Frase AI vs Scalenut: Which content optimization tool is right for you?

If you're in the SEO world, you've likely heard the chatter: with AI getting smarter by the day, do old-school content optimization tools still matter? It's a valid question. For a long time, these tools were our go-to for scoring content against top search results, but things are moving quickly.

I’ve scaled back on using these tools. They’re fine for keyword ideas or spotting gaps, but I’ve found they often make the content feel stiff and less enjoyable to read. I think readability and context seem way more important than stuffing in exact phrases or following a strict optimization checklist.

Reddit

Two of the biggest players are Frase AI and Scalenut. Both were created to help you research, write, and optimize content to rank higher on Google. They offer a more data-backed process than just winging it.

Use frase.io

Reddit

We're here to lay out a straightforward comparison of how they stack up. We’ll dive into their features, workflows, and pricing to help you decide which one, if either, makes sense for you. We'll also touch on a different way of working that's picking up speed: generating complete, ready-to-publish articles from just a keyword with tools like the eesel AI blog writer.

What is Frase AI?

Frase AI is an advanced research assistant. Its main purpose is to help you build content that aligns with what Google is rewarding.

The workflow is pretty simple. You feed it a target keyword, and Frase analyzes the top-ranking pages. It then produces a detailed content brief filled with insights, including common headings, questions people are asking online, and stats you can pull from. Its primary job is to give you all the data you need before you even start writing.

Its features are all about this research-first method:

• Automated content briefs based on SERP analysis.
• A text editor with a real-time topic score to keep you on track.
• Question research tools that pull from places like Reddit and Quora.

Frase is perfect for SEOs, content managers, and agencies who need to pump out detailed, data-backed briefs for their writers. It gets everyone on the same page and focused on the right topics.

What is Scalenut?

Scalenut tries to be more of an all-in-one solution for the entire content process. It’s not just for research; it’s meant to assist with everything from planning to creation and optimization.

Its big selling point is "Cruise Mode," a five-step wizard that walks you through creating a first draft of a blog post. You give it your keyword, and it helps you put together an outline, find key terms, and then writes the content.

Beyond that, Scalenut has a topic cluster planner to help you build authority, which is a great feature for serious SEO work. It also provides a content optimization score and a variety of AI writing templates for things like product descriptions or social media updates.

Scalenut is aimed at marketers and businesses who want one platform to handle everything from start to finish. If you want a tool to guide you from the idea phase to a first draft, Scalenut is designed for that.

Feature breakdown: Frase AI vs. Scalenut

Both tools aim to get you better SEO content, but their methods are quite different. You can really see the contrast in their features and underlying philosophies. Let's get into it.

Content research and briefs

Frase AI: Frase AI's core strength is its deep SERP analysis, grabbing headings, questions, stats, and external links from your top competitors. Its strength lies in providing a ton of detailed data to build a fantastic brief. It's designed for a human to take that research and steer the writing process.

Scalenut: Scalenut’s research is geared more toward building your overall content strategy. The keyword and topic cluster planner is a great tool for mapping out what to write about to become an authority on a subject. Its briefs feel less like a standalone research doc and more like the first step in its AI writing workflow.

AI writing and generation

Frase AI: Frase offers AI writing features within its editor, but it feels more like a helper than the main writer. It’s useful for fleshing out sections of your brief or tweaking sentences. It’s not really built to write an entire article from scratch.

Scalenut: This is Scalenut's main event. "Cruise Mode" is all about generating a complete first draft. It’s designed to do the heavy lifting of writing for you. It also includes other generative tools like paraphrasers and sentence shorteners to help you polish the AI-generated text.

Content optimization and scoring

Frase AI: The editor provides a real-time topic score that changes as you write. It checks whether you've included important terms it found from competitors. It’s a very direct and detailed way to optimize, ensuring you've covered your topic thoroughly.

Scalenut: Scalenut also provides a content grade based on NLP terms, heading count, and readability. It’s a solid feature, but it's worth mentioning that some users feel that chasing a 100% score can sometimes make the content sound a bit stiff or unnatural. That’s a potential issue with any optimization score, but it's something to be aware of.

To me personally I don't like them because I think they just make the content less readable. For LLM it has to be readable and the user has to enjoy the writing for the short span they have.

Reddit

Pricing comparison: Frase AI vs. Scalenut

Price is always a factor, and the way these two tools structure their plans is a key difference. Just remember that pricing can change, so it’s always smart to check their official websites for the most current information.

Frase AI pricing

Frase generally offers a subscription model with a few tiers, like Solo, Basic, and Team. The main limits are typically the number of documents you can research or optimize each month and the number of users you can have. It’s a fairly standard SaaS pricing setup.

Scalenut pricing

Scalenut’s plans (usually called Essential, Growth, and Pro) are typically based on AI word credits and the number of SEO articles you can create each month. This means you're paying for the amount of content the AI generates. This can be cost-effective if you have a predictable output, but you’ll need to keep an eye on your credit usage.

Here’s a quick summary of how they usually compare:

An alternative: Generating publish-ready content with eesel AI blog writer

Frase and Scalenut are effective tools for helping you refine a draft. An alternative workflow focuses on generating a more complete, publish-ready post from the start. The idea isn't just to write quicker, but to scale up your content production without letting quality slide.

This is what the eesel AI blog writer is built for. Instead of handing you a brief or a rough draft, it takes a single keyword and produces a full article, complete with an introduction, conclusion, proper headings, and even assets.

This approach includes features such as:

• Automatic Asset Generation: It creates relevant images, tables, and infographics to go along with your post. This can reduce the time spent searching for stock photos or creating charts.
• Social Proof Integration: It can find and embed relevant Reddit quotes and YouTube videos. This adds a layer of real-world perspective that pure AI text often lacks.
• Context-Aware Research & AEO: It does more than just sprinkle in keywords. It analyzes search intent to create content that is genuinely useful. It’s also optimized for AI Answer Engines (like Google AI Overviews), which is becoming increasingly important for modern SEO.

We used this exact tool to grow our own blog at eesel AI from 700 to 750,000 impressions per day in just three months. The pricing is $99 for 50 blogs, with no recurring subscription. It is also free to try, allowing users to evaluate the quality.

Frase AI vs. Scalenut: Which tool should you choose?

After all that, which one is right for you? It really boils down to your team's process and your biggest pain point.

• Choose Frase AI if: You already have a writing team, and your main bottleneck is research. You need a robust tool to create data-rich content briefs at scale so your writers can get started quickly.
• Choose Scalenut if: You want a single platform to guide you through the entire process. You need help with everything from keyword planning to generating a solid first draft that you can then edit and refine.
• Choose eesel AI if: Your main goal is to scale high-quality content production. You want to go from a keyword to a complete, SEO-optimized, and media-rich blog post that’s about 95% ready to publish, aiming to reduce your manual editing time.

  

For a more hands-on look at how these two platforms compare in real-time, the video below offers a detailed walkthrough of their features and user experience.

This video offers a detailed walkthrough of the features and user experience for Frase AI and Scalenut.

Final thoughts

So, what's the bottom line? Frase and Scalenut are designed for polishing and optimizing drafts. They improve what you're already writing. On the other hand, the eesel AI blog writer is designed to generate a complete, publish-ready final product from scratch.

The right tool is the one that slots into your process. Are you looking to tweak your current system, or are you ready for a new approach built for speed and scale?

Ready to see what a publish-ready blog post looks like? Generate your first blog for free with the eesel AI blog writer.