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Grammarly is still the name most writers know, but it is no longer just a grammar checker. The company behind it now operates as Superhuman, its Enterprise plan is sold through Superhuman Go, and the product leans more on AI prompts and agents every year. If you only want clean, correct copy for clients, you may be paying for features you never open. If you write long-form work, in several languages, or under strict client confidentiality rules, another tool may simply fit better.
This guide covers the best Grammarly alternatives for freelance writers and content creators who already use Grammarly and want to know what else is worth switching to. Each pick is matched to a specific reason for leaving, with current prices, free-plan limits, and the tradeoffs to know before you move your writing workflow.
Quick Answer: Choose ProWritingAid if you write long-form content or fiction and want deep style reports. Choose LanguageTool if you write in more than one language or want a cheaper all-round checker. Choose Hemingway Editor if your main problem is wordy, hard-to-read sentences. Choose QuillBot if you mostly paraphrase and summarize, Wordtune if you want quick sentence rewrites on a small budget, and DeepL Write if you write in English as a second language or work in several European languages.
Grammarly Alternatives at a Glance
| Tool | Best For | Starting Price | Free Plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| ProWritingAid | Long-form writers, authors, and editors | Premium $10/mo billed yearly ($120), $30 monthly, or $399 lifetime | ✅ Yes (500 words at a time) |
| LanguageTool | Multilingual writing | Check LanguageTool’s site (third-party trackers list about $4.99/mo) | ✅ Yes (2,000 characters per text field) |
| Hemingway Editor | Clear, readable sentences | Plus from $100/yr; Classic desktop $19.99 one-time | ✅ Yes (free web editor) |
| QuillBot | Paraphrasing and summarizing | Premium $8.33/mo billed annually | ✅ Yes (125-word paraphraser limit) |
| Wordtune | Quick sentence rewrites on a budget | Advanced $4.89/mo billed annually | ✅ Yes (10 rewrites a day) |
| DeepL Write | Non-native English and European languages | Write Pro add-on €6.99/mo billed annually (EU pricing) | ✅ Yes |
Table: Prices checked in November 2026 (U.S. pricing unless noted). Prices vary by country, billing period, and promotion, so confirm current pricing on each vendor’s site before you subscribe.
Why Writers Look for Grammarly Alternatives
For reference, Grammarly’s plans page currently lists a Free plan with 100 AI prompts a month, Pro from $12 a month with 2,000 AI prompts per member, and an Enterprise plan through Superhuman Go. Plagiarism detection, full-sentence rewrites, and tone adjustments are Pro features. These are the most common reasons people start looking elsewhere:
- Price for what you use: If you mainly need spelling, grammar, and punctuation fixes, several tools below cover that for less, and some do it for free.
- The shift toward AI generation: Grammarly now bundles AI writing prompts and agents. If you already pay for ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, you may not need a second AI writer. Our ChatGPT vs Claude comparison covers the general assistants.
- Languages: Grammarly’s full feature set is built around English. If you write for clients in German, French, Spanish, or Portuguese, a multilingual checker is a better fit.
- Long-form depth: Grammarly works sentence by sentence. Novelists, ghostwriters, and long-form content writers often want reports on pacing, repetition, and readability across a whole document.
- Client confidentiality: Any checker that runs in your browser reads what you type. If clients restrict which tools touch their drafts, you need a tool whose terms you can show them. See our guide on how to protect client data when using AI tools.
One note on Microsoft Editor, which many lists still recommend: Microsoft announced the retirement of the Editor browser extensions for Edge and Chrome as of October 31, 2025, saying the writing help is now built into Edge itself. Because the standalone extension is no longer a real option, we left it off this list.
How We Chose These Grammarly Alternatives
This is not a list of AI writers. Tools like ChatGPT, Jasper, and Rytr generate drafts; the tools here check and improve writing you already have. We compared them on five criteria:
- Reason to switch: Which Grammarly limitation does the tool solve, such as price, languages, long-form depth, or readability?
