SitePerfector vs MarketMuse
MarketMuse proved that planning by topic beats chasing keywords. It was built for a content team with an analyst on staff.
MarketMuse has told content teams what to write, and how much of it, since 2013, and the idea was right. SitePerfector answers the same question for one person, read from the live search results instead of a difficulty score, with the sites you would be beating named. MarketMuse does not publish a price; ours is on the pricing page.
$7 today · then $39/mo · cancel anytime
SitePerfector: themes and topics for one market, with the call on every topic.
Who each one is for
MarketMuse
Content planning platform
MarketMuse is built for content teams. Their own site says it is used by "brands, publishers and agencies", and names the roles as "SEOs, content strategists, editors, writers, and digital/content managers who oversee their operations". It fits when somebody on staff reads the data and turns it into a plan.
SitePerfector
Topic-first SEO
SitePerfector is built for one person, or a small team, with nobody whose job is analysis. It answers which pages are worth building, in what order, and who holds those positions today. Then it gives you a blueprint for each page.
How the two approaches differ
Keyword tools hand you data and leave the decision to you. Topic-first SEO hands you a decision, with the reason and the competitors named. The method itself is explained in Topic-first SEO: what it is and why it works. This page only shows the contrast.
MarketMuse
You start with
You start with an Inventory of your site and nine applications: Topic Navigator, Research, Compete, Optimize, Keywords, SERP x-ray, SERP Heatmap, Site Heatmap and Connect. What you do with them is your call.
You publish
You publish a page from a Content Brief, chosen against Personalized Difficulty and a Target Content Score. The entry paid plan allows five briefs a month, the top plan twenty.
What you get
- ✕You get nine applications to drive, and the decision at the end of them is still yours.
- ✕You get a difficulty score for each topic, and not the names of the sites holding page one.
- ✕You get 100 queries and 5 Content Briefs a month on the entry paid plan.
- ✕You get a pricing page with four plans, no dollar figure, and a Book a demo button on every plan.
SitePerfector
You start with
You start with your market read from live results and clustered into themes, topics and pages, with your own pages laid over it. Around a hundred ideas earn a place on the map.
You publish
You publish the page SitePerfector puts next in the order, with the sites you would be beating named and a blueprint built from what ranks now and the gap the top results leave.
What you get
- ✓You get a call on every topic: own it, build up to it, or leave it, with the reason.
- ✓You get the sites you would be beating named on every recommendation.
- ✓You get your own pages laid over the map from a crawl: covered, off the map, or ranking without you knowing.
- ✓You get the price before you sign up: $7 for 14 days, then $39 a month.
What each one does, job by job
Rows marked their strength are jobs MarketMuse does better than SitePerfector.
| Job to be done | MarketMuse | SitePerfector |
|---|---|---|
|
Plan by topic instead of a keyword list sorted by volume their strength |
Yes MarketMuse has made this argument since 2013, a decade before most of this category existed. |
Yes SitePerfector builds a topic tree of the whole market from live results: themes, topics and pages. |
|
Lay your existing pages over the demand map their strength |
Yes Inventory is, in their words, "a list of all of the published pages, topics, and page/topic combinations on your site, updated on a regular basis", with no manual upload. |
Yes SitePerfector crawls your site and marks each topic covered, off the map, or ranking without you knowing. |
|
Judge how hard a topic is for your site specifically their strength |
Yes Personalized Difficulty is scored against your own coverage and history rather than an average site, which is a better idea than a generic score. |
Partly SitePerfector reads the live results per topic instead of scoring it, and uses no bought difficulty number. |
|
Hand a writer a brief for the page their strength |
Yes MarketMuse has nine brief types, from Article to Product Review, with all nine unlocked on the Strategy plan. |
Yes SitePerfector has one blueprint per page, built from the results and the gap, exportable as a PDF brief. |
|
Name the sites you would be beating on a topic |
No The output is scores and topic models, and who currently ranks is left to you. |
Yes SitePerfector reads the live results per topic and names the sites holding those positions. |
|
Find out the price without talking to sales |
No The pricing page lists four plans and their limits and carries no dollar figure, checked 3 September 2026. |
Yes $7 for the first 14 days, then $39 a month, Pro $99 and Agency $179, all on /pricing. |
|
Track brand mentions in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity |
No MarketMuse sells none, and its parent company Siteimprove sells AI citation tracking as a separate enterprise product. |
No SitePerfector does not build it, because AI answers cite what ranks. |
|
Backlink, PPC and keyword database |
No Their own pricing FAQ states their position as "proprietary data and AI vs. commodity data via APIs". |
No SitePerfector has none of the three. I would keep Ahrefs or Semrush for that. |
Price |
Not published. The pricing page lists four plans, Free, Optimize, Research and Strategy, with their limits, a Book a demo button on each and no dollar figure anywhere. A third-party review updated in June 2026 puts the entry paid plan at $99 a month; that figure is the reviewer's, not MarketMuse's. |
$7 for the first 14 days, then Basic $39/mo. Pro $99, Agency $179. Cancel anytime. |
Facts about MarketMuse checked 3 Sep 2026 on their own pages. The sources are listed at the bottom of this page.
