BuzzSumo vs Frase
A source-aware comparison of pricing, documented capabilities and workflow fit.
Short answer
- Price: not directly comparable — BuzzSumo is pricing not verified, Frase is from $39/mo billed annually.
- How to start: BuzzSumo is pricing not verified, Frase is from $39/mo billed annually.
- Where they differ: only BuzzSumo has sso (saml); both offer public api.
These lines are generated from the pricing we track, not from a paid placement. How we score tools.
What BuzzSumo is
What BuzzSumo isBuzzSumo finds which content performs in a topic and who shares it, supporting content and outreach research. Seeing what already spread in a topic, and who spread it, turns content planning and outreach into the same research session. It reports what performed, not why, so editorial judgement still does the hard part.
What Frase is
What Frase isFrase builds SEO content briefs from search results and helps draft content against them. Building the brief from live search results is faster than reading ten competitors yourself, and it keeps the outline anchored to what ranks. Drafting quality is ordinary, so it is best treated as research plus a skeleton.
Side by side
| BuzzSumo | Frase | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Marketing | Marketing |
| How to start | Not verifiednot a monthly price | $39/moverified |
| Public API | Yes | Yes |
| Mobile app | No | No |
| Open source / self-hostable | No | No |
| SSO (SAML) | Yes | No |
| Visit | BuzzSumo ↗ | Frase ↗ |
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What BuzzSumo is built to do
- Content performance search
- Ranks articles in a topic by engagement across networks.
- Influencer identification
- Finds accounts that share content in a subject area.
- Alerts
- Monitors brands, keywords and competitors for new mentions.
What Frase is built to do
- SERP-derived briefs
- Builds an outline from the pages currently ranking for a query.
- Topic scoring
- Compares draft coverage against competing pages.
- Draft assistance
- Generates sections against the brief for editing.
Choose BuzzSumo if
- Solo marketers researching content: Content Creation is $199/month billed yearly with 1 user, unlimited searches and 2 alerts
- PR and comms teams — the next tier is $299/month billed yearly with 5 users, 5 alerts, the media database and outreach, and coverage reports
- Anyone who needs question research: the Question Analyzer searches customer questions across forums including Amazon, Reddit and Quora on the entry tier
Skip BuzzSumo if
- You need several seats cheaply — the entry tier is a single user and seats are what separate the tiers
- You want monthly billing at the listed rate: the prices shown are billed yearly, with the page advertising a 20% saving over monthly
- You only need occasional alerts: alert counts are low (2 then 5) and are a per-tier limit rather than an add-on
Choose Frase if
- Solo SEO writers on one site: Starter is $39/month billed yearly with 10 articles and 50 audit pages a month
- Content teams that want the whole loop — Professional at $103/month billed yearly adds 3 seats, 5 sites, 40 articles and a content calendar
- Agencies running many sites, where Scale covers 10 domains, 100 articles and client-ready reports for $239/month billed yearly
- Anyone wary of overage bills: Starter simply stops at its limits, and the pay-as-you-go option on higher tiers is off by default
Skip Frase if
- You want the advertised price monthly — month-to-month is $49, $129 and $299 against the yearly $39, $103 and $239
- You publish at volume: article allowances are 10, 40 and 100 a month, and audit pages 50, 250 and 1,000
- Your team is bigger than the seat count — Starter is a single seat, and extra seats on higher plans are $29/month each
- You need white-label reports, a client portal, SSO or SAML, which are Enterprise-only and custom scoped
Evidence and freshness
Where a claim on this page comes from a vendor page, it is linked here.
BuzzSumo: pros & cons
- Fast answer to what performs in a niche
- Influencer and journalist discovery
- Alerts for brand mentions
- Expensive for occasional use
- Social share data has become less reliable
- Overlaps with SEO tools you may own
Frase: pros & cons
- Briefs assembled from actual SERP data
- Speeds up the research phase
- Reasonable price point
- Generated drafts need heavy editing
- Optimisation scores are a proxy, not a guarantee
- Interface can feel cluttered
Our verdict on BuzzSumo
Useful for research sprints. Hard to justify as an always-on subscription for a small team.
Our verdict on Frase
Good at the research half. Treat the writing half as a rough draft.
Published plans, side by side
Every figure below was read from the vendor's own pricing page and is shown with the sentence it came from. Where a vendor publishes no plan prices, we say so rather than guess.
BuzzSumo
- Content Creation$199/mo billed annually
Content Creation $199/mo billed yearly, save $478/yr: 1 user, unlimited searches, 2 alerts; includes Content Analyzer, Trending Feeds, Question Analyzer
- PR & Comms$299/mo billed annually
PR & Comms $299/mo billed yearly, save $718/yr: 5 users, 5 alerts, everything in Content Creation plus media database and outreach, coverage reports
Frase
- Free$0/mo
Free 7-day trial with no credit card
- Starter$39/mo billed annually
Starter $39/month billed yearly, $49 month to month: 1 seat, 1 site, 10 articles and 50 audit pages a month, publishing to WordPress, Webflow, Sanity or Wix, SEO and GEO scores, AI Visibility on ChatGPT and Google AI, Content Guard watching 10 pages
- Professional$103/user/mo billed annually
Professional $103/month billed yearly, $129 month to month: 3 seats and 5 sites, extra seats $29/month, 40 articles and 250 audit pages a month, content calendar, internal linking suggestions, AI crawler monitoring, Perplexity added to AI Visibility, Content Guard on 75 pages
- Scale$239/user/mo billed annually
Scale $239/month billed yearly, $299 month to month: 5 seats and up to 10 domains, extra seats $29/month, 100 articles and 1,000 audit pages a month, Content Guard on 300 pages, Claude and Gemini added to AI Visibility, client-ready exportable reports
BuzzSumo vs Frase: common questions
- Does BuzzSumo or Frase have a free plan?
- We have not verified a free plan for BuzzSumo, while Frase publishes a free plan (Free).
- Which is cheaper once you start paying, BuzzSumo or Frase?
- Frase has the cheaper first paid step: Starter at $39/mo billed annually, against Content Creation at $199/mo billed annually for BuzzSumo — 5.1× the price. Both figures come from the vendors' own pricing pages.
- What is the difference between BuzzSumo and Frase?
- On the criteria we check, only BuzzSumo has sso (saml); both offer public api. The table above lists every criterion side by side.