- Core checking: Does it catch spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors, or is it a rewriting tool that you’d pair with a checker?
- Where it works: Browser extensions, Google Docs, Microsoft Word, and desktop apps, since a checker you have to copy and paste into gets skipped on busy days.
- Free plan: What you can do without paying, and where the limits start to hurt.
- Price and value: What you get compared with Grammarly Pro at $12 a month.
Prices and features come from vendor pricing pages and help centers, checked this month. Where a vendor page did not show a figure clearly, we say so instead of guessing.
The 6 Best Grammarly Alternatives in 2026
1. ProWritingAid: Best for Long-Form Writers and Authors
ProWritingAid is the closest full replacement for Grammarly if you write long documents. It covers grammar, spelling, and punctuation, then goes further with detailed reports on style, repetition, sentence length, and readability. Its AI features are aimed at writers rather than marketers: Rephrase for sentence alternatives, Chapter Critique for feedback on a full chapter, plus tools like Sparks and Story Canvas for fiction. It works in Google Docs, Microsoft Office, a desktop editor, and other apps through its browser and desktop integrations.
The lifetime plan is the standout for freelancers who are tired of subscriptions. At $399, it costs a little over three years of the yearly Premium plan.
Pricing: Free plan checks 500 words at a time, with 10 Rephrases a day. Premium costs $10/month billed yearly ($120), $30 billed monthly, or $399 lifetime. Premium Pro costs $12/month billed yearly ($144), $36 billed monthly, or $699 lifetime. Plagiarism checks cost extra on every plan.
Best for: Authors, ghostwriters, and long-form content writers who want document-level feedback, not just line fixes.
The catch: The interface is busy, and the number of reports can feel like overkill for short client emails or social posts. Plagiarism checking is a paid add-on, while Grammarly includes it in Pro.
2. LanguageTool: Best for Multilingual Writing
LanguageTool supports more than 30 languages, and its Premium plan adds over 20,000 extra checks for English, German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Polish, and Portuguese. If you switch between languages in the same day, it saves you from running two or three separate tools. It works almost everywhere you write: Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Opera, and Safari, Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, and Thunderbird, Google Docs, Microsoft Word, Apple Pages, and LibreOffice, plus desktop apps for macOS and Windows.
Premium also includes a style guide, a personal dictionary, text statistics, and AI sentence paraphrasing. It is one of the few Grammarly alternatives that also works well in LibreOffice and Thunderbird, which matters if you avoid Google and Microsoft tools for client work.
Pricing: Free plan checks up to 2,000 characters per text field. Premium raises that to 150,000 characters. LanguageTool’s pricing page did not display prices when we checked, and third-party price trackers list Premium at about $4.99/month, so check LanguageTool’s pricing page for the current price in your country. Premium comes with a 14-day money-back guarantee.
Best for: Freelancers, translators, and agencies that write for clients in more than one language.
The catch: The free limit of 2,000 characters per field is only a few paragraphs, so long blog drafts need Premium. Its style suggestions are less detailed than ProWritingAid’s for long-form English.
3. Hemingway Editor: Best for Clear, Readable Sentences
Hemingway Editor does one job well: it highlights long, complex sentences, passive voice, and weak phrasing, and shows the reading grade level of your text. That makes it useful for web copy, landing pages, and any client who asks for “plain English.” The free web editor is still the fastest way to see where a draft gets hard to read.
Hemingway Editor Plus adds advanced grammar fixes, AI sentence rewrites, tone and style adjustments, a style guide, a target reading level, and file import and export. The older Classic desktop app is still sold as a one-time purchase, but it does not include the new AI features.
Pricing: Free web editor. Plus Individual 5K costs $100/year (5,000 AI sentence rewrites a month), and Plus Individual 10K costs $150/year (10,000 a month), with a two-week free trial and no credit card required. The Classic desktop app costs $19.99 one-time per platform (Mac or Windows).
