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Let’s be real. Clearscope is an incredibly popular and powerful AI-driven content optimization tool. But it has one major flaw: it starts at $170 a month, which is WAY out of budget for most small businesses.
And that’s just for one seat! 👀
This pricing is a clear statement from the team at Clearscope that they target a premium clientele. But high prices don’t always mean great products.
Ready to save some money? 💰 Learn about the top 11 Clearscope alternatives that are cheaper, have better features, or offer an alternative solution! 👏
But first, a bit of a review of what Clearscope brings to the table.
Just a heads up!
This blog was created by the team at Outranking, a trusted content analysis tool for digital marketers. In this review, our team analyzed eleven tools, some of which are competitors with Outranking. This is for informational purposes only.
Clearscope is a content optimization tool that improves your content based on word count, content grade, and grade-level readability. It also has a simple keyword research tool to help you find content targets.
The tool is as old as Frase (2016), but it’s more recognizable among those seeking premium content-writing products. This popularity comes from using the Watson IBM system, and IBM has a strong legacy in the technology sector.
So, it’s got some powerful connections, but do content writers like what they use?
Those who can afford Clearscope enjoy it. This is because of its focus on simplicity and NLP-driven writing tools. Below, you’ll learn more about how business owners can benefit from Clearscope.
Clearscope focuses on simplicity above all else.
Those who use the platform will see a content grade, word count, and ease of reading score on the left. On the right side, users see common terms found across the top results of Google, typically sorted by importance.
With this information, a writer just needs to get the highest score, meet word count requirements, and mention the required keywords. Hands down, Clearscope is one of the easiest content editors on the market.
Clearscope’s simplicity makes it easy for users to navigate the platform and optimize their content. It’s a breath of fresh air for content writers and SEOs in a world full of overwhelming tools.
Clearscope uses IBM Watson to help optimize content and increase organic traffic. IBM Watson is a tool that leverages AI to understand language. In this case, it’s used to read common keywords and phrases found on web pages and improve your readability.
In a case study featuring Clearscope’s use of Watson, companies increased organic search traffic by more than 40%. So, it has a proven track record (although it’s hard to tell how much of it comes from IBM and how much of it comes from Clearscope).
IBM Watson helps Clearscope in these ways:
Clearscope also uses its own NLP technology. NLP, or natural language processing, is a technology that enables machines to analyze human language.
NLP analysis is key to creating a good content strategy that yields high-quality content. So, by using a top technology for this research, Clearscope wins over writers looking to leverage the best NLP data.
Clearscope hopes to create an environment that doesn’t feel overwhelming. It just focuses on research and optimization and integrates with any content workflow. Clerascope is particularly effective during the later stages of content writing: creation and optimization (after you create your content brief).
This narrow and simple focus makes it easy for Clearscope to fit into any environment. So, regardless of the complexity of your content creation process, Clearscope is a great solution.
Simplicity, top-notch NLP tech, and seamless workflow integrations are enough for many people. But they don’t make Clearscope perfect. We can name at least three deal breakers that might drive you away from Clearscope for your content optimization.
Clearscope claims to be AI-driven but offers no AI writing tools or briefs. This means you’ll need to be a talented writer and write everything manually. Its AI only works for topic research.
For some people, this might not be a problem. After all, many people are hesitant that AI content can’t rank on Google. But with the release of Bard, Google has confirmed that AI content has just as much chance to rank as human-created content (as long as it’s high quality!).
With the world’s largest tech company creating its own AI technology, it’s clear that the future is in AI. Any tool that hasn’t fully embraced this future is living in the past. So, while Watson uses AI for research, it’s still behind the curve in writing.
Want to learn more about AI-assisted writing briefs? 🧐 Outranking’s AI is a genius at writing SEO content briefs. Check it out! 👇
Clearscope’s on-page optimization tool includes only four aspects: quality grade, terms used, word count, and difficulty to read (based on grade level). But that’s not nearly enough data for excellent SEO!
