Squirrly SEO is especially suited for a WordPress website owner wanting to up their SEO game, but not knowing where to start. Squirrly does a great job of walking a beginner user through the steps to meet their site optimization goals one focus page at a time. Once, you get over the dated UI Squirrly really offers more than other WordPress SEO plugins.
SurferSEO is a powerful and technical SEO tool for any writer to rank on Google. It would be too much information, even overwhelming at times, for someone who has never had experience with this kind of work before, but there's tons of detailed knowledge available when it comes to understanding the features that are most relevant while still meeting your goals in mind.
The others simply do not compare to Squirrly SEO because it is more efficient, accurate, and effective. Squirrly SEO has increased rankings, traffic, and content optimization, which others simply have not been able to do. Moreover, Squirrly SEO operates like a consultant that guides you or tells you what to do, so that improvements can be done. Furthermore, it has much more features than other software.
Semrush's content and page optimisation tool is quite poor; it's not in the same bracket as Surfer. Frase is a good alternative from a cost perspective (if not paying the AI writing functions), it's cheaper, and Frase's keyword/topic heatmaps are quite unique. Sufer has a better UI and a shorter learning curve. It has an advantage in that it offers internal linking recommendations, which Frase lacks. Surfer also has limited competitor analysis (backlinks and page speed), which Frase does not. Both tools allow you to choose the number of competitors on the SERPS