Best for: Copywriters and content writers whose main goal is shorter, clearer sentences.
The catch: The free editor is a readability tool, not a full grammar checker, and it doesn’t plug into Google Docs or your browser the way Grammarly does. Most writers use it alongside a checker, not instead of one.
4. QuillBot: Best for Paraphrasing and Summarizing
QuillBot started as a paraphrasing tool and has grown into a writing suite with a grammar checker, summarizer, citation generator, AI detector, AI humanizer, and plagiarism checker. Its free grammar checker fixes basic errors, and the paraphraser offers two modes for free, rising to unlimited modes and custom modes on Premium. It is a strong fit if a lot of your work is rewording research, summarizing sources, or adapting one piece of content for different audiences.
Pricing: Free plan paraphrases up to 125 words at a time and summarizes up to 1,200 words. Premium costs $8.33/month billed annually and adds unlimited paraphrasing, a 6,000-word summarizer, advanced grammar suggestions, grammar correction in 6 languages, and the plagiarism checker. QuillBot’s pricing page did not show a monthly-billed price when we checked, so check QuillBot’s site for other billing options.
Best for: Content writers and researchers who rework existing text more than they write from scratch.
The catch: The grammar checker is less thorough than Grammarly’s or ProWritingAid’s. Paraphrasing tools also carry a quality risk: reworded text can lose your voice or the source’s meaning, so review every output before it goes to a client.
5. Wordtune: Best Budget Tool for Quick Sentence Rewrites
Wordtune, from AI21 Labs, focuses on rewriting. Highlight a sentence and it suggests versions that are shorter, longer, more casual, or more formal. It also summarizes articles and documents. Spelling and grammar checks are unlimited on every plan, including the free one, which makes it a reasonable Grammarly replacement for writers whose main need is tightening sentences rather than catching every comma.
Pricing: Basic is free with 10 rewrites a day and 3 summaries a month. Advanced costs $4.89/month billed annually (30 rewrites a day), and Unlimited costs $6.99/month billed annually. Both paid plans have a 3-day free trial. Wordtune’s FAQ says it does not offer refunds, so cancel before the trial ends if it isn’t right for you.
Best for: Freelancers who write lots of short copy, such as emails, proposals, and social posts, and want fast alternative phrasings.
The catch: It has no plagiarism checker and no long-form style reports. The daily rewrite caps on the lower plans run out quickly on a heavy editing day.
6. DeepL Write: Best for Non-Native English and European Languages
DeepL Write comes from the team behind the DeepL translator. It fixes spelling, grammar, and punctuation, suggests alternative words and sentences, and lets you choose a writing style and tone. Many writers who work in English as a second language find its suggestions sound more natural than a rules-based checker’s, and it is useful if you draft in one language and polish in another.
For client work, the privacy terms matter. DeepL says that for Pro subscribers, texts are stored only as long as technically needed and are never used to train its AI models. That is easier to explain to a cautious client than a free tool’s terms.
Pricing: DeepL Write has a free version. Write Pro is an add-on to DeepL Pro, listed at €6.99 per user per month billed annually on DeepL’s EU pricing page, and it is included in the Business plan. U.S. prices were not shown when we checked, so see DeepL’s pricing page for your country.
Best for: Non-native English writers and freelancers who write or translate in European languages.
The catch: It supports fewer languages than LanguageTool and has fewer integrations than Grammarly, and the stronger privacy terms apply to paid Pro accounts, not the free version.