Other tools (that are much cheaper) offer more comprehensive data. They can show you information about the ideal number of images, the use of statistics, and the total number of links. But Clearscope doesn’t do any of that.
Google has over 200 ranking factors, including external and internal links. Outranking includes more ranking factors, making it far more helpful in building winning content.
This makes Clearscope’s pricing somewhat baffling compared to some Clearscope alternatives. The Clearscope on-page optimizer needs a lot of work to be considered worth it. Not to mention that Clearscope focuses very heavily on keyword density — even though Google doesn’t consider it a ranking factor.
Like we said at the start, Clearscope’s biggest drawback is its through-the-roof pricing. At $170+ for one seat and only ten content reports, the cost of this tool adds up very fast.
Clearscope also offers no free trial, so you’ll have to request a partial refund if you don’t like it. Any prepaid credits you have used are taken from the monthly total (based on their Terms of Service).
Before diving deep into the top Clearscope alternatives, we made this table to give you a quick breakdown of the tools’ features, pricing, and pros and cons. Once you’re familiar with these alternatives, we can take a deeper look into each tool and what it’s most suited for. 👇
| Tool Name | Key Features✨ | Pricing💰 | Pros✅ | Cons⛔️ |
| Outranking | AI-powered content writing, domain data assessment, smart internal linking system, and complete content workflow | Starts at $69 /month ($7 for the first month) | Entry-level pricing only offers 5 content workflows | Less emphasis on keyword research |
| Content Harmony | Keyword report, content brief, and content grader | Starts at $50 /month | Decent entry-level pricing, great search intent classification system | The toolset is similar to Clearscope, user-friendly interface, and decent pricing |
| MarketMuse | Page and site-level insights, inventory, topic tracking, and competitive content analysis | Starts at $149 /month | Robust feature set for editing individual content pieces | Limit of 10 queries, very expensive |
| Dashword | Content grading, brief creation, and NLP content creator | Starts at $99 /month | Team editing features are limited to highest highest-tier plans | Limited plan flexibility; few keyword research tools |
| Page Optimizer Pro | AI/NLP writing tools, support for unlimited domains | Starts at $27 /month | Solid EEAT optimization tools, competitive analysis | Limited amount of data |
| Frase | The separate site and content analysis features, unique AI writing system | Starts at $14.99 /month | Affordable pricing, data-driven interface | SEO feature is not helpful, data gathering tools need work |
| Semrush Writing Assistant | Writing interface built as part of Semrush’s marketing tools | Starts at $119.95 /month | User-friendly interface, easy-to-follow content recommendations | Expensive, comes with other unrelated content improvement tools, and has no AI writing tools |
| Scalenut | 40+ AI writing templates, NLP key terms, chrome extension, and integrated SEO editor | Starts at $39 /month | An excellent user interface, built-in keyword tracking features, and great templates | The lite plan is limited to 40 articles per year, AI features require you to pay per article |
| Searchmetrics | Content writing tool built as part of a comprehensive search engine toolset | Unclear | Complete toolset, customizable reports | Dated user interface, pricing can get expensive |
| SurferSEO | Competitive analysis from keyword research to content finalization | Starts at $19 /month | Great content editing platform with an excellent NLP editor | The robust feature set for editing individual content pieces |
| NeuronWriter | Comprehensive, AI-based content writing platform similar to SurferSEO | Starts at €19 /month | Affordable pricing, user-friendly interface, and excellent NLP suggestions | Team editing features are limited to highest tier plans |
From this basic summary, you can see many of the above tools offer more data than Clearscope, but at a smaller price. The trade-off is typically a busier interface that’s harder to read. But other Clearscope alternatives also focus on simplicity. You can find what you’re looking for in any of these tools.
Below, we’ll give you the rundown for each choice, how they compare to Clearscope, and why you might be worth your time!
Outranking is an AI-driven platform for creating SEO content. We use proven techniques to increase search rank, revenue potential, and on-page results. Here’s a glimpse of how our content editor makes your writing life easier:
Outranking is the ideal Clearscope alternative because it does everything Clearscope doesn’t. It provides plenty of data to get inspired from the top results on Google, not just a content grade with zero context.
