AI SEO Pricing: What AI SEO Tools Cost Per Month and Per Published Article
AI SEO tools sell in two different shapes and the sticker price hides which one you are buying. Writing tools meter by article: Rankable starts at $19 a month for 4 articles, Frase at $49 for 10, Scalenut at $59 for 5. Optimization and tracking tools meter by page or by prompt instead: Clearscope starts at $129, Rankability at $99. Divide the plan price by what it actually produces and the ranking changes completely.
Updated September 2026. Every price below was read from the vendor's own pricing page on 10 September 2026, except Semrush and Ahrefs which were re-read on 9 September 2026.
Last updated September 2026
Try the tool these prices buy
Enter a site and Rankable researches, writes and schedules the article. 14 day trial.
See pricing starting at $19/mo
$1.49
Lowest cost per article, Rankable Scale at 100 a month
$11.80
Highest entry cost per article, Scalenut Starter
$19
Cheapest entry plan of the six vendors compared
6
Vendors with prices read from source this week
AI SEO pricing, compared on the unit you actually buy
Most pricing round-ups for this category compare monthly plan prices and stop there. That comparison is close to useless, because the tools are not selling the same unit. One charges you for articles it writes, the next for pages it grades, the next for prompts it watches inside ChatGPT. A $129 plan that optimizes 50 pages and a $129 plan that writes 40 articles are not competing products, and lining their prices up in a row tells you nothing.
So the table below does something narrower and more useful. Where a vendor publishes an article allowance, we divide the plan price by that allowance and show the cost per article. That number is arithmetic on published figures, not an estimate, and you can check every one of them against the vendor's own pricing page. Where a vendor does not meter by article, the table says so rather than inventing a number.
One honest note before the numbers, because it decides whether this page is relevant to you at all. Rankable produces and publishes SEO content. It is not a backlink index, a keyword database or a rank tracker, and the cheapest plan in a table is not the right answer if what you actually need is competitor research. If you are pricing a research platform rather than content production, the honest comparison is on SEO API pricing, and the question-shaped version of this page is how much AI SEO software costs.
AI SEO pricing table, September 2026
Plan prices read from each vendor's own pricing page. Cost per article is the plan price divided by the published article allowance, rounded to the cent.
Swipe to see all columns →
| Tool and tier | Monthly price | Included output | Cost per article |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rankable Starter | $19 | 4 articles | $4.75 |
| Rankable Growth | $59 | 20 articles | $2.95 |
| Rankable Scale | $149 | 100 articles | $1.49 |
| Frase Starter | $49 | 10 articles | $4.90 |
| Frase Professional | $129 | 40 articles | $3.23 |
| Frase Scale | $299 | 100 articles | $2.99 |
| Scalenut Starter | $59 | 5 articles | $11.80 |
| Scalenut Plus | $89 | 30 articles | $2.97 |
| Scalenut Professional | $199 | 75 articles | $2.65 |
| Clearscope Essentials | $129 | 20 drafts | $6.45 |
| Clearscope Business | $399 | 20 drafts | $19.95 |
| Rankability Starter | $99 | Not metered by article | Not comparable |
Clearscope includes the same 20 drafts on both tiers, so its per draft figure rises with price; it is priced for pages optimized, not posts written.
What you are actually paying for
Four different metering models sit behind these prices. Match the model to the job before you compare the numbers.
Metered by article
Rankable, Frase and Scalenut publish how many articles each plan includes, so cost per article is a real number you can budget against and check yourself.
Metered by page optimized
Clearscope charges for pages you optimize, not posts you publish. Both its tiers include the same 20 drafts a month, so the extra money buys coverage, not output.
Metered by tracked prompt
Rankability now prices on active prompts watched across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Grok. That is a visibility tracker, a different purchase from content production.
Annual billing changes the ranking
Scalenut advertises annual plans at $24, $36 and $80 a month with doubled limits. Rankable annual is $114, $354 and $894 a year. Compare like for like.
Seats are a hidden line
Frase includes 1 seat at $49 and charges $29 a month for extras on higher tiers. Clearscope includes unlimited users on every plan. Price the team, not the login.
Trials differ by a week
Rankable runs a 14 day trial and Clearscope 14 days. Frase, Scalenut and Rankability all run 7 days. That matters if you want a real publishing cycle inside the trial.