Which Grammarly Alternative Should You Choose?
| If You’re Leaving Grammarly Because… | Choose | Why |
|---|---|---|
| You write books or long reports | ProWritingAid | Document-level style reports and chapter feedback |
| You hate subscriptions | ProWritingAid lifetime or Hemingway Classic | $399 lifetime, or $19.99 one-time for Hemingway’s desktop app |
| You write in several languages | LanguageTool | 30+ languages and wide app support |
| Clients want plain, readable copy | Hemingway Editor | Highlights hard-to-read sentences and shows grade level |
| You mostly reword and summarize | QuillBot | Paraphraser, summarizer, and citations in one place |
| You want the cheapest paid rewriting | Wordtune | Paid plans from $4.89/month billed annually |
| English is your second language | DeepL Write | Natural-sounding suggestions and no AI training on Pro texts |
| You only need free spelling and grammar checks | Wordtune Basic or LanguageTool Free | Unlimited checks on Wordtune; short texts on LanguageTool |
You don’t need to replace Grammarly with one tool. A common low-cost setup is a free checker in your browser, such as LanguageTool, plus Hemingway for a final readability pass on important pages. If you also want an AI writer for first drafts, our roundup of the best AI writing tools covers those separately, and our Rytr review covers a budget option.
How to Switch From Grammarly Without Losing Your Setup
- Export your personal dictionary. Client names, product terms, and industry jargon you’ve added over the years are the hardest thing to rebuild. Copy them into a document before you cancel.
- Save your style rules. If you set up a style guide or brand tones for clients, write those rules down so you can recreate them in ProWritingAid, LanguageTool, or Hemingway’s style guide. Our guide on training AI on a brand voice shows how to document a voice clearly.
- Run both tools on one real draft. Paste a recent client piece into your new tool and compare what it catches. That tells you more than any feature list.
- Remove the old extension. Two grammar extensions in the same browser can conflict and slow down Google Docs.
- Cancel before renewal. Check your Grammarly renewal date and cancel before it, then keep using Pro until the paid period ends.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Mistake 1: Replacing a checker with a rewriter. QuillBot and Wordtune are excellent at rewording, but they are not built to catch every grammar issue. If accuracy is what clients pay you for, keep a dedicated checker in your workflow.
Mistake 2: Accepting every suggestion. Every tool here makes wrong calls, especially with technical terms, brand names, and deliberate style choices. Treat suggestions as questions, not instructions.
Mistake 3: Ignoring free-plan limits. A 125-word paraphrase cap or a 2,000-character field limit sounds fine until you’re editing a 1,500-word blog post on deadline. Test the free plan on your real workload.
Mistake 4: Pasting confidential drafts into any tool. Check whether the tool stores or trains on your text, and whether a paid plan changes that, before you check unreleased client work.
Mistake 5: Relying on old prices. Writing tool prices change often and vary by country and billing period. Check the vendor’s own page on the day you subscribe.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best free alternative to Grammarly?
For everyday grammar and spelling, LanguageTool’s free plan and Wordtune’s Basic plan are the most practical. LanguageTool works in more apps, while Wordtune offers unlimited grammar checks with a daily cap on rewrites. Hemingway’s free web editor is the best free option for readability.
Is ProWritingAid better than Grammarly?
It depends on what you write. ProWritingAid is stronger for long documents and fiction because of its style reports and chapter feedback. Grammarly is simpler, includes plagiarism detection in Pro, and is better suited to short business writing.
Is there a Grammarly alternative without a subscription?
Yes. ProWritingAid sells a lifetime Premium license for $399, and Hemingway’s Classic desktop app is a $19.99 one-time purchase, though it does not include Hemingway’s newer AI features.
What happened to Microsoft Editor?
Microsoft announced it was retiring the Editor browser extensions for Edge and Chrome as of October 31, 2025, and said the same writing help is built into Edge. If you relied on the extension in Chrome, one of the tools on this list is the simplest replacement.
Can I use ChatGPT instead of Grammarly?
You can ask ChatGPT or another assistant to proofread, but it doesn’t underline errors as you type, and it may rewrite more than you asked. Most writers get better results using a dedicated checker for proofreading and a general assistant for drafting. See our ChatGPT alternatives guide if you’re comparing assistants.
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