Like Clearscope, we keep you informed with phrases you can target. To insert those phrases, you can use our newly introduced auto-optimize feature that inserts these keywords alongside dynamic, original content for you.
Outranking provides deeper workflow management from keyword research to content finalization. To top it all off, Outranking integrates beautifully with tools like Google Docs, Grammarly, and Google Search Console to provide the best support for your work.
While Clearscope used IBM Watson to increase traffic by 50%, Outranking has been proven to double website traffic in six months. Check out this review to see the average user experience:
An absolute beast of a product, I switched from using Jasper + SurferSEO and Outranking does everything better than any content writing tool out there. An absolute must-have for anyone writing an article with SEO features!
Sarang Gambhir on Product Hunt
also leverages something Clearscope has fallen behind on in AI. Sure, Clearscope uses a robust tool for NLP analysis, but Outranking’s NLP tool simply writes the content for you! This works on a piece-by-piece basis or even for an entire site audit.
We don’t stop there — our keyword clustering feature provides your website with actionable topics to focus on, giving it the best opportunity to be recognized by Google as an authority in your field. Outranking
Psst! 🤫Here’s a quick training video on Outranking’s keyword clustering and ranking features!🎬
And while Clearscope focuses on simplicity, Outranking has recently simplified its interface with the latest V13 release. So you can be sure that we listen to our users!
| Outranking | Clearscope |
| Fully featured content editor with a plethora of data points | Limited content editor focused on some data points |
| AI-driven content platform that creates briefs and writes for you | No AI writing tools for your brief |
Ready to see what all the hype is about? ✨
Check out why Outranking is the best overall Clearscope alternative. 🥇With Outranking’s 7-day money-back guarantee, give it a GO today!
MarketMuse is a fully formed content optimization platform that starts with research. This makes it one of the most complete optimization platforms on the market, offering far more features than Clearscope. Here’s its research phase in action, which provides plenty of competitive data.
The optimization tool is similar to Clearscope. It’ll tell you whether you’ve spoken enough about and analyzed a topic to cover all your topic clusters. The one thing it lacks is AI writing tools. MarketMuse assumes you have a writer on staff, which might be false.
MarketMuse offers a free plan, which only gives you access to 10 monthly queries. The paid plan jumps up quickly, requiring you to pay upfront costs of $1,500 per year. Still, it’s one of the best content research platforms. But you’ll be frustrated to find out these tools have some overlap:
| MarketMuse | Clearscope |
| Has excellent content analysis and optimization abilities | Follows a simpler approach to content optimization |
| Starts from research to optimization | Offers relatively limited research tools |
While most content optimization tools on this page focus on articles, Page Page Optimizer Pro focuses on more technical aspects alongside content. As a result, its interface differs from all the others.
Despite this, you’ll see NLP keyword suggestions with this Clearscope alternative. You’ll just have to find the editor.
To access the built-in editor, you need to click the three-dot menu located on your project list. So, it’s a bit hidden and also tends to load slowly. But you don’t need the editor to access the NLP reports.
After you finish edits in the builder and check your page to be sure it meets all of the analysis requirements, you can open your website builder and make the changes there.
Technically, this is no different from the other editors, but segmenting the two pages makes it less helpful for writing long-form content. But it’s incredibly useful for editing home and service pages.
From the screenshot above, you can probably guess it’s more complex than standard content editors. So, it’s not ideal for those who want an easy editing tool. But as a young tool with fewer than 20 reviews across three websites, it has a lot of work to do.
Pricing varies anywhere from $27 to $490, based on the number of reports you need. You’ll need to pay for a higher-level plan to make bulk reports (multiple pages at once).
| Page Optimizer Pro | Clearscope |
| Domain-focused page optimization | Focused more on article creation and keywords |
| Has a longer setup process for each page of your website | Focuses on top performers so don’t have to worry about page setup |
Frase.io is a content optimization tool that became popular due to its Appsumo deal. Through Appsumo, the content creation tool made a name for itself by creating a simple system that gathers data from the top 20 Google results, letting the writers know about common topics and keywords found here.
