Best Grammarly Alternatives in 2026

QuillBot is the best Grammarly alternative in 2026 for most people: it covers paraphrasing, grammar, summarising and detection in one subscription listed at $8.33 a month billed annually, roughly half of Grammarly Pro. If you only want free, multilingual checking, take LanguageTool. If you write fiction or manuscripts, take ProWritingAid. Grammarly itself is still the safest default for everyday English writing, and there is a real group of users who should simply stay.

Grammarly alternatives at a glance

Prices below were read from each vendor’s own pricing page on 14 October 2026. Where a page offers a monthly and an annual toggle, the annual figure is the one quoted.

Alternative	Best for	Free plan	Starting price	Main advantage	Main limitation
QuillBot	All-round rewriting and summarising	Yes	$8.33/mo billed annually	Nine paraphrasing modes plus grammar, summaries and detection in one plan	Free paraphrasing capped at 100 words
ProWritingAid	Novels and long-form editing	Yes	$10/mo billed yearly	25+ structural reports, custom dictionary, lifetime licence	English only; 500-word free limit
LanguageTool	Free, multilingual, privacy-first	Yes	Paid Premium tier adds 150k characters per field	Permanent free plan, open source, 30+ languages	No generation, citations or plagiarism suite
Paperpal	Academic writing and journal submission	Yes	$12/mo billed annually	Journal-fit check, reference check, citation tools	Awkward for sales and support copy
Trinka AI	Research and manuscript submission	Yes	$48/year	APA/IEEE style guides, LaTeX proofing, free plan never expires	Tight free quotas and a credit system
Jenni AI	First drafts and beating the blank page	Yes	$12/month	Autocomplete carries the draft	Not a proofreader
Rytr	Short marketing copy and emails	Yes	$7.50/month	40+ use cases, unlimited plan undercuts the market	No grammar engine; metered by characters
Sapling AI	Support, sales and CRM agents	Yes	Enterprise from $15/seat/month	Writes inside Salesforce, Zendesk and ServiceNow	Narrow surface; API sold separately
DeepL Write	Multilingual and translation-linked work	Yes	€6.99/user/mo billed annually as a Write Pro add-on	Writing and translation in one tool	Write is an add-on on top of Pro
Hemingway Editor	Readability discipline	Yes	Free web editor; Plus on a 2-week trial	Teaches you to write shorter sentences yourself	Readability only, not a grammar engine

Why look for a Grammarly alternative?

The main reasons to look elsewhere are price, scope and platform ownership - not quality. Grammarly remains good at what it does, so the case for switching is mostly about whether it is priced and packaged for your job.

Pricing is the first thing people notice. Grammarly’s fixed global Pro plan works out at $144 a year per member, or $12 per member per month on average, according to Grammarly’s own support centre listing of Pro pricing. That is a lot for a person who writes two emails a day. QuillBot Premium and Paperpal Prime both land near $12 a month billed annually, so a straightforward switch can halve the bill without losing core correction.

The second reason is scope. Grammarly’s current plans page now lists three tiers: Free, Plus and Enterprise. Free covers spelling, grammar, tone checking and 100 AI prompts per month. Plus adds full-sentence rewrites, tone adjustment, inclusive-language and citation-consistency checks, plagiarism and AI-generated-text detection, and 2,000 AI prompts per member per month. Enterprise moves to unlimited prompts and adds SAML SSO, SCIM, managed mode, BYOK encryption, data loss prevention, audit logs API and cost-centre visibility. That is a very good product, and it is aimed squarely at organisations that need governance rather than at one person who wants cleaner prose.

The third reason is company direction. In October 2025 Grammarly’s parent announced it was rebranding to Superhuman and grouping Grammarly with Coda, Superhuman Mail and the new Superhuman Go assistant. The company cites more than 40 million daily users, 50,000 organisations and over a million app and website integrations. Nothing is shutting down, but if your objection to Grammarly is that it is becoming a productivity platform that happens to include writing, that objection is now factually correct.

Switching rarely pays off on grammar accuracy alone. It pays off when the tool you already pay for matches the document you actually produce - a manuscript, a ticket reply, a translation, or a paragraph of Spanish.

