach.
| Criterion | DeepSmith | Frase | BrandWell |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry price (monthly) | $99/mo (Pro) | $49/mo (Starter) | $249/mo (RankWell Essentials) |
| Annual price (per month) | $80/mo billed yearly | $39/mo billed yearly | Not listed |
| Articles per month at entry tier | 20 | 10 | 25 |
| Tracked prompts at entry tier | 50 | 50 | Not listed |
| AI engines at entry tier | ChatGPT | ChatGPT, Google AI | ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity |
| Free trial | 7 days | 7 days, no card | Partial, messages conflict |
| Scores a draft against top-ranking pages | - | Yes | Yes |
| Internal linking | Yes | Yes, not on Starter | Yes |
| Scheduled auto-publishing | Yes | Yes | Partial |
| Workflow automation or agents | Partial | Partial | Yes |
| Repurposing into other formats | Yes | Yes, Professional and up | Partial |
| MCP server | Yes | Yes | Not listed |
| SOC 2 | Yes | Yes | Not listed |
| Review rating | 4.8/5 on G2 | 4.8/5 on G2 | 4.0/5 on Capterra (legacy listing) |
Pricing and features as of September 2026, from each vendor's site and public reviews.
Frase
Frase is an SEO and AI-search content platform that was founded in 2016 and acquired by Copysmith in 2022. It is built for content marketers, small in-house teams and agencies who want research, writing, optimization, publishing and basic AI visibility tracking in one self-serve tool at a public price. Its standout is how much of the content job it covers on a single plan. It does SERP research and briefs, drafts in a brand voice, scores each page for SEO and for AI answers, publishes to WordPress, Webflow, Sanity or Wix, and watches published pages for decay. An API and an MCP server come with every plan.
The real limit is on the lower tiers. Starter tracks ChatGPT and Google AI only, Perplexity needs Professional, and Claude and Gemini need Scale. Starter also leaves out the content calendar, internal linking suggestions and repurposing, and Frase doesn't say how it collects AI answers. Reviewers on G2 give it 4.8/5 from 310 reviews. On Capterra it is 4.8/5 from 335 reviews, both checked in September 2026. Trustpilot is lower at 3.5/5 from 63 reviews, with complaints about support, refunds and usage limits. Reviewers praise the research speed and mention uneven AI writing quality. If you want every feature in one place, our Frase review goes through it.
BrandWell
BrandWell is the 2024 rebrand of Content at Scale, so a search for Frase vs Content at Scale lands on the same company. It calls itself growth automation software, and RankWell is its content product, covering planning, research briefs, drafts from keywords, URLs, video or audio, an editor with an SEO score, an AI detector, image generation, internal linking and publishing to WordPress or Contentful. Visibility, which tracks ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity, is included in every RankWell plan. Its standout is the suite around the content. MarketPulse intent data starts at $250 a month, TrafficID visitor identification starts at $99 a month, and Outreach is $99 a month plus $4 per connected inbox, all sold separately. The AIMEE agent carries work between them.
The limit that matters most is that its own pages disagree. The pricing page shows monthly RankWell plans and a 3-day refund guarantee, while the registration page still shows 12-month commitment plans from $899 to $2,999 a month and a 7-day no-card trial. The terms say a RankWell trial requires payment details. BrandWell lists no SOC 2 report or SSO that we could verify. The review base is small and old. The legacy Content at Scale listing on Capterra shows 4.0/5 from five reviews. TrustRadius shows 9.1/10 from two reviews. Older reviews mention drafts that need editing and fact checking. Our Content at Scale review covers the older product in more detail.
DeepSmith: the alternative that tracks and writes
Whether you pick Frase or BrandWell, both track AI answers and write articles, so the feature list is not where the choice gets made. The difference is the terms. Frase's Starter plan holds you to 10 articles and leaves out the calendar, internal linking and repurposing, which start at Professional. BrandWell starts at $249 a month, doesn't list an annual price, and gives mixed messages about its trial. DeepSmith publishes all of it. Pro is $99 a month, or $80 billed yearly, and includes 20 articles and 50 tracked prompts, which is twice the articles in Frase's Starter plan. There is a 7-day free trial, no long-term contract and no cancellation fee. Grow is $199 a month with 40 articles and 100 prompts, and Scale is $399 with 90 articles and 200 prompts.
What you get for that is one system where the tracking feeds the writing. AI Visibility reports your mention rate, citation rate and share of voice, shows which of your pages AI cites, and lists which competitor pages win citations. Content Map compares your site topic by topic against competitors, so coverage gaps show up as a measurement. Opportunity Agents turn those gaps into ideas that each carry the data point behind them, and the Writer turns a planned idea into a finished article, researched, linked, with a cover image and publish-ready metadata. All of it is grounded in Deep IQ, which holds your brand, voice, persona and product context. Autowrite can write an article on its scheduled date with no one in the app, and you can publish to WordPress, Webflow, Strapi, Sanity or Contentful. DeepSmith is SOC 2, GDPR and ISO certified and rated 4.8/5 on G2. If you are coming from BrandWell's older name, we also compare DeepSmith vs Content at Scale.
