Clearscope
Bootstrapped since 2016 by two founders who picked the expensive end of content grading, then spent a decade lowering the price while most SaaS tools were raising theirs.
What is Clearscope?
Clearscope has done one job for most of its history: hand it a keyword, it pulls the pages already ranking, and it grades a draft against them on an A++ to F scale, with a weighted list of missing terms and a target word count attached. Bernard Huang and Kevin Su built the company in 2016 without taking outside investment, and its pricing history runs backwards compared to most software — Clearscope launched above $300 a month for enterprise-only access and has spent the years since lowering that floor rather than raising it. The Essentials plan now costs $129/month, still the highest entry price among the mainstream content-scoring tools, but a real drop from where the company started, funded by a bootstrapped, profitable business rather than investor pressure to raise prices.
The 2026 addition is a push into what the industry calls AEO, answer engine optimization. Clearscope now tracks whether a brand gets mentioned inside ChatGPT and Gemini responses, and it surfaces the background searches those models ran while composing an answer — a level of detail few competitors expose at all. That tracking runs through a credit system called AI Tracked Topics, capped at 20 a month on the entry plan, and it shares the same monthly ceiling logic as three other capped resources: Topic Explorations, AI Drafts, and Content Inventory pages. Together, those caps decide how far a single subscription actually stretches before add-on costs kick in.
Founding and pricing-history details are drawn from independent tracking of Clearscope's public pricing page through 2026; customer logos and feature claims come from Clearscope's own marketing pages.
Key features
Content Editor
Grades a draft A++ to F against current top-ranking pages, with a weighted term list and target word count.
Topic Explorations
Keyword and topic research, capped at 20 explorations a month on the entry plan.
Content Inventory
Pulls Google Search Console data to flag pages losing traffic and worth a refresh.
AI Tracked Topics
Monitors whether ChatGPT and Gemini mention a brand, and what searches they ran to answer.
AI Drafts
Generates a starting draft from a content report; capped at 20 on both Essentials and Business.
Google Docs & WordPress
Live grading inside the editor teams already write in, rather than a separate tool to open.
Pricing
Essentials
- 20 AI Drafts, 20 Topic Explorations, 20 AI Tracked Topics per month
- 50 Content Inventory pages monitored
- Unlimited users and projects on the account
Business
- Higher Topic Exploration and Content Inventory allowances than Essentials
- Same 20-draft monthly cap as Essentials — this tier doesn't raise every limit
- Dedicated account manager included
Enterprise
- Custom credit bundles and unlimited monitored domains
- SAML single sign-on and crawler whitelisting
- Free live onboarding and training for the team
No long-term contract on Essentials or Business, cancel anytime. Extra Content Inventory pages and AI Drafts are available as paid add-ons once a plan's monthly caps are used up; Enterprise pricing requires a sales conversation.
AI answer engines tracked
Integrations & platforms
Pros, cons & best for
Pros
- Unlimited users and projects on every plan, no per-seat penalty for growing teams
- Simple A++ to F grading that's fast to read against a numeric score
- One of few SaaS pricing histories that has gone down since 2016, not up
Cons
- $129/mo entry price is still the highest sticker among mainstream content-scoring tools
- The 20-draft cap doesn't increase between Essentials and Business
- AI Tracked Topics covers only ChatGPT and Gemini, narrower than some competitors' AI tracking
Best for
- Editorial teams of three or more writers sharing one account without seat fees
- Teams publishing consistently who want structured, letter-graded briefs
- Not the pick for a solo blogger, or anyone needing backlink or technical SEO tools too
Take a look inside
Alternatives
For a lower entry price or broader SEO tooling in the same subscription:
Our verdict
Clearscope's case rests on two numbers holding at once: the per-seat math and the per-report math. Unlimited users at $129/month is a real advantage the moment a third or fourth writer joins an account, since tools that charge per seat get expensive fast and Clearscope simply doesn't. But the 20-draft, 20-exploration monthly ceiling on Essentials means a team publishing more than about five pieces a week will hit those caps and start paying for add-on blocks, which quietly erodes the pricing advantage the entry plan is built around. The 2026 push into AI Tracked Topics is worth watching rather than buying for on its own: it currently covers two AI engines, narrower than what some competitors track, though the query fan-out detail it surfaces is hard to find anywhere else so far. If the team is three or more writers publishing consistently and the grading workflow is the actual priority, the math works in Clearscope's favor. If it's one or two people, or the budget also needs to cover backlink and technical SEO work, $129 buys less here than a broader tool would at the same price.
FAQ
Does Clearscope charge per user?
No — Essentials and Business both include unlimited users and projects on a single account, unlike competitors that charge per seat as a team grows.
What happens if a team goes over the monthly Draft or Inventory limits?
Extra usage is available as a paid add-on — roughly $50 for additional drafts on Essentials, $20 on Business, plus separate per-100-page pricing for extra Content Inventory pages.
Does the Business plan raise every limit?
Not quite. Business raises Topic Exploration and Content Inventory allowances and adds a dedicated account manager, but the AI Drafts cap stays at 20 on both Essentials and Business.
Which AI engines does Clearscope track for brand mentions?
ChatGPT and Gemini as of 2026, along with a breakdown of the background searches those models ran to compose a given answer.
Is there a free trial?
Clearscope doesn't advertise a public free trial. It offers demos instead, and some users report getting limited trial access afterward, though that isn't guaranteed for everyone.
Who founded Clearscope, and is it venture-backed?
Bernard Huang and Kevin Su founded it in 2016. It has stayed bootstrapped and profitable without outside investment since.