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Which costs less for a team of writers, Surfer or Clearscope?
Summary
From four people up, Clearscope costs less, because every plan from the $129-a-month Essentials tier includes unlimited users. Surfer prices by seats: three on Standard at $99 a month billed yearly, ten on Peace of Mind at $299. A small team that publishes a lot flips the answer, since Clearscope caps new drafts at 20 a month on every listed plan.
Seats decide Surfer's price
Surfer publishes only annual pricing and charges the full year when you buy. Standard is $1,188 a year for three seats. Pro, at $2,184, gives you five. Peace of Mind, at $3,588, gives you ten. Surfer says monthly billing costs up to 17% more but doesn't list monthly prices.
Clearscope Essentials is $1,548 over twelve months, whether two people log in or twenty. It bills monthly with no contract.
Drafts decide Clearscope's fit
Clearscope meters Drafts, and both Essentials and Business ($399 a month) include 20 a month. Pages, the allowance for content you add to Clearscope's Content Inventory, is a separate count: 50 on Essentials, 300 on Business. Go over an allowance and Clearscope bills the add-on to your subscription automatically.
Surfer counts documents you create or optimize. Standard and Pro both include 360, and on annual plans the allowance resets once a year. Peace of Mind is listed as unlimited, with a fair usage cap of 6,000 documents a year on annual billing.
If you expect to use about 300 a year, Surfer Standard's 360 covers it and Clearscope's 240 drafts a year does not.
Tracking AI answers
Surfer Standard checks 25 prompts weekly in ChatGPT, Pro checks 50 daily and Peace of Mind 100 daily. Clearscope's Tracked Queries follow how your brand is mentioned in ChatGPT and Gemini, with 50 on Essentials and 300 on Business.
Surfer offers new accounts a seven-day trial of Pro. Clearscope's trial runs 14 days.
Work out your own number: the SEO Tools Cost Calculator finds the cheapest published plan for your sites, tracked keywords and users.
Sources
- https://surferseo.com/pricing/
- https://docs.surferseo.com/en/articles/7545943-pricing-faq
- https://docs.surferseo.com/en/articles/12944161-fair-usage-policy
- https://www.clearscope.io/pricing
- https://www.clearscope.io/support/how-do-plan-addons-work
- https://www.clearscope.io/support/how-do-clearscope-credits-work
Figures come from each vendor's own pricing pages and documentation. We have not tested these tools hands-on, and no ranking here is paid for.