Frase has a complete workflow process built into its system, from outline creation to drafting and optimization. Compared to Clearscope, the data you get is much more comprehensive. However, it needs a comprehensive keyword data tool.
Frase does offer some AI writing features, but you have to pay an extra $35 each month for the “SEO Add On.” A minimum of $35 for four content pieces means you’ll pay a lot if you make a lot of content. So, if you want value from this, you’ll need to pay more for Frase, exceeding $150 per month.
Some users have also expressed frustration with the company’s difficult-to-understand subscription system, as you can see from the review below.
| Frase | Clearscope |
| Similar content-building tool, but no AI writer is included | Similar content- building tool, but no AI writer included |
| Gathers results from the top 20 of Google without keyword research features | Offers built-in keyword research features |
Semrush is one of the world’s best-known marketing tools. It works for organic traffic, advertising, local SEO, and other marketing factors. The writing assistant is just part of this impressive package.
Curious about SEO writing in 2023? 📝 Gain valuable tips and tricks for writing amazing content! Watch the video below for more information! 👇
By itself, the writing assistant isn’t very detailed. You’ll find a system similar to what you get from Clearscope. While it can help you create content, it doesn’t help if you need to know the number of images or links others have chosen.
Better writing tools exist, but Semrush stands out because of its complete marketing suite. So, if you need help with email marketing, full website tracking, social media management, and almost everything else, Semrush is a great tool.
But it comes with some technical knowledge and a few problems based on some user experiences.
If you want the full tool set, be prepared to pay at least $229 for the Guru plan to access the writing assistant. This pricing puts it out of range for most small businesses.
| Semrush Writing Assistant | Clearscope |
| A simple editor is part of a larger marketing package | Simple editor and keyword research too |
| No AI-writing tools | No AI-writing tools |
If you’re looking for an alternative to Clearscope, the Searchmetrics Content tool is a great option. This tool offers the following features:
Searchmetrics is similar to Clearscope in that it focuses its AI on optimizing, so it won’t write the content for you. This differs from Outranking, which will focus on leveraging the latest AI tools to help research and write the content for you.
The result of having this comprehensive package is pricing, but you’ll need to talk to a sales expert to know more. This is a huge reason why some don’t like Searchmetrics: they don’t want to talk to a salesperson and feel pressured. But if you think sales experts can help answer your questions, go for it.
| Searchmetrics Content Experience | Clearscope |
| Solid content editor alongside other SEO tools | Just the content editor (with limited SEO tools) |
| The content editor focuses on simple targets | Similar to what you get from Searchmetrics |
Content Harmony is a bit rough around the edges compared to some other companies on this list. But it’s still a powerful tool well worth looking at. Its most powerful feature, which you can see above, is its search intent score.
Search intent is what people are generally looking for while they type a search query. Understanding this intent helps you create better content that addresses readers’ needs.
But despite this, the UX looks a bit dated. So you’ll find it’s harder to use than other content writing platforms. So, it requires more work, even if the work yields results.
Content Harmony’s content optimization tool is closer to what you might expect from Clearscope. It focuses on filling out all of your target keywords. But you won’t get the same data you get from alternatives like SurferSEO (mentioned later) and Outranking.
Regarding pricing, Content Harmony ranges from $50 (for five content pieces) to over $1000 (for 200 pieces or more). So, it’s better than Clearscope in this regard, but only by a small margin.
| Content Harmony | Clearscope |
| Offers detailed keyword reports and competitive analysis tools | Has a keyword report, but fewer data on the competitive analysis |
| Has a keyword report, but less data on the competitive analysis | Starts off with a brief creation |
Dashword is a content optimization platform that lets you insert a target keyword and optimize content based on the top Google results. From there, you can choose whether to use AI credits to create your content, start with a brief, or jump into content creation.
The content editor, seen above, is similar to Clearscope’s — it just flipped the placements of the keywords and the content score. Dashword also scores other pieces of content, letting you know the minimum score if you want to beat the average.
