Grammarly Pro lists at $30/mo billed monthly; annual billing cuts that by more than half. Its AI rewrites are rule-bound next to a real chatbot, which is why many users only keep the free grammar checker.
Wordtune is the cheapest real alternative: its free tier has unlimited grammar and spelling checks, and Unlimited costs $9.99/mo. QuillBot suits students who paraphrase. For full rewrites, a free ChatGPT account beats Grammarly's AI.
| App | Free tier | Paid from | Top plan | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grammarly | Yes | $30/mo | $30/mo | Non-native and casual writers who want real-time grammar, tone, and clarity fixes everywhere they type |
| Wordtune | Yes | $6.99/mo | $9.99/mo | Writers who want fast, contextual sentence rewrites and tone shifts on text they've already drafted |
| QuillBot | Yes | $19.95/mo | $19.95/mo | Students and ESL writers polishing and paraphrasing existing text rather than generating new content |
| ChatGPT | Yes | $8/mo | $500/mo | Everyday writing, brainstorming, image generation, casual coding |
| Claude | Yes | $20/mo | $100–200/mo | Document analysis, research papers, nuanced writing, software engineering |
Monthly prices in US dollars before tax, from each vendor's official pricing (US list price; weekly-billed plans converted to a monthly figure). Updated October 7, 2026
Free includes unlimited grammar and spelling checks plus 10 rewrites a day; Unlimited ($9.99/mo) removes the caps on rewrites and summaries for about a third of Grammarly's monthly price.
Pick it if: you want sentence rewrites and tone shifts on text you've already written.
Full Wordtune pricing →QuillBot combines a paraphraser, grammar check, summariser and AI humaniser; Premium ($19.95/mo) adds unlimited paraphrasing and a plagiarism checker (25,000 words a month).
Pick it if: you rework existing text and need a plagiarism check, for less than Grammarly Pro's monthly price.
Full QuillBot pricing →ChatGPT Free has unlimited text chats, so you can paste a draft and ask for a full rewrite in any tone, which goes further than Grammarly's AI rewrites.
Pick it if: you want whole paragraphs rewritten and don't need inline checks as you type.
Full ChatGPT pricing →Claude is tuned for nuanced writing; its free tier handles editing passes on longer documents, and Pro ($20/mo) also covers research and code.
Pick it if: you edit long documents and care about tone more than typo-catching.
Full Claude pricing →A common setup is Grammarly Free (or Wordtune Free) for real-time typo catching wherever you type, plus a general chatbot for rewrites. That covers most of what Grammarly Pro sells, and the chatbot does far more besides.
Wordtune Free, with unlimited grammar and spelling checks. For rewriting whole passages, ChatGPT Free is more capable than any grammar tool's AI.
For paraphrasing and summarising, yes, and Premium costs less than Grammarly Pro billed monthly. For real-time grammar checking everywhere you type, Grammarly is still the specialist.
How we choose: prices come from each vendor's official pricing page and are re-checked every week. We take no affiliate fees, so rankings aren't for sale.