If you choose tools for a content team, you need editorial checks and usage allowances that fit the volume of work you publish. Clearscope publishes two self-serve plans and nothing between them. Essentials at $129 a month covers 50 tracked prompts, 50 pages, 20 topic explorations and 20 drafts. Business at $399 a month covers 300 tracked prompts, 300 pages, 50 explorations and the same 20 drafts.
OppAlerts publishes this page and is one of the alternatives on it. It scores drafts and does not write them.
Most teams start looking when Essentials runs out and Business is three times the price for capacity they will not use. Which alternative fits depends on which of the four allowances you exhausted first.
Frase, when the price gap is the problem
Frase fills the space Clearscope leaves. Its plans cost $39, $103 and $239 a month billed yearly. They cover 10, 40 and more articles, with audit allowances of 50, 250 and more pages. Content Guard monitors 10 and 75 published pages for declining Google performance.
Content Guard is the capability with no equivalent elsewhere in this list: it tells you which published pages are declining. Seats cost $29 a month each, so a large team narrows the saving.
Frase positions itself around Google rather than AI answers, so if Clearscope's tracked prompts are what you use, this is a step away from that.
Surfer, when the page allowance ran out first
If you exhausted the page allowance, consider Surfer Standard at $99 a month billed yearly. It covers creating or optimizing 360 documents and 25 AI prompts refreshed weekly. It also includes 1-click content optimization, team collaboration and a plagiarism checker.
Its prompt tracking is sold separately, on the AI Search Analytics plan at $158 a month for 100 AI prompts refreshed daily. That plan includes Mention Gap, Brand Sentiments, five Brand Spaces and MCP access. Buying both comes to $257, which is still below Clearscope Business, but check the refresh frequency you need before treating that as equivalent.
SE Ranking, when the tracked prompts are what you use
If Clearscope's prompt allowance is the constraint, SE Ranking at $129 a month includes 100 prompts and 2,000 keywords tracked daily. It also includes 10 projects, an AI Writer and 250,000 audit pages a month. Its $279 plan reaches 250 daily prompts and 5,000 keywords.
That is more prompt collection than Clearscope Essentials at the same price, with keyword rank tracking added. Its editorial tools cover more tasks in less depth than a specialist content scoring tool.
Semrush, when content belongs inside the platform
Semrush includes content optimization from its Pro+ plan at $299 a month, with 1,500 keywords and 100 prompts tracked daily, Site Audit and MCP access. It costs slightly less than Clearscope Business and offers a much wider product, though not a dedicated content grading workflow.
OppAlerts, when the score should measure audience and place
OppAlerts does not write drafts, and it has no topic exploration workflow, so it does not replace Clearscope's editorial side.
Its Content Optimizer measures something Clearscope does not. Select up to three categories, each from a different taxonomy. The report shows the nearest categories, whether they include your intended category, and related phrases missing from the draft. The taxonomies cover audience, industry, product and US city categories. Check whether a page addresses facilities managers or contractors, for example, or whether it provides context specific to Boulder. The editor reads up to 8,192 bytes at a time.
Tracking uses one weekly call allowance. One call is one tracked prompt or keyword on one provider on one day. Providers include ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode, Google and Bing. The same campaign definition supplies context for prospect searches by meaning and opportunity type, contact lookups, and news and blog searches. It also supports Content FAQs from LLM answers and search results, link gap reports, unlinked mentions and monthly PageRank history.
Matching the reason to the product
| Which Clearscope allowance ran out | Look at |
|---|---|
| Budget, before any allowance | Frase from $39/mo billed yearly |
| Pages | Surfer Standard, at 360 documents |
| Tracked prompts | SE Ranking, 100 daily at $129/mo |
| Drafts, stuck at 20 a month | Surfer or Frase, both metered on documents or articles |
| Nothing; you need pages watched for decline | Frase Content Guard |
| Scoring against audience, industry or city | OppAlerts Content Optimizer |
| Placements, contacts, coverage and keyword positions | OppAlerts |
| Nothing; you want one plan for content and prompts | Stay with Clearscope; that bundling is its distinguishing point |
Several alternatives here are billed yearly where Clearscope states no contracts, so compare the commitment as well as the monthly figure.
Before replacing Clearscope, compare a typical draft review and your expected monthly workload. Check that the alternative supports the editorial decision your team needs to make.
For the two-product version, see OppAlerts and Clearscope compared.