How to price this properly in four steps
The order matters. Teams that start from budget instead of output almost always buy a tier too high.
Count the articles you actually need
Start with output, not budget. Four posts a month and forty posts a month sit on completely different tiers at every vendor, and guessing high is the most common way teams overpay in this category.
Divide the plan price by that number
Take the tier that covers your volume and divide. At 100 articles a month the spread in the table is $1.49 against $2.99, which is $150 a month, or $1,800 a year, for the same nominal output.
Add the seats and the overage
Check what an extra user costs and what happens when you exceed the allowance. Frase sells pay as you go capacity above the plan limit; others simply stop. The overage rule decides your real bill in a busy month.
Check it publishes, not just drafts
A draft in a dashboard is not a published page. Confirm the tool reaches your CMS before you compare it with one that does, because that gap is usually paid for later in someone's time.
Which tier fits which team
One site, a few posts a month
At four to ten articles the entry tiers are close in absolute dollars and far apart per article: $4.75 at Rankable Starter against $11.80 at Scalenut Starter, because Scalenut's entry tier includes only 5 articles.
An agency running client sites
Site or domain counts bind before article counts do. Rankable Scale covers 25 sites, Frase Scale covers up to 10 domains. Count the client list first, then compare the article price.
A team that already has writers
If people are writing and you only need briefs and grading, an optimization tool priced per page is the right shape, and Clearscope Essentials at $129 for 50 pages is a fair comparison point.
A brand chasing AI citations
If the goal is being cited by ChatGPT or Perplexity, tracking that is a separate product. Rankable does not track AI visibility and will not pretend to; see the honest round-up linked below.
At 100 articles a month, side by side
The two plans in this category that both publish a 100 article allowance, compared line by line at their published monthly prices.
Swipe to see all columns →
| Rankable Scale, $149 | Frase Scale, $299 | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly price at 100 articles | $149 | $299 |
| Cost per article | $1.49 | $2.99 |
| Sites or domains covered | 25 sites | Up to 10 domains |
| Seats | No published cap | 5 seats, extras $29 a month |
| Free trial | 14 days | 7 days |
| Capacity above the plan | Not sold as overage | $4 per extra article |
| Publishing to your CMS | Wired up during onboarding | Ships its own agent |
AI SEO pricing questions
How much does AI SEO software cost?
AI SEO software costs between $19 and $399 a month at the published self-serve tiers of the six vendors compared here. Entry plans cluster between $19 and $129. The figure that matters more than the plan price is the cost per article, which runs from $1.49 to $11.80 depending on tier and vendor.
How much does an LLM SEO tool cost per month?
Tools built around AI search visibility price higher than writing tools. Rankability starts at $99 a month for 60 tracked prompts across three AI platforms and runs to $399 for 250 prompts across six. Clearscope bundles tracked prompts into its $129 and $399 tiers rather than selling them separately.
What is the cheapest AI SEO tool?
Of the vendors compared here, Rankable Starter at $19 a month is the cheapest entry plan, covering 4 articles and 1 site. Frase Starter is $49 for 10 articles and Scalenut Starter is $59 for 5. Cheapest by plan price and cheapest per article are not always the same tier, so check both.
Do AI SEO tools charge per article or per month?
Most charge a monthly subscription that includes a capped number of articles, which is a per month price with a per article limit rather than true usage billing. Frase additionally sells capacity above the cap at $5 and $4 per article. Clearscope and Rankability do not meter by article at all.
Is AI SEO software cheaper than hiring a writer?
On unit cost, yes, and by a wide margin. Published per article prices here run $1.49 to $11.80, while a commissioned 2,000 word post from a freelancer costs an order of magnitude more. The honest caveat is that software output needs review, so the saving is real but it is not the whole editorial budget. Per article SEO content costs covers the human side.
Does a more expensive plan mean better rankings?
No. Higher tiers buy volume, seats and coverage, not ranking quality. The output on a $399 plan is produced by the same models as the output on a $99 plan at most vendors. Buy the tier that matches the number of pages you intend to publish, and spend the difference on editing.
Start at $19 and check the arithmetic yourself
Rankable researches keywords, writes the article and publishes it on your schedule. Starter is $19 a month for 4 articles and 1 site, Growth is $59 for 20 articles and 5 sites, Scale is $149 for 100 articles and 25 sites. Every trial runs 14 days.
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