For an agency with several clients, Frase is the easier fit between the two. Each client gets a walled-off workspace, the prices are public, and there is a documented API, while MarketMuse sells paid plans by quote and shows no terms for adding more sites. MarketMuse suits agencies that plan topics from each client's own site inventory. DeepSmith is a strong alternative on isolated client workspaces, where each client runs on its own Deep IQ context, content and plan, with AI visibility tracking per client.
Frase vs MarketMuse for agencies comes down to how each tool handles a roster. An agency needs each client's voice, content and reporting kept apart, a way for several people to work and approve, programmatic access for reporting, and a cost it can predict per client. Frase and MarketMuse cover those four needs to different degrees, and the gaps show up mostly in client separation and pricing. DeepSmith is the third option worth weighing, because it was built around a separate workspace for every client. This page looks only at the agency job. The full pricing comparison is in Frase vs MarketMuse: Pricing Review of Public Plans and Sales-Led Tiers, so we skip it here.
Frase vs MarketMuse for agencies: the short answer
- Choose DeepSmith if you want every client in an isolated workspace with its own Deep IQ context, content and plan, and tracking plus writing on one self-serve plan from $99 a month.
- Choose Frase if you want public prices, a separate workspace per client, an approval queue and an API on every plan, starting at $39 a month billed yearly.
- Choose MarketMuse if your agency spends most of its time deciding what to write for each client's site and you are fine requesting a quote for the paid plans.
| Criterion | DeepSmith | Frase | MarketMuse |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry price (monthly) | $99/mo | $49/mo | Not listed, sold by demo |
| Annual price (per month) | $80/mo | $39/mo | Not listed |
| Free trial or free plan | 7-day free trial | 7-day free trial, no card | Free plan (1 user, 10 queries/month) |
| Multiple brands or clients in one account | Yes | Yes | Partial |
| Sites or domains per plan | - | 1 / 5 / 10 domains by plan | 1 site inventory per paid plan |
| Team collaboration and approvals | Partial | Yes | Partial |
| Seats on the entry paid plan | 5 | 1 | 1 |
| API access | Yes, read-only | Yes | Not listed |
| Scheduled publishing | Yes | Yes | No |
| Review rating | 4.8/5 on G2 | 4.8/5 on G2 | 4.6/5 on G2 |
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 researches, briefs, drafts, scores, publishes and then monitors content, with AI visibility tracking on every plan. For agencies it is built around separate client workspaces, with 1, 5 or 10 domains on Starter, Professional and Scale, and exportable client-ready reports on Scale. The standout is how much of the agency workflow sits in one self-serve tool at a public price. Frase lists Starter at $39 a month billed yearly, and its API, MCP server and webhooks come with every plan. The real limitation is that team features are gated. Starter is a single seat, roles start on Professional, and white-label reports and a branded client portal are Enterprise only. On G2 it is rated 4.8/5 from 310 reviews, checked in September 2026. Reviewers praise the research speed and complain about uneven AI writing, editor friction and usage limits.
MarketMuse
MarketMuse is a content strategy and optimization platform. It builds an inventory of a client's site, scores each topic with its own metrics such as Personalized Difficulty and Topic Authority, and turns that into content plans, briefs and an editor that scores drafts. It lists agencies among its target customers, and the standout is that site-specific prioritization, which helps an agency decide what to write or update for each client. The limitation for a multi-brand roster is that each paid plan includes one site inventory, and MarketMuse says the Strategy plan can add more sites without showing the terms. Paid plans have no public prices and route to a demo, and publishing to a CMS is copy and paste. On G2 it is rated 4.6/5 from 216 reviews, checked in September 2026. Reviewers like the heatmaps and briefs, and some raise price concerns.
DeepSmith: the alternative that gives every client its own workspace
Frase separates clients well but keeps client reports and portals on its higher tiers, and MarketMuse is organized around one site inventory per plan. DeepSmith's Multi-Workspace runs each brand or client from one account, with every workspace fully isolated, so each client has its own Deep IQ context, content and plan. Deep IQ holds the client's company details, products, buyer personas, brand voice, visual guidelines and content types, set up once from the client's website, so the Writer produces publish-ready articles in that client's voice without a new brief each time.
Frase also offers separate workspaces, and where DeepSmith differs is that tracking and writing happen in the same one. AI visibility tracking runs per client across up to ten engines depending on the plan. Opportunity Agents then turn the gaps they find into ideas that each carry the data point behind them.
Those ideas move into Planned Content, where Autowrite can write each article on its scheduled date against that client's stored persona, voice and content type, and the finished piece lands in Produced Content for review. DeepSmith's review step sits there, where teammates review, edit and publish.