Three differences you can check
1.MarketMuse gives you nine applications. SitePerfector gives you a call on each topic.
MarketMuse's output is nine applications: Topic Navigator, Research, Compete, Optimize, Keywords, SERP x-ray, SERP Heatmap, Site Heatmap and Connect, all sitting on an automatic Inventory of every page and topic on your site. Reading them and turning them into a plan is your job. That works when somebody on staff has exactly that job. MarketMuse argued for planning by topic from 2013, a decade before most of this category existed, and it was first to do so. SitePerfector returns one call per topic: own it, build up to it, or leave it, with the reason and the competitors named.
Open MarketMuse's pricing page and read the list of applications included in one plan. Then open How it works to see what SitePerfector returns instead.
Check it yourself
2.MarketMuse scores how hard a topic is. SitePerfector names the pages you would have to beat.
Personalized Difficulty is a better idea than a generic keyword difficulty score. MarketMuse's own FAQ describes it as a metric unique to your site, calculated from your coverage of a topic and how that topic performs for you. Scoring a topic against your site rather than an average site is the right instinct. It is still a number, and a number does not name who you are up against. SitePerfector reads roughly 40,000 ranked positions per market map and comes back with the sites currently holding those positions. Open any topic and you can read who you would be beating.
Run our free What Ranks Here on one long-tail phrase in your subject. It lists the pages on page one for it right now, with their position.
Check it yourself
3.MarketMuse does not publish a price. SitePerfector publishes the whole ladder.
You cannot find out what MarketMuse costs from their site. Their pricing page lists four plans and the limits on each: 10 queries a month on Free, 100 tracked topics and 5 Content Briefs a month on Optimize, up to 10,000 tracked topics and 20 briefs on Strategy. There is no dollar figure on the page, and every plan button, including the one on the free plan, says Book a demo. A third-party review updated in June 2026 puts the entry paid plan at $99 a month, which is the reviewer's number rather than MarketMuse's. SitePerfector is $7 for the first 14 days, then $39 a month, Pro $99, Agency $179, cancel anytime.
Load MarketMuse's pricing page and search it for a dollar sign. Then open our pricing page, where every number is on the page.
Check it yourself
When to choose MarketMuse, and when to choose SitePerfector
Choose MarketMuse if
- You run a content team with an editor, writers, and somebody whose job is reading the data.
- You have a large site and you want an automatic inventory of every page and topic on it, kept current.
- You need nine brief types, multiple seats and assignment workflow inside the planning tool.
- Booking a demo and agreeing a quote is a normal way for you to buy software.
Choose SitePerfector if
- You are the whole content team, and you need the decision without an analyst to read the data for you.
- You want every recommendation to name the sites you would be beating, so you can check it.
- Your site is small, or you have not built it yet, and the question is what to publish first.
- You want to see the price and start today rather than book a call.
Questions
Is SitePerfector a MarketMuse alternative?
For one person deciding what to publish, yes. For a content team that wants nine brief types, multiple seats and an inventory of a very large site, MarketMuse is the more complete platform. Both start from topics rather than from a keyword list. The difference is who can operate it without help.
Is MarketMuse still running?
Yes. Siteimprove acquired MarketMuse in October 2024 and announced it publicly, and the product is sold and documented today as MarketMuse by Siteimprove. Everything on this page was checked against their live site on 3 September 2026.
Does SitePerfector track AI visibility?
No. AI answers cite what ranks, so the work that gets you cited is the work that gets you ranked, and we build for that instead. MarketMuse sells no AI citation tracking either; its parent company Siteimprove sells that as a separate enterprise product.
Can I use both?
Yes. If you already run MarketMuse for the Inventory and the briefs, use SitePerfector to decide which topic is worth the next brief and to see who holds those positions. Nothing in either product blocks the other.
What does the $7 get me?
Fourteen days of the full product on Basic: your market mapped, your pages laid over it, the pages worth writing in order, and a blueprint for each. Then $39 a month, cancel anytime. It is an intro price on Basic, so nothing is held back.
Next
- Read how topic-first SEO works. The method behind the right-hand column, with an example.
- Run What Ranks Here on one keyword you care about. It shows what kind of page Google ranks for it.
- Map your own market for $7. Fourteen days of the full product, then $39 a month.
Sources for every claim about MarketMuse on this page
- MarketMuse pricing page, plan limits and FAQ checked 3 Sep 2026
- MarketMuse: Why MarketMuse, who it is built for checked 3 Sep 2026
- MarketMuse homepage: "tells you what content to write (and how much)" checked 3 Sep 2026
- Siteimprove: Siteimprove and MarketMuse Have Officially Joined Forces checked 3 Sep 2026
- Siteimprove launches Advanced AEO Insights for AI visibility checked 3 Sep 2026
- Third-party price for the entry paid plan (AllAble review, no vendor figure exists) checked 22 Jun 2026
- SitePerfector: How it works, with our own measurements
If something here is out of date, tell us and we will fix it.
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