How I chose these alternatives

Prices and plan limits were checked against vendor pricing pages, comparison tables and help documentation on 14 October 2026. Scores are editorial judgements on a five-point scale.

Each product had to clear three bars: it is currently sold and actively developed, it overlaps with Grammarly’s real workflow rather than merely mentioning writing, and I could verify its free tier and paid limits from a primary source. Products that repositioned away from writing were dropped; Texta’s current pricing page, for example, now sells generative-engine-optimisation tracking rather than an editor.

Weighted in the comparison: output quality on real documents, how easily it fits into an existing daily flow, price at both monthly and annual billing, what the free tier genuinely permits, integration surface, team and governance features, privacy commitments, and how painful migration would be.

1. QuillBot - Best overall

QuillBot is the closest single-product replacement for Grammarly Pro, and the strongest choice here on price. It wins because it treats rewriting as a first-class job rather than an add-on.

It does: paraphrasing in nine built-in modes plus custom modes, grammar checking, summarising with custom summary lengths, an AI content detector, an AI humanizer, a plagiarism checker covering more than 100 languages, translation into 40-plus languages, and tone insights that estimate how a reader will perceive your text. It runs as a browser extension, a Word add-in, desktop apps and mobile keyboards.

The numbers come straight from QuillBot’s own Premium comparison, which lists Free at $0 and Premium at $8.33 per month billed annually, shown with a 58% discount on annual billing. The free tier is real: paraphrase up to 100 words, two modes, basic grammar fixes, limited humanizing, 1,200-word summaries, limited AI detection, a 25,000-words-per-month plagiarism allowance and 10 MB of Flow storage. Premium unlocks full paraphrasing in all nine modes, unlimited custom modes, advanced grammar recommendations, tone insights, grammar checking in six languages, 6,000-word summaries and 100 MB of storage. A Team plan adds usage metrics, user management, centralised billing, data control and priority support.

Compared with Grammarly, QuillBot gives you paraphrasing, translation and detection for less money, and loses on depth: Grammarly’s sentence-level analysis and its Snippets and brand-tone libraries for teams are more developed. QuillBot is a Learneo business and has been shipping new tools continuously, including a presentation maker and resume builder.

Verdict: switch if you rewrite as much as you correct. Stay on Grammarly if your team’s real need is a shared brand voice rather than a bigger toolkit.

2. ProWritingAid - Best for power users

ProWritingAid is the most analytical editor on this list and the right answer for anyone working on a long document. It is a poor substitute for live correction and an excellent substitute for a line edit.

It does: grammar, spelling and punctuation checks, plus roughly 25 additional analysis reports covering repetition, overused words, wordiness, passive voice, clichés, sensory detail, readability and pacing. On paid plans you get a custom style guide, a custom dictionary, comparison against 90 fiction authors across genres, comment-and-share collaboration, unlimited document storage, and a full story-critique suite including chapter critique, plot analysis, character analysis, virtual beta reader and marketability analysis. It proofreads Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Google Docs, Microsoft Office and its own desktop editor.

Pricing on its own page shows Free with 500 words per check, two line-editing reports per day, 10 Rephrases, three Sparks and three Creative Nudges. Premium is $10 per month billed yearly ($120 a year) or $30 billed monthly. Premium Pro is $12 per month billed yearly ($144 a year) or $36 monthly, and raises daily limits to 30 chapter critiques, 50 Sparks and 15 Creative Nudges while adding live workshops and co-writing sprints. Lifetime licences are $399 for Premium and $699 for Premium Pro, which is the standout offer here for anyone who writes for years. Paid plans include a three-day money-back guarantee; monthly payments are not refundable.

Two honest limits: it is English-only, covering general, British, American, Australian and Canadian English; and free users cannot check documents longer than 500 words at a time.

Verdict: switch for manuscripts, theses and long reports. Keep Grammarly for the quick email fix you do twenty times a day.

3. LanguageTool - Best free

LanguageTool is the best free alternative and the only open-source option on this list. If you want a permanent free plan with no prompt meter and no expiry, this is it.