Pricing and value
Frase is the cheaper of the two at every published tier. Starter is $49 a month, or $39 billed yearly, for 10 articles, and Professional is $129 a month, or $103 billed yearly, for 40 articles and 200 prompts. Scale is $299 a month, or $239 billed yearly, for 100 articles, 500 prompts and five engines. Starter stops at its limits, and pay-as-you-go overage on the higher plans is off by default. BrandWell's RankWell plans are $249 for 25 articles, $499 for 50 and $999 for 100, and Programmatic SEO and Link Builder start at Growth. At the 100 article level that is $299 against $999 a month. BrandWell lists no annual price. Its terms make payments non-refundable apart from the 3-day guarantee, which only applies if you have generated no more than two articles and published or exported none. For anyone searching Frase vs BrandWell pricing, the gap is wide, and the conflicting pages on BrandWell's side are a reason to get the price in writing. If you want to see how BrandWell's tiers sit against another content platform, the AirOps vs BrandWell pricing page lays it out.
What DeepSmith does: It puts the price on the page and keeps the terms simple. Pro is $99 a month with 20 articles and 50 tracked prompts, there is a 7-day free trial, and you can leave without a cancellation fee. Because tracking and writing are on the same plan, you are not buying a content tool and a visibility tool separately.
AI answer tracking
In BrandWell vs Frase on tracking, BrandWell covers more engines at its entry plan and Frase tells you more about how its tracking works, so this one is close to a tie. BrandWell's Visibility tracks ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity on every RankWell plan, and it saves each answer along with mentions, citations and share of voice. It doesn't state how many questions you can track, how often checks run or how long answers are kept. Frase says it checks prompts daily and alerts you when visibility changes, with 50, 200 or 500 prompts by plan and country targeting in more than 40 countries. It also sorts prompts by buying stage and keeps history for 30 days or more depending on the plan. It does not name which Google AI surface it tracks, and neither vendor explains whether answers are collected through official APIs or consumer interfaces. If you are sizing a prompt list, our piece on how many prompts to track is a good starting point.
What DeepSmith does: It reports mention rate, citation rate, share of voice and sentiment, keeps the full answer history for each prompt, and shows which of your pages get cited and which competitor pages win the citations instead. Pro tracks ChatGPT, Grow adds Perplexity, Scale adds Gemini, and Enterprise covers all ten engines. Discover Prompts builds a starter set from your product, persona and buyer-stage context.
Writing and publishing workflow
Frase is ahead on scheduled publishing and refreshing old pages, and BrandWell is ahead on workflow automation and on the kinds of material it can start from. Frase's research ends in a brief, its writer drafts in your brand voice, and a content calendar on Professional and up publishes to a connected CMS on the day you pick. Its Content Guard watches published pages for rank decay and drafts fixes for you to approve. Frase says every content type starts in review, and the agent publishes on its own only after you switch that on. BrandWell can start an article from a keyword, a blog URL, a YouTube video, a podcast or an audio file. It also includes an AI detector and undetectable rewrites, metered at 20,000 words a month on Essentials. Its AIMEE agent runs workflow templates with approval points, but BrandWell says generation creates editable work and publishing needs a separate approved delivery path, which is why its scheduled publishing is only partial. For another view of Frase beside a different content platform, see AirOps vs Frase.
What DeepSmith does: The Writer produces a finished article with research, internal and external links, a cover image and publish-ready metadata. Autowrite writes it on the date you planned, using the persona, voice and content type you stored, and the draft lands in Produced Content for review or publishing. Apps Library then turns the article into versions for LinkedIn, X, newsletters and more.
Growth suite scope
BrandWell wins on breadth, and that is the main reason to choose it over Frase. Beyond RankWell it sells MarketPulse for buyer-intent audiences, TrafficID for visitor identification, SocialStreams for social listening, Outreach for email campaigns, Direct Mail and Link Builder, which is included from the Growth plan. AIMEE connects them, so a brief, a publish and an outreach step can sit in one workflow. These are separate products with their own prices, so the total depends on what you add. Frase stays closer to content and search. It adds site audits, backlink research, the FraseCMS hosting option and Frase Answers, a widget that answers visitors from your own content. If you do not plan to use intent data or outreach, you would be paying for a suite you do not use.
From insight to action
Frase is closer to turning AI visibility into changes on the page. Its GEO score sits beside the SEO score in the editor and rates a draft against a rubric for its content type, and Content Opportunities ranks competitor gaps, Search Console data and decaying pages in one list. Frase describes the GEO method only at a high level, and the citation results are its own claim. BrandWell's content plan ranks what to create, optimize or merge from search performance, keyword demand and AI citations, and its AIMEE templates include one to close a visibility gap. BrandWell does not document a method for optimizing article text to be cited in AI answers, so its link to the page itself is thinner.
What DeepSmith does: It connects the two halves with one set of data. Opportunity Agents read your AI visibility and your Content Map and return ideas, each with the evidence that justifies it. Those ideas move from New Ideas to Planned Content to Produced, and Autowrite can take them the rest of the way. If you want the longer process, here is how to turn visibility gaps into a content backlog.
Which should you choose
- DeepSmith: you want to track AI answers and produce the articles that close the gaps on one self-serve plan, with a published price, a 7-day trial and no long-term contract. It fits content and marketing teams and agencies that want the tracking to decide what gets written next.
- Frase: you are choosing between these two and want the content tool, with research, scoring, publishing and refresh in one product at $39 a month billed yearly. It fits solo marketers and small teams, and Professional or Scale fit in-house teams and agencies that need seats, domains and the full engine list.
- BrandWell: you are choosing between these two and also want buyer-intent data, visitor identification or outreach next to your articles, and you will confirm the price and trial terms in writing. It fits growth teams that plan to buy more than one product.
If you are still comparing options, our pages on Frase alternatives cover more of the field. Our page on Content at Scale alternatives does the same for BrandWell's older name.
Try DeepSmith
You can start a 7-day free trial of DeepSmith and see tracking and publish-ready writing on your own site before you pay.
