ProWritingAid Premium lists at $30/mo billed monthly, and annual or lifetime billing brings the cost down sharply. The free checker stops at 500 words per check, too short for the manuscripts the tool is built for, and its 20+ style reports can overwhelm anyone who just wants quick corrections.
Grammarly is the better fit for quick, real-time fixes everywhere you type. Wordtune Free has unlimited grammar and spelling checks. For feedback on a full manuscript, Claude handles long documents, and QuillBot Premium ($19.95/mo) bundles a plagiarism checker with unlimited paraphrasing.
| App | Free tier | Paid from | Top plan | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ProWritingAid | Yes | $30/mo | $36/mo | Novelists, academics, and bloggers who want in-depth style reports (pacing, overused words, readability) on full manuscripts |
| 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 |
| Claude | Yes | $20/mo | $100–200/mo | Document analysis, research papers, nuanced writing, software engineering |
| QuillBot | Yes | $19.95/mo | $19.95/mo | Students and ESL writers polishing and paraphrasing existing text rather than generating new content |
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 November 2, 2026
Grammarly Free checks grammar and spelling in real time with a tone detector; Pro ($30/mo) adds full-sentence rewrites, plagiarism detection and AI-text detection.
Pick it if: you write emails and short pieces and found ProWritingAid's reports too much.
Where it falls short: Its fixes work sentence by sentence rather than as manuscript-level reports, and Pro's monthly price matches ProWritingAid Premium.
Full Grammarly pricing →Wordtune Free includes unlimited grammar and spelling checks plus 10 rewrites a day; Unlimited ($9.99/mo) adds vocabulary, clarity and fluency enhancements.
Pick it if: you want free proofreading without a per-check word cap.
Where it falls short: It focuses on sentence rewrites, with no style reports on pacing or overused words.
Full Wordtune pricing →Claude is built for long documents and nuanced writing. Pro ($20/mo) adds unlimited projects for keeping a manuscript and style notes together, and Claude for Microsoft 365.
Pick it if: you want editorial feedback on structure and tone across a whole draft.
Where it falls short: Usage caps are smaller than ChatGPT's.
Full Claude pricing →QuillBot Premium ($19.95/mo) bundles a plagiarism checker (25,000 words a month) with grammar checking, unlimited paraphrasing and a summariser.
Pick it if: you need a plagiarism checker alongside grammar fixes and paraphrasing.
Where it falls short: A full manuscript may exceed the 25,000-word monthly plagiarism allowance.
Full QuillBot pricing →ProWritingAid earns its price on long-form work: reports on pacing, overused words and readability across a whole manuscript, inside Word, Google Docs or Scrivener. For emails and short posts, those reports are overkill and a real-time checker is the better buy. For a novel or thesis, check that an alternative copes with the full length; ProWritingAid Premium has no word-count limit.
For long-form writers, ProWritingAid's 20+ in-depth reports go deeper than Grammarly's sentence-level fixes, and it integrates with Scrivener. For real-time corrections and tone detection everywhere you type, Grammarly is the simpler tool.
Wordtune Free includes unlimited grammar and spelling checks, and Grammarly Free checks grammar and spelling in real time. For style feedback on a whole manuscript, ProWritingAid's paid reports remain the specialist option.
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.