Frase vs Surfer: cut brief time from 90 to 22 minutes

Frase vs Surfer: cut brief time from 90 to 22 minutes

Agency was hand-building content briefs at ~90 min each, 40 briefs/month. We A/B'd both for a quarter.

Frase ($45/mo Basic, 30 docs)
👍 SERP summary + question mining produced a usable outline in ~12 min
👎 Basic plan's 30-document cap forced an upgrade to $115 Team by week 3

Surfer ($99/mo Essential)
👍 Content Editor's real-time score kept writers on-brief without a second QA pass
👎 Term suggestions over-optimize — we manually cut ~20% as keyword stuffing

Net: average brief dropped to 22 min. Across 40 briefs that's ~45 hours/month saved, roughly one freelancer's load. Surfer-built articles also hit page 1 ~2 weeks faster in tracked tests.

Verdict: Pick Frase to research fast and cheap, Surfer if writers need a live guardrail.

Best for: Frase = solo writers; Surfer = content teams shipping volume.

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