Frase vs NeuronWriter: Content Editor or Publishing Agent, a Side-by-Side Review

Frase vs NeuronWriter comes down to an editing tool or a production workflow. NeuronWriter is a low-cost editor that scores your drafts against the search results, from $19 a month billed yearly, while Frase adds an agent that drafts, scores, publishes and monitors, from $39. DeepSmith is a strong alternative if you want finished, publish-ready articles instead of scored drafts, with SEO structure built in as it writes and Autowrite publishing on a schedule.

Most people weighing NeuronWriter vs Frase are trying to settle one thing: do they need help improving what their writers already produce, or do they need something that produces and publishes the articles too? NeuronWriter is built around the first job and Frase around the second, and the prices reflect that. This review goes through both tools using public pricing and reviews checked on September 30, 2026. DeepSmith sits in the same space and does the production work in a different way, so it gets its own section.

Frase vs NeuronWriter: the short answer

• Choose DeepSmith if you want publish-ready articles that are researched, linked and formatted for search and AI answers, written on a schedule and sent straight to your CMS, from $80 a month billed yearly.
• Choose Frase if you want one self-serve tool that researches, drafts, scores, publishes and monitors content, starting at $39 a month billed yearly.
• Choose NeuronWriter if your writers already draft the articles and you mainly want term and structure guidance against the search results, starting at $19 a month billed yearly.

Comparison table

Pricing and features as of September 2026, from each vendor's site and public reviews.

Frase

Frase was founded in 2016 and was bought by Copysmith in 2022. It describes itself as a content operating system for Google and AI search, and the product covers a lot of ground. It reads the pages ranking for a topic, builds a brief, drafts the article in your brand voice, gives it a live SEO score and a separate GEO score, publishes to WordPress, Webflow, Sanity, Wix or its own hosted FraseCMS, and then watches published pages for decay. A built-in agent can run that sequence from a plain-language request, and AI visibility tracking comes with every plan.

It is built for content marketers, small in-house teams and agencies that want the whole loop in one self-serve tool. Starter is $39 a month billed yearly ($49 monthly), Professional is $103 ($129) and Scale is $239 ($299).

The standout is breadth at a public price. The main limits are gating and quality. Starter has one seat, one domain and 10 articles a month, and it leaves out the content calendar and internal linking suggestions. Client-ready reports start at Scale, and SSO is Enterprise only.

Reviewers rate Frase 4.8/5 on G2 from 310 reviews and 4.8/5 on Capterra from 335, checked September 30, 2026. They praise the speed of research and outlines. Complaints cover uneven AI writing, editor lag, usage limits, and mixed support and refund experiences, which show up in a 3.5/5 Trustpilot score from 63 reviews. Much of the current product shipped in 2026, so older reviews may describe a different tool.

NeuronWriter

NeuronWriter is a SERP-based content optimization editor from the Polish company Conti sp. z o.o. It analyzes the Google results for a keyword and turns them into term, entity, heading and length recommendations with a live content score. The editor also has AI drafting, a plagiarism checker, internal link suggestions and schema generation, and a smaller AI Visibility module tracks brand mentions in AI answers.

It suits freelancers, small businesses and small to mid-sized agencies that want guidance at a low price. Plans run from Bronze at $19 a month billed yearly ($23 monthly) to Diamond at $97 ($117). Gold, at $57 billed yearly ($69 monthly), is where most of the useful team features start: unlimited team members, WordPress and Search Console connections, the API and an MCP server.

The standout is price paired with term-level guidance. The real limit is scope. NeuronWriter's pages don't document bulk article generation or scheduled auto-publishing, and the entry tiers are heavily gated. Bronze and Silver share content read-only and leave out Content Designer, WordPress and the API.

Reviewers rate it 4.4/5 on G2 from 31 reviews and 4.9/5 on Capterra from 17. They praise the SERP analysis, the term suggestions and the value. Complaints are that AI drafts can be generic and need revision, and that the interface has a learning curve and can be slow on long documents.

DeepSmith: the alternative that writes publish-ready articles

Both tools leave a gap for a team that wants articles published and not just improved. NeuronWriter scores a draft, and its output is presented as a draft to edit. Frase does more of the loop, but its writer produces a draft that is then scored and approved, and reviewers mention uneven writing quality and editor friction. Either way, someone still spends time turning the draft into a finished article.

DeepSmith produces the finished article. Keyword coverage, heading structure, schema markup, internal links and metadata are part of the Writer's pipeline, so they are in the article when it arrives instead of being fixed after review. The Writer researches each piece, links internal and external sources, adds a cover image and writes the metadata. It draws on Deep IQ, which stores your company, products, personas, brand voice and content types, so the article sounds like you and describes your real products.

Autowrite handles the schedule. You set up an article when you plan it, and it writes itself on the date and lands in Produced Content, or goes all the way to published with no one in the app. From there you can publish to WordPress, Webflow, Strapi, Sanity or Contentful, or to your own webhooks.

DeepSmith also helps you decide what to write. Content Map compares your coverage with your competitors' sites and shows the gaps. Opportunity Agents turn those gaps, and your AI visibility data, into ideas that each carry the evidence behind them. The AI visibility tracking covers ten engines, with Pro tracking ChatGPT, Grow adding Perplexity, Scale adding Gemini and Enterprise covering all ten.

Plans are Pro at $99 a month ($80 billed yearly) with 20 articles, 50 tracked prompts and 5 seats, Grow at $199 ($160) with 40 articles and 7 seats, Scale at $399 ($299) with 90 articles and 10 seats, and a custom Enterprise plan. There is a 7-day free trial and no long-term contract. DeepSmith is rated 4.8/5 on G2 and is SOC 2, GDPR and ISO certified.