It does: spelling, grammar, punctuation, style, semantic and typography checking across more than 30 languages and dialects, with six English varieties (US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa). Its free and Premium tiers differ sharply in capacity: the feature comparison on its Premium page shows 2,000 characters per text field on the free plan against 150,000 on Premium, limited Picky Mode against full Picky Mode, and three AI sentence rephrases a day on free. Premium adds a personal dictionary, text statistics, a personal style guide and team features. Apps cover Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Thunderbird, Windows, macOS and iOS, plus a Microsoft Word add-in and a Google Docs add-on. The browser add-on states that no text is stored by it.

The reason it is free is the business model: LanguageTool is developed as open source and earns from Premium, business and team accounts. That means your writing is not the product.

Verdict: switch if price or data handling decides it. Give up generation, summarising, citations and plagiarism detection in exchange.

4. Paperpal - Best for academic writing

Paperpal is the most complete academic writing assistant here, and it does things Grammarly has no equivalent for. It targets students, researchers and clinicians rather than general business writing.

It does: grammar and language suggestions, consistency checks, plagiarism checking, AI detection, a journal-fit report that tells you whether a paper suits a target journal, a reference check that catches miscited work, citation formatting in APA, MLA and thousands of other styles, chat-with-your-papers for PDFs, a reference library, document sharing with up to five collaborators, and AI-assisted figure generation. It works through a Microsoft Word add-in and Chrome and Edge extensions that cover Google Docs and Overleaf.

Its pricing page lists Free at $0 with 200 edits per month, five uses a day of the writing tools, five research questions a day, five PDF chats a month, 300 MB of library storage and up to five collaborators. Prime is $12 per month billed annually ($144 a year) with 20,000 edits, 10,000 words of plagiarism checking, 25,000 words of AI detection and 2 GB of storage. Pro is $29 per month billed annually ($348 a year) with unlimited edits, 30,000 words of plagiarism checking, unlimited AI detection and 10 GB of storage. Multi-year Prime options exist at $229 for two years and $289 for three years. Pro carries a 100% money-back guarantee.

Paperpal is part of Cactus Communications, the same group as Editage, which matters mainly for institutional invoicing. The trade-off is obvious: it is built for papers, and forcing it to write a support reply is a poor use of it.

Verdict: switch if your output is academic. Nobody else on this list gives you journal fit and reference checking.

5. Trinka AI - Best value for research writing

Trinka AI delivers the most research-specific feature set per dollar on this list. Its free plan does not expire, which is rarer than vendors like to admit.

It does: grammar and style-guide corrections using APA, AMA, ACS, AGU and IEEE rules, a paraphraser, consistency and inclusive-language checks, a personal dictionary, a journal finder, citation checking and formatting, plagiarism and AI detection, file proofreading for Word and LaTeX with tracked changes on paid plans, file translation in more than 30 languages, and an offline desktop grammar checker on its top tier.

Plan structure on its pricing page: Basic is free and never expires, with 5,000 words a month of writing assistance, five AI writing requests a month, four credits a month, Lite-mode grammar checking only, standard-mode paraphrasing only, and proofing of up to four files by credit. Premium is $48 a year and adds full grammar modes, all paraphrasing modes, inclusive-language checks, editable proofread files and ten credits a month. Premium Plus is $125 a year ($10.41 a month) with double credits, file translation and 240 pages a year of standard plagiarism checking or AI detection. Confidential Data is $300 a year ($41.67 a month) and adds an offline grammar checker, unlimited AI writing, real-time data deletion and 1,000 pages a year of detection, with a stated commitment that data is not used for AI training. Team plans start at six users.

The credit system is the part to watch. Extra credit packs never expire, but unused free monthly credits do, and it is easy to misjudge how many checks you can afford.

Verdict: switch if you submit to journals and want the cheapest credible academic setup. Do not switch if you mainly write in a browser.

6. Jenni AI - Best for drafting

Jenni AI solves a different problem: getting words onto the page. It is not a Grammarly replacement so much as a first-draft engine with editing attached.

