Surfer vs Moz

Surfer is a content optimization platform: its Content Editor scores drafts live against the pages ranking on Google, with an AI Tracker across five engines and Surfer AI drafting. Moz, a Ziff Davis company, is the veteran SEO suite: Domain Authority, a 40-trillion-link index, keyword research, site crawls, and an AI module tracking two to three models weekly. They compete only where the categories overlap, and the chapters below walk every dimension a buyer would price: which AI engines each can see, how the tracking actually meters, what each produces on the content side, what surrounds the core product, and the full published tier lists.

Surfer built the live draft-scoring category: the Content Editor grades a draft in real time against the pages already ranking on Google for a keyword, with term recommendations and structural targets as you type, and it remains the deepest tool of its kind. Around the editor sit Surfer AI drafting, a plagiarism checker, one-click internal linking, content ideas and coverage gap analysis, cannibalization reports, and an AI Tracker following brand visibility across five engines.

Pricing model. Discovery $49, Standard $99, Pro $182 and Peace of Mind $299 a month, all billed yearly, plus a $999-a-month Enterprise plan; AI tracking starts on Standard with 25 prompts refreshed weekly, and daily refresh starts on Pro at $182.

Moz was the first name in SEO software and remains one of the most trusted, now a Ziff Davis company, with Domain Authority and Brand Authority as industry-standard metrics, a link index past 40 trillion links, a 1.25B-keyword research base, and Moz Academy behind it. Moz Pro carries the suite: keyword research, competitive research, site crawls up to 1.25M pages a week, weekly rank tracking, and a new AI and GEO feature set with visibility dashboards, prompt tracking, citations data and content briefs. Moz Local and STAT sell separately for listings management and enterprise SERP tracking.

Pricing model. Standard $99, Medium $179 and Large $299 a month (20% off yearly: $79, $143, $239), with a $49 single-site starter plan; extra AI prompts cost $50 per 100, extra dashboards $20 each, and add-on seats $49 per user.

Surfer. The AI Tracker's compare table lists five engines: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overview and Google Gemini. Claude, Grok and DeepSeek appear nowhere on the pricing page, which invites you to email them to request another model.

Moz. The tracked AI models are GPT and Gemini on the $99 Standard plan, with Google AI Mode joining from the $179 Medium plan, three models at most. Claude, Perplexity, Grok and DeepSeek appear nowhere in the tracked-model lists on the Moz Pro pricing page.

Summarized: Surfer reads 5: ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Mode, AI Overviews, Gemini; Moz reads 2 (GPT, Gemini) on $99; 3 (+ AI Mode) from $179. On Claude specifically, Surfer: no; Moz: not listed.

Surfer. Prompt tracking meters by tier and cadence: 25 prompts refreshed weekly on the $99 Standard plan, 50 refreshed daily on Pro, 100 daily on Peace of Mind, with Mention Gap and Brand Sentiments included. Classic rank tracking is one thing Surfer does not do; its measurement of Google is SERP analysis for scoring, with rank drop detection on documents.

Moz. Both halves of tracking run weekly: AI prompt tracking frequency reads weekly on every tier, and the rank tracker checks each keyword weekly across Google US and international, Google Mobile, Yahoo and Bing, with 300 to 3,000 keywords by tier. AI citations data and prompt suggestions ship on every tier, and extra prompts are $50 per 100.

Surfer. This is the flagship: live scoring against the SERP while a human writes, Surfer AI full drafts, content optimization, templates and custom voices from the Pro tier, and 360 documents a month on the mid tiers rising to unlimited on Peace of Mind. Integrations for publishing cover WordPress, Google Docs, Contentful and Zapier; Shopify is not listed.

Moz. Content output is AI Content Briefs: 2 a month on Standard, 10 on Medium, 50 on Large. There is no article writer and no CMS publishing; briefs hand off to your writers.

Surfer. There is no local surface: no Google Maps tracking, no geo-grid, no GBP monitoring, no citations anywhere in the product.

Moz. Moz Pro carries the classic research stack with Domain Authority at its center, plus site crawls to 1.25M pages a week and an On-Page Grader. Local is a separate product, Moz Local, which syncs listings to directories; its pricing did not render dollar figures when checked, and no geo-grid appears on the Moz Pro page.

Surfer. API access appears in the Peace of Mind ($299) feature list, and no MCP server appears anywhere on the pricing page or homepage; earlier checks of their API docs show access running through API keys and third-party connectors.

Moz. The Moz API sells separately with its own flexible pricing, and no MCP server is listed. Branded reports and report templates arrive on the Large tier, and MozBar Premium ships with every plan.

Every cell below was read from the vendors’ own rendered pages as of August 2026. Where a vendor’s public pages neither confirm nor deny a capability, the cell says so.