Pricing and value

NeuronWriter wins on price, at $19 a month billed yearly against $39 for Frase, and it stays cheaper as a team grows.

If you are choosing Frase or NeuronWriter on budget, the comparison is less simple once you match what each plan includes. Frase Starter includes CMS publishing, the agent and AI visibility tracking, but it is limited to one seat. NeuronWriter Bronze is the cheapest plan on either list, yet it leaves out WordPress, Search Console, the API and one-click article generation, which start at Gold. The closer match to Frase Starter is Gold at $57 billed yearly, and Gold brings unlimited team members. Frase adds seats at $29 a month each on Professional and Scale. Frase's pay-as-you-go overages are off by default on higher plans, and Starter simply holds at its limits.

What DeepSmith does: Pro is $99 a month, or $80 billed yearly, and includes 20 finished articles, 50 tracked prompts and 5 seats. Writing, tracking and publishing share one plan, so there is no second tool to pay for. You can try it for 7 days, and there are no long-term contracts or cancellation fees.

Optimization and scoring

NeuronWriter has the edge on term-level guidance, because that is the product it is built around.

Its content score compares your draft with the top 10, top 30 or top-intent results and recommends terms, entities, headings and length. It adds an AI score for readability by AI tools, and reviewers keep coming back to the quality of these suggestions. Frase scores a draft against the ranking pages too, and adds a separate GEO score that checks things like a direct answer and quotable facts. How well that GEO score predicts AI citations is a vendor claim, and Frase describes the method only at a high level. Reviewers praise Frase for fast research more than for scoring depth.

What DeepSmith does: The optimization happens while the article is written, with keyword coverage, heading structure, schema, internal links and answer-first formatting for AI engines built in. DeepSmith is made to write the article and not to score one written somewhere else. That fits teams who would rather receive a finished piece than a to-do list of edits.

Writing and publishing

Frase wins on production, since it drafts, schedules and publishes, and NeuronWriter's pages don't document the last two.

Frase writes a full article in one pass from the brief, in 16 content types, and the agent can write up to 10 articles from briefs in one batch. It publishes to four CMSs plus FraseCMS, and content calendar scheduling is on Professional and up. Frase's pricing page says auto-publish is on every plan, while its autonomy page describes it as part of higher plans, so confirm which applies to your tier. NeuronWriter's Content Designer produces one-click articles from Gold, with WordPress export, but the output is a draft for you to edit. Its MCP server can't publish to WordPress, and bulk article generation isn't documented.

What DeepSmith does: The Writer produces the article, Autowrite runs it on the date you set, and publishing goes to WordPress, Webflow, Strapi, Sanity or Contentful. Plan individually or in bulk, up to the plan's monthly article allowance. The result is publish-ready, so the review step is about strategy and editorial judgment and not formatting.

AI visibility tracking

Frase wins on tracking depth, because it checks more engines every day on every plan.

Frase tracks ChatGPT and Google AI from Starter, adds Perplexity on Professional, and adds Claude and Gemini on Scale, with 50, 200 and 500 prompts. NeuronWriter includes 5 to 20 monitored questions per plan. According to its AI Visibility FAQ, standard monitoring covers Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, and ChatGPT and Perplexity need the paid Advanced add-on, which starts at $9 a month for 10 questions. Neither vendor fully explains how its answers are collected, so treat the numbers as directional.

Team access, API and security

This one splits. NeuronWriter is better for large teams on a budget, and Frase is better for security and automation.

NeuronWriter gives unlimited team members from Gold, with the API and an MCP server at no extra cost on that plan. Frase includes a REST API, webhooks, a hosted MCP server and a CLI on every plan, with request quotas of 5,000, 20,000 and 50,000 a month. Frase also states that it is SOC 2 Type II attested, with the report on request, and it offers SSO and SAML on Enterprise. NeuronWriter's pages list no security certification or SSO, which is a gap in what is documented and not proof that it lacks them.

From insight to action

Frase wins here, since it takes an idea through research, writing, publishing and monitoring inside one tool.

Its Content Opportunities list ranks competitor gaps, Search Console data and decaying pages together, and Content Guard drafts fixes for decaying pages and republishes them on approval. NeuronWriter has a content plan and a Next Content Ideas feature, but automatic detection of decaying content isn't documented, and the work from idea to published page stays mostly manual.

What DeepSmith does: DeepSmith connects measurement to production in one platform. AI Visibility shows which prompts and competitor pages win citations, Content Map shows the topics where competitors publish and you don't, and Opportunity Agents turn both into ideas with the supporting data point attached. Those ideas move through New Ideas, Planned Content and the Writer, and out to your CMS, all grounded in the same Deep IQ context. Every idea can be defended with its evidence, so the backlog isn't a guess.

Which should you choose

• DeepSmith fits marketing leads and content teams who want to publish more articles without more headcount, and want each one to arrive finished, on brand and ready for search and AI answers. It also fits teams that want to see where AI engines cite them and have the evidence-backed ideas and scheduled production sit in the same platform.
• Frase fits a small team or agency that wants research, drafting, scoring, publishing and basic AI tracking in one self-serve tool at a public price, and is comfortable reviewing and approving drafts. Between the two, it is the better choice if you want a tool that produces and publishes.
• NeuronWriter fits freelancers and small agencies whose writers already draft the articles and who mainly want SERP-based term guidance at the lowest price. Between the two, it is the better choice for a large team on a tight budget.

Try DeepSmith free for 7 days and see a finished, linked and formatted article from your own brand context. Start your free trial.