It does: inline autocomplete that continues your sentences as you type, AI edits, an AI chat, reviews, repeatable workflow runs, unlimited PDF uploads for source material, inline citation generation, and full document export.

Its pricing page lists a free plan plus Plus at $12 a month and Pro at $29 a month, with a monthly and annual toggle. Plus gives 5,000 autocompletes a month, 500 AI edits, 500 AI chat interactions, 10 reviews and 10 workflow runs with unlimited PDF uploads. Pro removes the caps on all of those and adds priority support. No credit card is required to start and cancellation is self-service.

The reason it is here despite overlapping only partly with Grammarly: a large share of people evaluating grammar checkers do not have a grammar problem, they have a starting-line problem. If you can already write a clean paragraph, none of this matters to you.

Verdict: switch if drafting is your bottleneck. Keep Grammarly alongside it for the edit pass.

7. Rytr - Best for short-form content

Rytr is the cheapest credible way to produce short marketing copy at volume. It is a generator first and a checker never.

It does: more than 40 use cases and templates across emails, ads, social posts and product descriptions, tone selection across 20-plus tones, a Chrome extension that writes inside Gmail and Docs, and built-in plagiarism checking. It analyses a sample of your writing and mirrors your voice, with personal tone profiles on paid plans.

Its homepage lists Free at $0 with 10,000 characters per month, Unlimited at $7.50 a month with unlimited generations, one personal tone and 50 plagiarism checks a month, and Premium at $24.16 a month with five personal tones, higher input limits, writing in 40-plus languages and 100 plagiarism checks a month. Its own FAQ notes that annual billing saves 20% over monthly.

There is no grammar engine here. You are buying drafts, and you will still need something to check them - which is why Rytr pairs naturally with LanguageTool rather than replacing it. AIUnpacker also has a standalone Rytr review if you want a second read on that side.

Verdict: switch for generation-heavy content marketing. Keep a real proofreader alongside it.

8. Sapling AI - Best for support and sales teams

Sapling AI is the strongest alternative if your writing happens inside a ticketing or CRM system all day. It is narrow by design, and that narrowness is the feature.

It does: grammar and advanced writing suggestions, autocomplete that completes replies in place, rephrasing, reusable snippets, an AI detector, and a chat assist for answering inside live conversations. It integrates natively with Salesforce, Zendesk, ServiceNow, Amazon Connect and Twilio Flex, and it now also ships a REST API with Python and JavaScript client libraries for custom surfaces.

Its pricing comparison shows Free with basic suggestions, 20 snippets, AI detection at 2,000 characters per check and five files per batch, on free domains only. Pro raises detection to 100,000 characters per check and ten files per batch, adds autocomplete everywhere, rephrase and unlimited snippets, unlocks premium domains and adds email and ticket support; registering an account starts a one-month Pro trial with no credit card required. Enterprise starts at 10 seats at $15 per seat per month and adds chat assist, custom integrations, self-hosting, SSO and SCIM, bulk provisioning, team analytics, conversational insights and dedicated support. The API is a separate usage-based plan with a one-time $5 minimum.

If you write in Gmail all day, this will feel like less product than Grammarly for the same money. If you answer tickets, it will feel like the only tool built for the job.

Verdict: switch for support, sales and ops teams. Keep Grammarly for anyone who also writes long-form documents.

9. DeepL Write - Best for multilingual work

DeepL Write is the best Grammarly alternative when your documents cross languages rather than merely needing better English. It is the only option here that pairs a writing assistant with a serious translation engine.

It does: AI writing assistance with tone adaptation and refinement, plus full document and text translation in the same subscription, with browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox and Edge that work inside Gmail, Google Docs and Google Slides.

The plan structure from DeepL’s own comparison gives the free version 50,000 characters per user per month and one saved translation. Individual Pro gives 300,000 characters, Team gives 1,000,000, and Business and Enterprise are unlimited under a fair-use policy. Write is sold as an add-on at €6.99 per user per month billed annually, with 16% saved against monthly billing - so you need a Pro subscription before Write is available at all. Individual and Team plans come with a 30-day free trial, and DeepL states that trials are not offered to users who have had one before.

