If you want articles written and published for you every week, Outrank, Koala AI, Arvow and Paperboy all do that; Surfer and Jasper are writing tools you drive yourself. The bigger difference is what happens before an article goes live. Full disclosure: we make Paperboy, so read this with that in mind. Every competitor fact below comes from that company's own pricing or home page as of October 4, 2026, and is linked so you can check it.
The short version
| Tool | Starting price | Publishes on its own | Uses your Search Console | Automatic fact check |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paperboy | $49 a month per site, 3 articles a week | Yes | Picks every topic from it | Every number and citation, every plan |
| Outrank | $99 a month, 30 articles | Yes | Not listed | Human fact-checking is a $1,399 a month add-on |
| Koala AI | From $25 a month, priced by words | Yes; Content Calendar Autopilot from $99 a month | Yes, from $49 a month | Citations when you want them, from $49 a month |
| Arvow | From $39 a month billed yearly (limited-time price) | Yes | Submits articles for indexing | Human editors in a service from $2,000 a month |
| Surfer | From $49 a month billed yearly | Not listed; a writing and optimization editor | Not listed | Not listed |
| Jasper | $59 a month billed yearly | Not listed; a marketing writing platform | Not listed | Not listed |
"Not listed" means the page does not mention it. The tool may still do it, so ask before you buy.
The question that matters: who checks the facts?
AI writing tools are fluent. Fluent is not the same as right. A language model will state a price, a statistic or a rule with the same confidence whether it is true or not, and an article on autopilot publishes that sentence under your name.
Here is how each tool answers that, from its own pages:
- Outrank offers a "Human Curated Service" in which "professional human editors review, fact-check, and polish every article before publication", priced at $1,399 a month on top of the $99 plan (Outrank pricing).
- Arvow lists a "Human + AI SEO Service" with expert human editors, starting from $2,000 a month (Arvow pricing).
- Koala AI says its Deep Research gathers sources "with citations when you want them", available from the Professional plan (Koala AI pricing).
- Paperboy saves the text of every source it reads, then checks each number in the article against the source it links to and compares each cited sentence with that source's own words. If anything fails, it fixes the flagged paragraphs once and checks again; if it still fails, the article is held for you instead of published. That is on every plan.
My take: if you are going to let software publish under your name every week, an automatic check on every article is the feature to insist on. That is an opinion, and it is the reason we built Paperboy the way we did.
How to choose
Ask every tool one question before you let it publish to your site: what checks the facts in each article before it goes live, and what happens when a check fails? If the answer is "nothing", "a human service that costs more than the tool", or "citations if you turn them on", you are the fact checker.
Paperboy answers it on every article, on every plan: each number and citation checked against the saved source, failures fixed or held for you, and the full fact check one click away. The best way to judge is on your own site. Your first article is free, with no card, and you read it before we ask about a plan.
See what Paperboy writes for your site, free.
Frequently asked questions
What is the cheapest AI tool that writes and publishes SEO articles automatically?
From each company's pricing page in October 2026: Koala AI starts at $25 a month (priced by words), Arvow at $39 a month billed yearly (a limited-time price), Paperboy at $49 a month per site for three articles a week, and Outrank at $99 a month for 30 articles. Prices change, so check the pricing pages linked above.
Do AI SEO tools fact-check their articles?
Not by default in most cases. Outrank and Arvow list human fact-checking as paid services ($1,399 and from $2,000 a month), and Koala AI offers citations from its Professional plan. Paperboy checks every number and citation automatically against the saved source text on every plan.
Which AI SEO tools use Google Search Console?
Koala AI connects Search Console from its Professional plan, Arvow uses it to submit new articles for indexing, and Paperboy picks every topic from your Search Console data. Outrank, Surfer and Jasper do not mention it on their pricing pages.