Three plans. No credit games.
Surfer: $99/mo and metered. Clearscope: $129. RankCrab is flat — and includes audits, rank tracking, and the free tool suite.
For the solo blogger or freelance writer.
- 15 content briefs / month
- 25 page audits / month
- 50 tracked keywords (weekly)
- 1 site · 25-page crawl
- 5 AI brief credits
- All 15+ free SEO tools
Most picked. Cheaper than Surfer's $99 entry plan.
- 50 content briefs / month
- 100 page audits / month
- 250 tracked keywords (weekly)
- 5 sites · 100-page crawls
- 30 AI brief credits
- 3 team seats
- Internal link suggestions
- Watchdog: weekly re-audits
For boutique agencies billing 3–10 client sites.
- 200 content briefs / month
- 500 page audits / month
- 1,500 tracked keywords (weekly)
- 25 sites · 500-page crawls
- 100 AI brief credits
- 10 team seats
- White-label PDF reports
- Embeddable audit widget
- Public API access
Direct, factual, no smear.
Numbers pulled from competitor pricing pages — May 2026.
| Feature | RankCrab | Surfer SEO | Clearscope | Frase |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entry price | $29/mo | $99/mo | $129/mo | $45/mo |
| Content briefs included | 15 · 50 · 200 | Credit packs | Credit packs | 30 |
| On-page audits in base tier | Add-on | |||
| Live SERP top-10 scoring | ||||
| Per-credit overage games | Never | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Rank tracker included | 50 · 250 · 1,500 kw | +$95/mo add-on | ||
| Free SEO tools (no signup) | 15+ | 1 | 0 | 3 |
| Trial requires credit card? | Yes — 7 days, cancel anytime | No trial | No trial | Yes |
| Annual price (lowest plan) | $279/yr ($23/mo) | $948/yr ($79/mo) | $1,548/yr | $468/yr ($39/mo) |
Answers, with all the caveats.
Why no free tier?+
Freemium-to-paid conversion is ~2.6% across SaaS (First Page Sage, 2026). Free users drive support cost without reaching the workflows that move rankings. Instead we run the 10 widget tools as the unmonetized acquisition surface — they're genuinely useful, no signup, no paywall.
How is RankCrab cheaper than Surfer if you use the same DataForSEO under the hood?+
Surfer's $99/mo wraps SERP data with their custom NLP pipeline and a credit system that meters every query. We use DataForSEO Standard Queue ($0.0006/SERP) directly, batch rank checks weekly, and price predictably — no credit overage games. Our COGS per active paid user runs under $5/mo.
Do you have an API?+
Yes, on the Agency tier — POST /api/public/v1/audit and /score with an X-API-Key header. Rate-limited to 60 req/min. CLI helpers ship in v2.
What about AI Overviews / ChatGPT citations?+
We track AI Overview citations for tracked keywords (1 prompt per keyword, weekly) starting in v2. Frase ships an MCP server today for this; we'll match it before Surfer does.
How does the 7-day trial work?+
Credit card on file, full Pro features. Days 1, 3, 5, 6 you get a reminder email. On day 7 + 1h, Stripe auto-charges. Cancel any time from the dashboard — no email chain, no "are you sure" dark pattern.
Can I cancel after I get billed?+
14-day money-back guarantee. Email us, we refund the charge. No questions, no "sorry to see you go" survey.
What stack are you built on?+
Next.js 15 on AWS Amplify Hosting, Aurora Serverless v2 (Postgres), Clerk auth, Stripe Billing, Lambda + @sparticuz/chromium for the audit worker. The boring choices, deliberately.