The privacy position is unusually clear for an AI vendor: ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II certified processes, processing in ISO 27001-certified data centres, and content that is never used to train DeepL’s models. Prices are quoted in euros, with VAT included, which adds currency friction for non-European buyers.

Verdict: switch if you draft in one language and publish in another. Pay the Pro subscription first, then add Write.

10. Hemingway Editor - Best for readability

Hemingway Editor is the cheapest way to stop writing sentences people abandon. It is a teaching tool, not a grammar engine.

It does: colour-coded highlighting where yellow marks long sentences, red marks sentences so dense the reader will get lost, blue marks adverbs and passive voice, and purple marks unnecessarily complex words. Clicking a highlight explains the problem. The paid Hemingway Editor Plus adds AI fixes for those highlights, an advanced grammar checker that marks issues in green, and tone and style changes on selected text. There is a free web editor that needs no account, and Plus is advertised with a free two-week trial.

The base editor is free and the Plus trial lasts two weeks. Confirm the current Plus price at checkout before subscribing.

Verdict: switch for blog posts and newsletters where readability is the metric. Do not expect it to replace a proofreader.

Which Grammarly alternative should you choose?

Match the tool to the document you produce most often.

1. You write across many formats and want one subscription - QuillBot. Best balance of correction, rewriting and detection at $8.33 a month billed annually.
2. You want a real free plan with no expiry and no prompt meter - LanguageTool. Open source, 30-plus languages, permanent free tier.
3. You write novels, scripts or long reports - ProWritingAid. Structural analysis and a lifetime licence.
4. You write papers, theses or clinical documents - Paperpal. Journal fit, reference checking and citation tools.
5. You submit to journals on a tight budget - Trinka AI. $48 a year for the same academic feature set at a fraction of the price.
6. You struggle to start rather than to polish - Jenni AI. Autocomplete drafts; proofread afterwards.
7. You produce short marketing and social copy in volume - Rytr. Cheapest unlimited generation, paired with LanguageTool.
8. You answer tickets and leads inside Salesforce or Zendesk - Sapling AI. Built for the queue you actually sit in.
9. You publish in more than one language - DeepL Write. Take Pro, then add Write.
10. Your problem is long, muddy sentences - Hemingway Editor. Free editor, two-week Plus trial.

When you should keep Grammarly

Keep Grammarly if correction is automatic and invisible, and your documents are ordinary English business writing. There is a substantial group of users for whom switching is pure cost.

Keep it if you already have Grammarly installed in Chrome, Edge, Word and on mobile, and you have never thought about it. That is the product working. Keep it if the free plan is enough - 100 AI prompts a month, unlimited spelling, grammar and tone checks is genuinely useful for ordinary email. Keep it if your organisation depends on Snippets, brand tones, style guides and team analytics; Grammarly Plus includes those and Grammarly Enterprise adds SSO, SCIM, managed mode and BYOK encryption, and rebuilding that on any tool here means a procurement project. Keep it if you are a student or educator, since Grammarly’s free-for-education programme covers more than 3,000 institutions according to the company’s own announcement.

The rebrand to Superhuman is not, by itself, a reason to leave. The product continues, and if you also use Coda or Superhuman Mail, the suite bundling may make staying cheaper than leaving.

When switching makes sense

Map the complaint to the fix.

If the price is the problem, QuillBot Premium or Paperpal Prime both land at roughly half of Grammarly Pro on annual billing. If you do not need paraphrasing at all, ProWritingAid at $10 a month billed yearly is cheaper still.

If the free tier is the problem, Grammarly Free now caps AI prompts at 100 a month. LanguageTool’s free plan has no prompt cap and no expiry, and Trinka’s Basic plan never expires.

If you write outside English, LanguageTool covers more than 30 languages and dialects; DeepL handles translation and writing together.

If you handle sensitive or regulated text, LanguageTool’s open-source core and no-text-storage add-on, Trinka’s Confidential Data tier with real-time deletion and no training on your data, and DeepL’s stated no-training commitment are all stronger positions than a cloud writing suite.

If your writing is academic, Grammarly has no journal-fit or reference-checking equivalent. Paperpal and Trinka do.