Each workspace is billed and limited independently. Plans run from $99 a month on Pro (20 articles and 50 tracked prompts) to $399 a month on Scale (90 articles and 200 tracked prompts), with a 7-day free trial. For reporting, a read-only REST API with scoped keys pulls each client's visibility data, Content Map and content library into your own dashboards.
Client separation and multi-brand setup
Frase wins this one between the two, because it documents a separate walled-off workspace for each client and MarketMuse's multi-brand support is only partial. Frase's limits are 1, 5 and 10 domains on Starter, Professional and Scale, so an agency with more than ten clients would move to Enterprise, which is quoted. MarketMuse includes one site inventory on each paid plan and says Strategy can add more sites as needed, but the add-on terms and prices are not shown, so you can't cost a roster of eight clients from the public pages. Both facts come from the vendors' own pricing pages, so I'd treat Frase as the safer read for a growing agency here.
What DeepSmith does: Multi-Workspace runs each client as a fully isolated workspace with its own Deep IQ context, content and plan, so one client's voice and product claims stay out of another's. You invite teammates to each workspace as owners or members, and each workspace is billed on its own.
Collaboration and approvals
Frase leads on this axis. It has a review queue with approval before publish, and roles for Owner, Admin, Editor and Viewer on Professional and up, though Starter is a single seat and extra seats cost $29 a month each. MarketMuse is partial. Its Strategy plan lets you assign content to team members, track progress and due dates, and share saved writing with outside writers or editors, but formal approval steps are not described. Seats are tight on the lower plans as well, with one user on Optimize, three on Research and five on Strategy. If your agency sends drafts to clients for sign-off, Frase's approval step fits better, and MarketMuse's sharing with outside writers suits agencies that lean on freelancers.
What DeepSmith does: The self-serve plans include 5 seats on Pro, 7 on Grow and 10 on Scale, and the work for each client stays in that client's workspace. Autowrite lands finished articles in Produced Content, where your team reviews, edits and publishes to WordPress, Webflow, Strapi, Sanity or Contentful.
API access and client reporting
Frase wins this one. It documents a REST API with 50+ endpoints and webhooks on every plan, with API, MCP and CLI requests capped at 5,000, 20,000 and 50,000 a month on Starter, Professional and Scale. Exportable client-ready reports start at Scale. MarketMuse's pages list no public API, so "Not listed" is as far as the evidence goes, and it exports briefs and writing to Google Docs or Word and Heatmap data to spreadsheets. Frase's request cap is shared across API, MCP and CLI, which matters if you pull data for many clients on a lower plan.
What DeepSmith does: DeepSmith has a read-only REST API with scoped keys that returns AI visibility data (mention rate, citation rate, share of voice, the competitor leaderboard and cited pages), the Content Map and the content library, at 120 requests per minute per workspace, and reads spend no credits. That gives you a reporting feed for each client, and the MCP server connects an AI assistant to a client's workspace in the same read-only way.
Pricing and agency margins
Frase wins on pricing clarity. Starter is $49 monthly or $39 billed yearly, Professional is $129 or $103, Scale is $299 or $239, and Enterprise is quoted. One Scale subscription covers up to 10 domains, 100 articles a month and 500 tracked prompts, which makes margin per client easy to work out. Pay-as-you-go overage is optional and off by default, at $4 per extra article on Scale. Frase's refund policy generally excludes unused annual months, which is worth reading before you commit a roster to annual billing. MarketMuse has a Free plan, but Optimize, Research and Strategy have no public prices and route to a demo, so you can't work out margin until you have a quote. Reviewers also raise affordability as a concern, though the paid prices were not public when we checked.
What DeepSmith does: Each client workspace is billed and limited independently, so a client's cost is its own plan, from $99 a month ($80 billed yearly) on Pro to $399 ($299 yearly) on Scale, with no long-term contracts. A client's articles, tracked prompts and seats all sit on that workspace's plan, which lets you price a client against what it actually uses.
Which should you choose
If you are choosing Frase or MarketMuse for agencies, the split above holds, and DeepSmith sits alongside both.
- DeepSmith: an agency that wants each client in an isolated workspace, with AI visibility tracking and publish-ready writing for that client on one self-serve plan, and a read-only API for client reporting.
- Frase: an agency that wants public prices, an approval queue, team roles and an API at a low entry price, and does mostly SEO research and optimization across a handful of clients.
- MarketMuse: an agency that spends most of its time deciding what to write and update for a few large client sites, and is fine with quotes and copy and paste publishing.
You can start a free DeepSmith trial and set up a first client workspace in minutes.