You’ll also see the familiar readability level you expect from other platforms. You’ll bring your grade up by keeping your sentences simple and short (and using keywords!).
You’ll also pay less starting here as well. But the entry-level $39 pricing only gives you five editing blocks per month. For more, you’ll need to pay $100 for 20 or $350 for 100 reports.
Dashword’s biggest problem is that it’s relatively new. So, while the 20 reviews you can find online are mostly positive, there is little evidence of Dashword’s usefulness.
| Dashword | Clearscope |
| AI writer with built-in SEO optimization tools | Optimization tools with no built-in AI writer |
| Advanced plans with content monitoring services | Support for large teams but with no monitoring features |
Scalenut is one of the many SEO tools that follows a specific design format. You’ll find similar text editors across tools like SurferSEO and others. Matching this popular design means that Scalenut doesn’t do much to stand out.
The keyword planning and research tools make this a much more affordable Clearscope alternative. Scalenut also has AI templates, which Clearscope doesn’t have. So, it does have a few extra features, but that’s not enough to stand out compared to other Clearscope alternatives.
Scalenut starts at $20 monthly for an annual plan, doubling that price next year. You’ll find this across all of their plans, which are still cheaper than you get from Clearscope. Pay a little bit more than that, and you can get a much better tool with more unique, comprehensive features.
| Scalenut | Clearscope |
| Includes AI templates | Doesn’t offer AI templates |
| Simple editor focused on filling out topic gaps | Simple editor with similar tools |
SurferSEO is one of the most popular NLP writing platforms on the internet. Their system is emulated across other content-writing platforms, such as Scalenut and NeuronWriter.
Surfer is great because its NLP system is similar to Clearscope’s, only with some extra detail. You’ll see things like common questions, commonly used header keywords, and questions asked across the top results of the SERP. Like Frase, you can also choose to isolate specific topics.
The problem with this content editor is similar to the problem with Clearscope: it can encourage unnatural writing. Keyword stuffing is a common issue among inexperienced writers, which can make the tool more of a hindrance. But in the right hands, Surfer is excellent.
Pricing starts at $29 for keyword-based content pages. These don’t roll over between months and don’t include AI credits (like Outranking does). It also doesn’t include the site audit feature, which lets you optimize content reviewed directly on your site. So, considering the entire toolset, you’ll pay more than $250.
| SurferSEO | Clearscope |
| NLP-driven content editor and AI writing features | NLP content writer with no AI writing |
| The great built-in content editor that’s been emulated | Content writer has also been emulated |
NeuronWriter has taken a lot of inspiration from SurferSEO, evidenced by the editor screenshot above. Because it’s a smaller company, it has a better deal for AI credits and the number of content writer analysis pages.
NeuronWriter is divided into three areas:
On paper, NeuronWriter is a better version of SurferSEO. In practice, the relatively newer company has much growing to do. Its editor is great, but the AI tools behind it are a work in progress.
You can check it out for a starting price of 19 euros, far cheaper than some alternatives. But you won’t get high-quality AI writing tools as you would with Outranking.
| NeuronWriter | Clearscope |
| Builds outlines for your articles using AI | Doesn’t offer comprehensive outline building features |
| Writes drafts using AI | Doesn’t use AI for writing, only for optimization |
TL;DR Here’s a quick review 📚of the top 6 Clearscope alternatives! Check out which one fits best depending on your team’s needs:
Clearscope is a popular tool, But its monthly price for just one seat is too expensive for most small businesses. Your team’s needs decide which tool you should go for. But if you’re looking at the overall features, Outranking has the most comprehensive approach.
Outranking is your all-in-one SEO platform for AI-assisted content writing. Outranking offers the most bang for your buck.
Get access to an AI writer, built-in plagiarism checks, personalized voice, and style guide, and keyword research & clustering – what other platforms offer all of this (and more!) for only $69 per month. Create or spruce up your entire website with less work and get better results using the new and improved Outranking V13!