If your team lives in a CRM, Sapling writes where the work happens instead of in a separate editor.

How to migrate without chaos

Do this in order and it takes an afternoon.

1. Export before you cancel. Grammarly stores documents in its editor. Download anything you want to keep, and note which style rules you had configured, since those do not transfer.
2. Keep the free tier running for two weeks. You can downgrade rather than cancel, so you keep access while you compare. Use that window on your real documents, not on sample text.
3. Install the new tool alongside the old one. Running two extensions at once on the same page will double every suggestion. Disable one; do not uninstall either yet.
4. Rebuild the bits Grammarly did quietly. Snippets, brand tones and custom style guides have no automatic equivalent. Export or rewrite them before your paid Grammarly subscription lapses.
5. Move your documents, not your workflow. Paperpal, Trinka and ProWritingAid all read and export standard Word files, and ProWritingAid handles LaTeX, so nothing is locked into a proprietary format.
6. Check billing dates carefully. Annual plans are where the pain is. Do not start a new annual subscription in the same week your Grammarly annual plan renews.

Final recommendation

Best overall: QuillBot. It is the only product here that matches Grammarly’s everyday correction while adding paraphrasing, summarising, translation and detection, at $8.33 a month billed annually against Grammarly Pro’s $144 a year. If your workflow is mostly rewriting rather than proofreading, it is simply better value.

Best free: LanguageTool. A permanent free plan, no prompt cap, more than 30 languages and an open-source core. Its 2,000-character field limit is the whole trade-off.

Best for power users: ProWritingAid. Twenty-five-plus analysis reports, a custom dictionary, author comparison and a $399 lifetime licence for anyone writing books or long reports.

Best for support and sales teams: Sapling AI, for teams whose writing happens inside Salesforce and Zendesk rather than in a document editor.

Who should stay on Grammarly: anyone who wants correction that stays out of the way across browser, desktop and mobile, and any organisation genuinely using Snippets, style guides, SSO and team analytics. The free plan alone remains worth keeping.

Who should switch: anyone paying $144 a year for personal use, anyone who needs more than 100 AI prompts a month, and anyone whose writing is academic, multilingual, or confined to a CRM queue.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best Grammarly alternative overall? QuillBot. It bundles paraphrasing, grammar, summarising, AI detection and plagiarism checking in one subscription listed at $8.33 per month billed annually, and its free plan is genuinely usable rather than a countdown demo.

Is there a free Grammarly alternative? Yes. Of all the Grammarly alternatives, LanguageTool is the best free option. Its free plan never expires, needs no credit card, has no AI prompt cap and covers more than 30 languages. The limitation is 2,000 characters per text field and restricted Picky Mode.

Is Grammarly’s free plan still worth using? Yes for ordinary correction. It covers spelling, grammar, tone checking and 100 AI prompts a month at no cost, while Pro costs $144 a year. Upgrade only when you need more prompts, plagiarism and AI-text detection, or team brand controls.

Which alternative is best for writing novels? ProWritingAid, with its structural reports, custom dictionary, comparison against 90 fiction authors and lifetime licences. Its limits are English-only support and weak live, sentence-by-sentence correction.

What is the cheapest option for a student? LanguageTool, because the free plan never expires. Paperpal’s free tier is also permanent and includes 200 edits a month plus five PDF chats, which covers most coursework.

Can I try these without a credit card? Yes. LanguageTool, Paperpal, Trinka’s Basic plan and Jenni AI all start without a card, and Trinka states explicitly that its Basic plan never expires. Sapling AI issues a one-month Pro trial on sign-up.

Is Grammarly shutting down now that the company is Superhuman? No. The rebrand was announced in October 2025 and groups Grammarly with Coda, Superhuman Mail and Superhuman Go. The Grammarly product continues, with Free, Plus and Enterprise tiers still listed.

What happens to my Grammarly documents if I switch? Export them before cancelling, because Grammarly stores documents in its editor and offers no standard export elsewhere. Paperpal, Trinka and ProWritingAid all read and export standard Word files, so nothing is held hostage by format.